HERMAN BOOSTS PENN STATE BERKS
Gov. Mifflin grad Kylie Herman had a big impact on the women’s basketball program
Kristin Hawley couldn’t believe her good fortune when she checked her inbox that day. There was an email from a prized recruit who got away.
Kylie Herman was looking to transfer. The Gov. Mifflin grad wondered if Penn State Berks had room. She wondered if the coach remembered her name.
Hawley remembered. There definitely was room.
“Could this really be happening?” Hawley said. “Could our luck be changing? When she showed up on campus the next semester, I said, ‘It is real. Our Christmas came early.’”
It’s no wonder Hawley felt skeptical. Recruiting at a small Division III college is hard. There are so many swings and misses. Star players don’t just fall from the sky.
Except this time. Hawley took a picture of the email and sent it to assistant Ric McClure, who coached Herman during her AAU days. Life for the women’s basketball team at Berks Campus was about to change.
Herman finished her senior season last month. The Lions won 13 games combined in the three seasons before she arrived. They won 34 during the three she was on the roster.
“She was a game changer,” said Hawley, a former 1,000-point scorer at Holy Name. “She’s just a natural athlete. She knows what needs to be done on the court. She sees things happen before they actually pan out.”
Herman was a four-year varsity player at Mifflin and finished with 783 career points. She helped the Mustangs win back-to-back county titles and scored a career-high 26 points in the final against Berks Catholic in 2015.
The 5-7 guard went to Widener as a freshman and didn’t receive much playing time. When she decided to transfer, Penn State Berks made sense. It was close to home and she could switch her major to biology.
An added bonus was basketball. She wanted to keep playing and she knew Hawley from high school recruitment.
“With college being so stressful, basketball has always been an outlet,” Herman said. “I definitely wasn’t ready to give it up. In high school I had a good run. I was successful but I knew I could do better. I could peak a little more.”
Herman averaged a leagueleading 19.6 points, 5.6 rebounds and 2.9 assists as a senior. She was named All-NEAC first team and led Berks to its first postseason win in a decade.
What makes those achievements more impressive is Herman didn’t make her season debut until Jan. 8. She only needed one semester’s worth of credits to graduate and didn’t enroll in the fall.
Herman spent much of that time traveling. She took a road trip west and visited 12 national parks. She went with her boyfriend to his native Turkey for about a month.
When Penn State Berks started its season, Herman was in the stands watching. She wasn’t allowed to practice until second semester.
Hawley had a secret weapon waiting to transform her team.
“Everybody thought she was gone,” Hawley said. “Little did they know. She made a comeback.”
Herman scored 18 points in her first game at Valley Forge and reached double digits in the next 17. Berks went 13-5 with her in the lineup after starting 3-5.
Despite the time off and travel, Herman was one of the best players in the conference.
“It didn’t seem to hurt me,” she said. “I got lucky with that one, I guess. I didn’t expect to come back and be as strong as I was.”
Herman will graduate in May and hopes to work as an environmentalist at a national park.
There’s no denying the impact she made at Penn State Berks. She scored 1,100 points in 62 games and ranks first in school history in scoring average at 17.7.
For Hawley, Herman is the recruit who got away and then came back.
“She was invaluable to the program,” Hawley said. “We couldn’t have asked for a better player to really change where we were going.”