Louis Kail lives life with emotion. And nowhere has that been more evident than on the basketball court of the Ben Light Gymnasium.

Like on Feb. 23, when the senior center led the men’s basketball team’s electrifying pre-game ritual, as he did every game this season, and then went out and scored 16 points to help the Bomber’s defeat Nazareth College to clinch the right to host this year’s Empire 8 tournament.

Or when Kail, with tears in his eyes, walked off of Ithaca’s home floor for the last time ever in the final minute of Ithaca’s season-ending loss to St. John Fisher College this past Friday and hugged his teammates and friends on the bench.

Kail going one-on-one with All-Empire 8 first team center junior Jeff Bostic, smashing hips, elbows and shoulders in physical post battles during practice, was as common as him cracking a joke before squirting a stream of water into his mouth during breaks.

“Come on, Jeff” and “Nice shot, B-Rog” were often mixed in with an assortment of four-letter words. Good or bad, that’s Kail in a nutshell. The vocal leader of the team. The “heart and soul” and unquestioned leader of the team, as Head Coach Jim Mullins called him.

In Kail’s trademark pre-game cheer, the entire team circles around him on the “Ithaca” logo at the center of the court, arms locked, rocking side to side and chanting “Ah, ah, ah” while Kail punches the air around and above their heads, chanting along.

That is how games began this season, and more often than not they would end with an Ithaca victory. But not on Feb. 23. Not against conference rival St. John Fisher. Not in the biggest game of Kail’s career at Ithaca.

And though the end to Kail’s career was nothing short of a letdown, the story of his four years on South Hill is a tale of perseverance, patience and success.

Ask any of Kail’s closest friends about the most important aspect of his life and they will all give the same simple answer: his mother. Senior Matt Calabro, one of Kail’s best friends and housemate for the past two years, said he has never seen such a connection between a mother and a son.

“[Their relationship is] such a big part of his life,” Calabro, an assistant coach with the team the past few years, said. “I make fun of him all the time, but I’ve never seen a mom and son love each other so openly. She’ll answer the phone and be like ‘I love you so, so much Louis’ and he’ll hold the phone away and laugh. They have an unbelievable relationship.”

Their bond is even more special when you consider they aren’t related by blood. Kail’s mother, Barbara, adopted Louis when he was about eight months old and moved from Texas to the West Chester, N.Y., area after she accepted a teaching position at Fordham University.

John Beloff, Kail’s high school coach for basketball and baseball and his teacher at Saddle River Day School, said Kail’s relationship with his mother is truly one of a kind.

“I’m very close with Lou’s mom,” Beloff said. “They’re certainly the odd couple, if you see them standing next to each other. But they are just astonishing. He’s about as proud of her as she is of him.”

When standing side-by-side, Barbara only comes to up to Kail’s elbows, as the senior stands roughly 6-feet-3-inches tall. Beloff said Kail has always been big in the height department but that his growth as a person is what set him apart.

“He’s still the biggest middle schooler I’ve ever met,” Beloff said. “But more than that, his maturity and his growth from ninth grade on was amazing, as a leader, [as an] athlete and in the classroom.”

Kail brought those leadership qualities to South Hill in the fall of 2004, when he arrived as a physical education and health education major and new recruit for the basketball team. Kail made the varsity squad as a freshman, something he said was a great accomplishment as well as a learning experience.

“My freshman year I made varsity and I was like ‘Wow,’” Kail said. “You don’t expect to play, you’re just working to get better and gain more experience.”

Kail only saw action in four games his first year, totaling 15 minutes and five points. Kail said these numbers didn’t surprise him but the playing time during his sophomore and junior seasons — 144 minutes and 62 points — did.

“It’s always frustrating when you’re not playing,” Kail said. “[Junior year] was probably the hardest year. It was up and down. Every game was like ‘Am I going to play, am I not going to play?’ That was the hardest part.”

Kail responded by re-dedicating himself to the things Mullins told him he needed to improve during their end-of-year meetings — mainly, getting into shape to fit in with the Bombers’ run-and-gun style of offense.

“We kind of had to tell him ‘With that kind of strength, you’re going to have to physically bully people, you’ve got to be more physical,’” Mullins said. “I think he finally bought into that this year. He [also] did a great job with running the floor. He could outrun people and that probably goes back to his high school days when he was releasing [long-distance shots].”

Kail responded by posting career highs across the board this year and fighting his way into the Bombers’ starting lineup for the second half of the season, something Mullins said Kail completely earned by himself.

Despite his paltry 4.8 points per game career average in four years at the college, Kail was actually a scoring machine in high school, something he said he still gets jokes about.

“I actually have the highest scoring average in New Jersey history,” Kail said, laughing. “I had 67 points in a game once, 50 twice. It’s a running joke that ‘Oh, Louis could score in high school.’ But I didn’t play in a very good high school league. It’s almost embarrassing when I tell people stuff like that.”

Beloff said despite his size advantage, Kail often played on the wing back in his Saddle River Day School playing days. It forced him to work on all aspects of his game and not just post moves, which ultimately, for a player his size, was something that worked against him when he got to Ithaca.

At the collegiate level, Mullins and the rest of Ithaca’s coaching staff wanted Kail to play physically down low and work on his post moves, which Kail said he did for the first three years in Ithaca. His hard work and consistent team-first attitude did not go unnoticed.

Kail was selected unanimously by his teammates and coaches at the beginning of this season to be one of the team captains, something Calabro said Kail cherished. He also said Kail quickly became the most respected captain the team has had in recent memory.

“[The difference in past captains and Kail] is like night and day,” Calabro said. “When I first got here [five years ago], you could just tell [the captains’ hearts] weren’t in it. Maybe that’s because it’s at the Division III level, who knows. But we talked about it a lot before the season started, and Louis said ‘We’re too good to joke now.’ We didn’t want that to be that way [anymore].”

With Kail’s leadership and improved performance on the court, the Bombers finished with a 17–9 overall record and a 12–4 mark in the Empire 8, earning them the right to host the Empire 8 postseason tournament for the first time ever.

Calabro said more than a few players approached him during the season and praised Kail’s leadership style. Mullins, for one,

admitted that the players, especially the younger ones not playing as much, could relate to Kail’s experience going through the same thing.

“He had a unique perspective in that, with some of the kids that may have been struggling with playing time, he could tell them, ‘Look I’ve been through this, I know what its like,’” Mullins said. “We’re going to miss him a lot more than people realize. They’re going to look at his numbers and say ‘Well, he wasn’t an all-conference kid, and he wasn’t this and he wasn’t that.’ But it’s not what he wasn’t: it’s what he was.”

Kail’s affinity for leadership stretches beyond just his teammates and peers; The senior plans on instructing younger kids as both a gym and a health teacher after college.

“I really enjoy working with kids, [the] elementary age group,” Kail said. “They’re really a lot of fun. I’m student teaching right now with elementary school kids at Newfield Elementary School, so I’m really enjoying that.”

As part of his major, Kail is now in the middle of a seven-week physical education teaching period in Newfield in lieu of classes. Kail will then spend the final seven weeks of the school year teaching health education in Rochester.

It’s fitting that Kail — the “gentle soul,” as Mullins called him — will spend the rest of his life instructing children. But next year, Kail said he will be back with the Bombers, this time as a graduate assistant.

Following in the footsteps of Jonathan Whetstone ’06, Sean Stahn ’07, one of Kail’s housemates, and others, Kail will provide a familiar face and a steadying force on the sidelines.

Mullins said the prospect of having Kail back with the team in any capacity is great but that replacing his on-the-floor leadership and intensity will be a nearly impossible task.

“It’s an unusual kid that can really sit there for three years and watch others around him play when he really desperately wants to play and never make an issue of it, never be anything but positive,” Mullins said. “You’d like to have every captain that ever comes through your program to be like Louis Kail.”