Why Rashard Kelly didn’t let travel nightmare stop him from playing for AfterShocks

It took almost two days, stops in five different cities, one flight and 11 hours of driving, but Rashard Kelly made it to Wichita in time for Monday night’s game for the AfterShocks .

It was a travel nightmare that turned what should have been a routine flight to Wichita on Sunday afternoon into a mad dash across the country, as Kelly didn’t arrive at Koch Arena until one hour before tipoff on Monday evening.

It would have been easy — and totally understandable — for Kelly, a 2018 Wichita State graduate, to call off his return to play for the WSU alumni team. But his trip to Wichita, even with a crushing 65-61 defeat to Team Colorado, was always bigger than just basketball.

“Coming back here means everything to me,” Kelly said. “This is my family. I know we all have family from where we’re from, but being back at Koch Arena and seeing so many familiar faces, this is always family to me.”

Like many Americans, Kelly had flights rescheduled, delayed and canceled the past two days.

He missed the AfterShocks’ opening-round win on Saturday to attend his mother’s wedding in Virginia, but was scheduled to fly out at 5:45 a.m. Sunday from Richmond to Atlanta. But due to the global tech outage, the flight was rescheduled and then delayed until Tuesday.

Kelly drove 90 minutes to Washington, D.C., to try to find a flight out, but to no avail. Since there were no direct flights to Wichita available, he spent the rest of the night trying to find an airport he could fly out of to somewhere within driving distance of Wichita.

He checked for flights to Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Denver and even Arkansas. Finally, he found a flight out of Pittsburgh that would take him to Dallas on Monday morning. He made the nearly five-hour drive on 45 minutes of sleep.

Kelly managed to sleep two more hours on the flight from Pittsburgh to Dallas. And when his flight to Wichita was delayed and he was left on the standby list for the rest of Monday, he rented a car and drove five more hours to arrive in Wichita on Monday afternoon.

“I just needed a nap,” Kelly said. “And then I knew I would be good.”

AfterShocks coach Zach Bush went to bed on Sunday night not knowing if he would have Kelly, who has become an invaluable glue guy, for Monday’s game.

He woke up on Monday morning with a simple text from his former teammate: “I’ll be there.”

“It just shows you how much they meant to each other and how much Rashard cares and how much this matters,” Bush said. “I’ll be honest, I don’t know if I would have come if I had to put myself through what he’s been just to get here. But he never complained, never said a word. He figured it out on his own because he wanted to be here. He loves these guys and we love him. You don’t do that for people who don’t mean anything to you.”

With no practice time under his belt and running on a disjointed three hours of sleep, Kelly found all the energy he needed from being back in the Roundhouse.

“Walking through that same tunnel, it just kind of hit me, ‘Man, I’m ready to play hard,’” Kelly said. “I could forget how my day went. None of that stuff mattered. I was just ready to play hard.”

Within 20 seconds of checking into the game, Kelly grabbed his first offensive rebound. Later in the first quarter, he delivered arguably the most impressive sequence of the game.

It started with him playing stellar defense on Colorado guard Jaizec Lottie, matching him step for step and then smothering his shot and staring at him before sprinting the floor and knocking down a 3-pointer in transition. Less than 15 seconds later, Kelly knocked down another triple to bring the Koch Arena noise to a swell.

“I don’t want to overstate it, but that was euphoric,” Bush said. “He drove all the way up from Dallas and comes into a major tournament and plays like that. Who does that?”

Kelly finished with 10 points, including a crucial turnaround jumper late in the fourth quarter to help the AfterShocks close to within 57-55 before the Elam Ending.

“It was all instincts,” said Kelly, who played this past professional season in France.

“You could tell he’s been in the gym working on his game,” added teammate Markis McDuffie, who also played with Kelly at WSU. “He was actually in my bag. I taught him some of that stuff.”

It was a somber locker room following the loss, as some apologized to Kelly for not being able to extend his stay in Wichita.

Winning the $1 million prize is, of course, the goal for Kelly and the AfterShocks. But it’s only part of the reason why former Shockers flock back to Wichita every July.

For Kelly, he’ll forget about the sting of the loss in a few days. But a moment like the one he shared after the game with former teammate Zach Brown, who recently became a first-time father himself, was something he’ll cherish for a long time.

“This is the only opportunity we have to all be in the same place, like we were back in the college days,” Kelly said. “No way I was going to miss this.”