Dance was her passion, but after hearing loss, Combs' Kiley Bush found purpose on high school basketball court

Heidi Bush thought her oldest daughter, Kiley, was being dramatic, like middle schoolers are.

The Bush family was on the way to a dance competition, because in those days, that’s what they did. Both their daughters danced, but Kiley was obsessed.

“I thought it was gonna be the rest of my life,” she says now.

This particular competition, the Spotlight Dance Cup, was in Seaside, Oregon, six hours southwest of the family’s home in Entiat, Washington. Plenty of time for a 12-year-old to sink into the backseat, throw in a pair of earbuds and ignore her parents.

That’s when Kiley first noticed something was wrong. Sound wasn’t coming through from her left earbud so, naturally, she thought they were broken. Heidi tested them out and came to the conclusion that Kiley was pining for a new pair. Neither of them realized that this was the first warning sign.

Certainly, neither of them imagined that this little moment, in the backseat of the family’s red Dodge Durango, meant this dance competition would be one of Kiley’s last. Or that, five years later, it would lead to her becoming one of the most dominant forces in Arizona high school basketball.

“You don't think of that when you're a parent,” Heidi said. “It never dawned on me that she could be losing her hearing.”

Three months later, that was the diagnosis they received. In between, the Bushes navigated a labyrinth of medical providers. The yearly wellness check at Entiat Middle School identified Kiley’s compromised hearing. The audiologist at Confluence Health in neighboring Wenatchee offered little clarity, except that the situation wasn’t good.

Only after a three-hour drive to Seattle Children’s Hospital did they learn Kiley had enlarged cochlears. Even there, no explanation was offered as to why. But the future was laid out in no uncertain terms. Kiley’s hearing loss was progressive. Eventually, the doctors said, she would likely lose it all.

'I won't be able to dance anymore'

Heidi and her husband were stunned, unable to conjure a next step. Beside them, Kiley let tears soak her cheeks. Until that moment, she thought there would be an easy surgical fix. But now, two months into seventh grade, here she was, learning that her future had been turned upside down.

“I was really shocked,” Kiley said. “I never thought something like that would actually ever happen to me.”

Her first thought in the moment wasn’t how impending hearing loss would affect school, or friendships, or a future job. It was, as Kiley puts it, “Oh crap, that could mean I won't be able to dance anymore at some point.”

Much of the rest of her seventh grade year was spent mired in a funk. Bitter. Frustrated. Lying in bed, door closed. Mind racing. Envisioning a future without sound. Imagine being 12 years old and confronting that reality. To hear Kiley tell it, those months were as awful as they sound. “Really upset and really sad,” she says. Heidi describes it as a “depression” and “pretty dark.” Whatever the adjective, it was completely foreign to anyone who knew Kiley.

“She's just always been such a happy person,” Heidi said. “Seeing her that sad was just so abnormal.”

Eventually, Kiley’s support system helped pull her out. Teachers and classmates adapted, little by little, to her hearing loss. Her parents used visual cues and learned to tap her on the shoulder to get her attention. Looking back, Heidi says, “Out of all the senses to lose, I think hearing might be the best one because there's so much you can do. And there's hardly anything she can't do.”

None of that, though, could save dance.

Had she grown up in Phoenix, or nearby Seattle, or just about anywhere else, Kiley might never have found dance in the first place. Her mom grew up in Lynden, Washington, a town where 14 banners hang in the gym where she played high school ball.

“If you grow up in Lynden, you play basketball,” Heidi said. “That's just the way it is.”

With 1,300 residents, Entiat is the opposite. The class with which Kiley began high school will graduate with just 23 kids. Stretching along the west bank of the Columbia River, the town resembles a remote Alaskan outpost. Natural beauty is in abundance, youth sports leagues are not. When the Bushes talk of “driving into town,” they mean Wenatchee, population: 35,000. Even that is a half-hour drive away.

But wanting their kids to have access to an extracurricular activity, that’s the drive the Bushes made, four times a week, shuttling them to and from the nearest dance studio. The time commitment, both in driving hours and practice hours, was grueling. So were the demands.

“Dance is hard,” Heidi said. “People don't think it's a sport, but the coaches that coach dance, they love their dancers, but they are the meanest coaches for the most part. You get sick, it's bring your own bucket.”

Immediately, though, Kiley was addicted. She loved making music with her feet and losing herself in a routine. “If I want to do something, I want to be really good at it,” Kiley says. Dancing aligned perfectly with that mindset. For six months, she could fine tune every aspect of a routine, then reveal the product of her laboring at a competition. Tap dancing was her favorite, but she was obsessed with it all.

Then, in the span of two years, it was gone.

Basketball brings 'meaning and purpose again'

Initially, tennis filled the void, borne out of a suggestion from a ninth grade teacher who pointed out that the sport doesn’t require hearing. A natural athlete at 5-foot-11, with balance and coordination fine-tuned by a lifetime of dancing, tennis clicked with Kiley, scratching her itch for competitiveness and providing the outlet that dance once offered. “I really did love it,” Kiley said.

With an affinity for sports newly formed, Heidi pushed basketball, convincing Kiley to join Entiat High’s team as a sophomore. Having “never even touched a basketball,” as she puts it, Kiley was a project. Rebounding and aggressiveness came naturally. Shooting and dribbling didn’t. But like she had with dance, Kiley would go to practice, come home and practice more. With her mom as a trainer, she learned proper shooting form, honing her skills in the driveway for hours on end.

Whereas tennis was individual, basketball meant working as a team, filling the void left by the absence of dance competitions. If Kiley worked out of her depression in eighth grade, she soared in 10th.

“It's helped me a lot with my mental health,” Kiley said. “When I found out that I was losing my hearing and then my eighth grade year, when I wasn't able to continue dancing because of it, I thought that I wasn't gonna be able to do anything with my life. Like my life had no meaning or purpose to it anymore. And then once I started doing basketball, I found that meaning and purpose again.”

That summer, Kiley’s dad, Brandon, was relocated to Arizona for work. Even moving to the Valley’s outermost reaches in San Tan Valley, there was an intimidation factor associated with trading a remote village for the country’s 10th largest metro area.

For Kiley, though, the move was perfect.

“She just blossomed down here,” Heidi said. “And it was really neat to see. She wasn't sad anymore about her hearing loss. She just started thriving. And it was wonderful as a parent because I was so scared about moving here, but it turned out to be the best thing we ever could have done.”

In San Tan Valley, Kiley enrolled at Combs High School. Even in 4A, its 1,523 students make the school larger than the entire town of Entiat.

With that came resources. By now, as a senior, Kiley has no hearing remaining in her left ear and only 50% in her right ear. But at Combs, she’s not the only student with hearing loss. The school is equipped with all sorts of modern technology that makes her life easier. In her classes, teachers wear small microphones that transmit their instruction into an earpiece that Kiley wears on her right side.

On the basketball court, too, everything is different.

As a junior last season, she was an honorable mention to the all-region team, averaging six points and six rebounds against stronger competition than she faced in Washington. Being in Arizona also enabled her to join Valley Basketball Club, a travel team headed by Mesa coach Katie Fonseca.

When Fonseca first met Kiley, she recalls a physical, athletic but raw post player. “She was working hard, but she wasn't getting better by working hard,” Fonseca said.

From March to July, Fonseca gave Kiley the tools to change that. She developed a go-to up-and-under move and added finesse to her game. Her knowledge of where to be on the floor and how to catch an entry pass improved. Skills that lifelong players learn as grade schoolers, but that required ingraining for Kiley.

“She wanted to improve and get better and from May to July, you could see it,” Fonseca said. “Every time we played, it would be the next level. The kid's just — she worked. She worked, man.”

A dominant senior season

Back at Combs, the difference in Kiley’s game is unmistakable. As a senior this season, she’s averaging a team-high 18.5 points. Her 17.2 rebounds per game are the most in the state. Opposing defenses have no answer for her post presence.

“When she gets the ball, she's determined to score,” Combs coach Kameron Thomas said. “I played high school basketball and college basketball and one thing that looking back on, I wish I had her drive and determination … to just turn and score. She'll get double-teamed and she'll just plow through them and try to score or just draw the foul.”

Watching her dominate, leaving girls four inches taller caught flat-footed as she spins freely to the rim, it’s easy to forget that Kiley has become one of the best players in the state while dealing with progressive hearing loss. For that, she credits her coaches, who have adapted by introducing hand signals for playcalls and every other instruction imaginable, from “make quicker post moves” to “look for smarter passes.”

They speak deliberately in huddles, enunciating and making sure Kiley can see them to read their lips. And it helps, Thomas said, that Heidi has joined Combs’ coaching staff as an assistant, offering a comfortable presence.

In truth, though, Kiley doesn’t need it. Next year, she’ll be playing collegiately, as she currently holds an offer from Park University, an NAIA school in Gilbert. Her play speaks for itself, enabling her to grow into a captain and a leader.

Someday, she’d like to carry that into coaching, perhaps working with Special Olympics kids. She’s involved in that program at Combs, getting students involved and working with them — a passion developed in a family with an older brother, Nelson, who has autism.

The girl who, just five years ago, sat at home, wondering what would become of her life. The girl who hinged her identity on dancing. The girl who went 14 years before picking up a basketball.

That was then.

Now she’s the girl who found basketball. The girl who learned to dominate it. The girl who says, “I just don’t want to stop playing it … because I do love it so much.” The girl who wants to share that joy with others.

Theo Mackie covers Arizona high school sports and the Arizona Diamondbacks. He can be reached by email at theo.mackie@gannett.com and on Twitter @theo_mackie.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Amid hearing loss, Combs' Kiley Bush finds purpose in basketball