July 25, 2004

By Adam Lucas, Tar Heel Monthly

At some point, every Carolina basketball player has to become a member of the real world. Sometimes, it can be a difficult transition, as the adjustment in going from a well-recognized hoopster to a faceless member of the working world can be a shocking one. Some players struggle with it.

Others, like Steve Hale, embrace it.

A Tar Heel from 1982 to 1986, Hale played in 131 games, good for a spot among the top 25 in Carolina's all-time games played list (a trivia note: Brendan Haywood leads that category with 141 appearances). His 503 career assists are eighth all-time at Carolina, and he was a key member of the 1984 team that reeled off 21 straight victories to start the year.

His credentials certainly would allow him to bask in the glow of his career for many years. Perhaps start a basketball camp, maybe live somewhere in the Triangle and smile sheepishly when a fan asks, "Hey, aren't you that Steve Hale?"

Instead, he chose to move 800 miles away to Burlington, Vermont, a place where college basketball is primarily an afterthought. Despite the move, though, there's still one unfortunate fact of life in the Northeast that he can't escape.

"Unfortunately, there are a lot of Duke graduates up here," Hale says with a laugh. "There are more college basketball fans up here than I would have thought before we moved. It's probably weekly that someone mentions the Tar Heels."

But even to Vermont's most rabid hoops fans, he's no longer Steve Hale, basketball player. He's long since traded the hightops for a stethoscope, and he's now Steve Hale, M.D., with a thriving practice in pediatrics.

Hale didn't decide he wanted to be a doctor until his junior year at Carolina, when he switched his major from chemistry to biology. He applied to medical school, was accepted at Carolina, and after finishing his graduate work moved to Vermont in 1991 to begin his residency.

By that point he'd married his college sweetheart and the couple already had a young daughter, Sarah (who now thinks she might want to enter the noble profession of sportswriting). They've since added three sons to the brood, but the quartet of Hale kids have grown up with very little knowledge of the fact that their dad was once one of the best-known men in Chapel Hill.

Until, that is, the entire family traveled to UNC in February for the basketball reunion. Seeing their father honored at halftime of the Florida State game along with the other lettermen almost gave Hale a new status.

"I don't know if Dad is ever cool," he says. "But it was exciting for them to see the Smith Center and see a game and meet the players. It's woven into the fabric of people's lives at Carolina. You can try to be grafted in, but it's never the same as people who are Tar Heel born."

The ever-present status of basketball in the state was part of the reason why Hale, an Oklahoma native, chose to go elsewhere for his residency.

"Playing at Carolina was a wonderful experience, but I didn't want that to define who I was for good or for bad," he says. "I didn't want to be a pediatrician and have people come to see me because I played basketball. I wanted them to come see me because I was a good pediatrician."

The decision to step out of the limelight came as no surprise to Carolina assistant Joe Holladay, who was Hale's high school coach at Jenks High. The player still cites his prep coach's intense three-hour practices, with all 15 players in constant motion, as the key to preparing him for the demands of college basketball.

"He's not a guy who would want to hang around and live off his basketball reputation," Holladay says. "To Steve that was one good phase of his life, and he wanted to move on to the next phase, which was being a doctor and parenthood."

Soon after Holladay moved into his new office at the Smith Center--where the walls stayed mostly barren until the building staff provided a framed photo of Hale, the only picture Holladay hung in his early months on the job--the Hale family stopped by Chapel Hill for a visit. They met again at the reunion, an event the former player says was responsible for giving him an even greater appreciation for the history of Tar Heel hoops and the thread that runs through every member of the program.

Despite the distance to Chapel Hill, Hale says he still uses one of Dean Smith's trademark "Thoughts for the Day" on a regular basis. Smith made the quick thoughts a staple of every day's practice sheet, a tradition carried on by Roy Williams.

"The one that has stuck with me seems simple, but it's a Native American saying of, 'Don't judge someone until you walk two miles in their moccasins,'" Hale says. "I use that as a pediatrician, because I'm relating to a lot of different kids and parents. I can't make a snap judgment with them because I don't know how they've grown up or what their circumstances are. It has made me more empathetic."

Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly, click here.