Kameron Cox used to throw plenty of good-natured trash talk at his stepsister, Kuryn Brunson. A talented baseball player who was set to play varsity at Rushville before COVID-19 wiped out the season, Cox would playfully taunt Brunson by saying that he would be the one to get a Division I scholarship before she got one in basketball.
The back-and-forth banter used to motivate both of them.
But Cox’s diamond dreams were tragically cut short when he died in a single-vehicle accident on the morning of Sept. 1. Now, Brunson uses the saved text-message conversations between them to motivate herself as she heads into her junior basketball season at Franklin.
"(Cox) would always be like … ‘Oh, I’m going D1 before you go D1,’ or ‘Oh, I’m doing this,’ so we used to push each other in that sense," Brunson said. "I read our messages and I’m like, ‘This is what he would have wanted.’
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Click here to purchase photos from this gallery"When I get up at 5 a.m. to come to morning workouts, and I’m tired and I don’t want to be here, I’m like, ‘This is what he would have wanted.’"
A Division I ride is what Brunson has long wanted, too, and it’s well within her reach despite a road that had been riddled with potholes even before the untimely passing of Cox, who had just turned 16 in August.
Brunson arrived at Franklin two years ago as a freshman with plenty of buzz — a marvelous physical talent who can handle the ball but also mix it up in the post if needed. She made an immediate impact in her debut season, contributing about 13 points, 6 rebounds and 5 assists per game and running the point while Kyra Baker, who had started in that spot as a ninth-grader the previous season, recovered from a knee injury.
"She’s a very good all-around player," Franklin coach Josh Sabol said of Brunson. "She’s 5-10, but she can play point guard and you can also put her in the post. She can shoot 3s, and she can bully someone under the basket.
"Being that well-rounded, and being able to utilize her in multiple ways is her biggest strength as a player. She does so many things well, where a lot of players, maybe they’re the shooter, or they’re the point guard, or their back is always to the basket. With her, I can literally put her at any spot on the floor and she’s going to do well."
Grizzly Cub fans were excited about the prospect of pairing Brunson with a healthy Baker — but then Brunson suffered the same fate as her teammate, tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee in May of 2019.
She missed the first 12 games of the season and was still definitely not herself when she returned, with her numbers over the 10 games that she did play in (6.4 points, 2.7 rebounds, 1.4 assists) not even half what they had been during her freshman year.
"It was hard at first, because I had been out of a groove with my team," Brunson said. "My team has been playing this whole season, and so coming back I had to find my place, learn what my team needed from me and what I could do to help contribute to wins. Toward the end of the season, I think we found our groove more."
That was most evident in Franklin’s lone postseason game, a 72-67 overtime loss to eventual sectional champion Franklin Central. Brunson was still relatively quiet, scoring seven points, but the team seemed more comfortable together — and she was gradually getting more comfortable on the floor again.
She noted that the time on the sideline helped her notice some things she had never picked up on during the heat of the moment while playing, and that having Baker around as a sounding board during the rehabilitation process was a tremendous asset.
"Kyra actually helped me a lot. She would send me motivational stuff, tell me to keep pushing. I’d do my rehab over here to the side, and Kyra was always the first person be like, ‘Oh, you look good,’" Brunson said. "Of course, neither of us wanted to do it, but having her having gone through the same thing, it really helped a lot."
"We talked about it every single day," Baker added. "We’d talk about what we needed to do to improve each other, more the mental aspect than physical."
Brunson had hoped to use this past offseason to complete her recovery and to make an impression on college coaches. But the pandemic played havoc with the AAU season, and many of the games she did get to play were in relatively empty gyms.
She made enough of an impression, though, that numerous scouts who saw her game footage online — including some from mid-major Division I schools — want to see more in person.
Sabol is confident that anyone who comes to watch Brunson this winter is going to really like what they see.
"With COVID and her injury, it’s almost like some people have forgotten about her, because you haven’t been able to see her play," the coach said. "So this year, with her being 100 percent and her being on the floor and being back to where she was, I think there’s going to be a lot of people that will be like, ‘Oh yeah; I remember her.’"
No matter how the recruiting process ends up playing out over the next year or two, Brunson is just happy to be back into a routine on the court — especially after all of the hardship she has endured in the past 18 months.
Having to bounce back after the ACL tear and missing the bulk of her sophomore season was hard. Losing Cox just as she was starting to get her on-court groove back was even harder. But through all of the rough times, Brunson has always been able to lean on the game she loves.
"Basketball has definitely always been my escape," she said. "When things get hard or when I don’t know how to handle things, I definitely focus on basketball and push it into basketball, and I think that’s helped me be the player that I am, because I have dealt with a lot."
Starting with Franklin’s season opener at Mt. Vernon on Thursday, Brunson figures to be a lot for opponents to deal with.
She’ll be doing it to help her team win. And she’ll be doing it to fulfill the big dreams that she and her stepbrother used to talk about.
On Sunday night, Brunson tweeted out a message along with some photos of Cox: "2 months without you. I’m accomplishing our dreams bub. I got you, and yeah I know you got me. LongLiveYou."
Perhaps her note was meant to reach Cox directly somehow. Perhaps it was just one final preseason reminder to herself about what her mission is. Maybe a little of both.
He might not be around to talk smack to her anymore, but Cox is still motivating his stepsister every single day.
"I know he’s watching over me," Brunson said, "and I can only make him proud of the things I do."
