Culture
She wanted a law degree. Instead, Shakyla Hill became a quadruple-double threat
Making it to the WNBA or setting incredible NCAA records never crossed Shakyla Hill’s mind when she arrived at Grambling State in 2015.
She had other aspirations. She wanted to be a lawyer.
Recording a quadruple-double in a game was never part of the plan. Getting two in a career wasn’t even a thought.
But it happened for the student-athlete who preferred law over layups.
“I probably said my first two years a hundred times, I’m playing basketball to pay for school. I’m not in school to play basketball,” Hill told The Athletic. “But then the (first) quadruple-double happened, and it kind of just changed the trajectory of the things that I was supposed to do because it allowed me other opportunities to continue playing.”
As March Madness continues, she is paying attention to the tournament brackets on both the women’s and men’s sides. Basketball always will be of value to her life, but she’s now 28 and works in compliance. Hill plans to start law school in August.
She just happened to achieve phenomenal feats while playing collegiately — feats that aren’t expected to be duplicated any time soon.
The 5-foot-7 guard finished her career at Grambling as the only Division I player with two quadruple-doubles. Only five Division I NCAA players in the men’s and women’s game have ever achieved that stat once.
The first one was enough to catch the attention of a national audience — one that included NBA All-Stars. It was during Hill’s junior season, when she had 15 points, 10 assists, 10 rebounds and 10 steals in Grambling’s 93-71 victory over Alabama State on Jan. 3, 2018.
The effort drew praise from LeBron James, Chris Paul and James Harden.
Crazy!!! Not every day you see a quadruple-double! 👌🏾 https://t.co/ScVxD1XUdD
— Chris Paul (@CP3) January 4, 2018
“When they touched on it, I think that’s when I realized this is way bigger than I ever imagined,” Hill said. “Then it just got uncontrollable. I think the next day, that night, I had to turn off my phone because it was going crazy.”
Isayra Diaz was an assistant coach with Grambling at the time. She said when James spoke about it during a media session, that really got Hill excited.
“He commented on it saying how cool it was and all that, that no matter what level you’re on, it’s hard to do in general,” Diaz said. “For her to do it was pretty cool. I think we were on the bus for a road trip, and we showed her the (James) video. She started crying because he’s one of her favorite players of all time.
“When he is able to comment about that … it was cool.”
After notching just the 4th quadruple-double in women’s college basketball history (15p, 10r, 10a, 10s), Grambling State’s Shakyla Hill said she wanted to hear LeBron James’ reaction to her feat. Well, here it is: pic.twitter.com/IfWjzRcbJ8
— Dave McMenamin (@mcten) January 6, 2018
That game helped change Hill’s life … and then she did it again 13 months later.
On Feb. 2, 2019, Hill had 21 points, 13 rebounds, 13 assists and 10 steals in a 77-57 defeat of Arkansas-Pine Bluff. It was a special performance for her, as she is from Little Rock, Ark. Although the game was played in Louisiana, Hill, then a senior, was excited to play well against a team located 45 miles from her hometown.
That second quadruple-double, though unexpected, came with fewer surprises. After recording the first one, she was accustomed to the attention.
“I adjusted well. I feel like, definitely, those last two years kind of molded me into the person that I am now,” Hill said. “Everybody’s watching, and everything you did at that point in time was under a microscope. I think it kind of prepared me for the future and everything else.”
Hill credits her coaches for not allowing the moments to get too big. She was revered at Grambling, an HBCU best known athletically for legendary football coach Eddie Robinson and as the alma mater of Super Bowl XXII MVP Doug Williams and Pro Football Hall of Fame defender Willie Brown, among others.
After January 2018, media requests seemed nonstop for Hill. Fans and alumni wanted time and pictures — at home and on the road. Her social media following grew exponentially, and she became a celebrity in and outside of Grambling, La., with photos of her appearing in local stores and in the school café area.
A Super 1 Foods supermarket in Ruston, La., features Shakyla Hill on a billboard by the entrance and exit. (Photo courtesy of Shakyla Hill)
Hill joked about having to be photo-ready at all times. Normally, she was fine with simply wearing a headband that never matched her shirt. But quadruple-doubles are life-changing beyond the court.
The 2017-18 season ended with the Tigers winning the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) tournament as a No. 3 seed and making the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 19 years. Grambling lost to Baylor in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
But the Tigers made waves with a guard who once had basketball as a secondary option.
“It just came natural to her,” former Grambling coach Freddie Murray said.
Hill was recruited to play at Grambling by David Pierre Jr., who now is an assistant coach at the University of Texas-Arlington. Hill credits her first Grambling coach, Nadine Domond, for pushing her on the court by using a stern approach when she arrived on campus. Domond now is the coach at Division II Virginia State.
Pierre was recruiting another player when he saw Hill on film. She wasn’t as big on playing AAU basketball during the offseason as other recruits. Pierre said Hill was more into spending time with her family than competing on the summer circuit, which might have contributed to larger schools missing out on signing her.
“Hill was one who could have played anywhere,” Pierre said.
The Grambling coaching staff knew Hill was talented coming out of high school. She was a sophomore when Hall High won the Arkansas Class 6A state championship. The coaches considered her a game changer in high school, but they wanted to see her do more with that talent in college.
“We stayed on her about getting in the gym, putting in extra time,” Murray said. “She’d come, then she’d leave, and then come back. and then she’d leave. Initially, I think she was just kind of getting caught up in college life and enjoying college. I think it didn’t really click with her until going into junior year, when she really, really started putting the time in.”
That’s when the Breakfast Club became the norm. The Breakfast Club was a group of players who met with Diaz for workouts at 4:30 a.m., 90 minutes before practice. That was in addition to workouts later in the day. That group helped Hill mature as a serious college athlete.
“It took some time, but when she started coming in the gym with me and coach Pierre, it showed improvement in her game,” Diaz said. “I think once she started realizing, ‘I’m consistent with it, and now I’m reaping what I sow,’ it just went on from there. Then she just kind of got addicted to doing actual workouts and things of that nature.
“She started falling in love with the whole Breakfast Club.”
Hill became more of a team leader. She remained someone her teammates could rely on, both on and off the court.
“As stern as we were with her, pushing her, challenging her, she was as stern on her teammates,” Pierre said. “Sometimes it’s hard being the best player and being liked. She was our best player, but they liked her and liked playing with her.”
Hill finished her college career as a first-team All-SWAC performer her last three seasons. She was the SWAC Defensive Player of the Year as a senior. And, of course, there were the two quadruple-doubles.
No longer was she playing only to pay for school.
Murray said Hill was projected as a third-round pick in the 2019 WNBA Draft after averaging 18.9 points, 7.6 rebounds, 6.3 assists and 4.6 steals during her senior year. But Hill went undrafted. Murray said colleagues with WNBA ties liked Hill’s athleticism, but they wanted to see more from her that translated to the pro game, like playing in the pick-and-roll with post players. The 14-player Grambling roster during the 2018-19 season had only one player taller than 6-foot-1, so guards like Hill were forced to play bigger than they were in most games.
When Hill was going through the draft process, no HBCU players had been drafted since 2002, when Andrea Gardner (Howard, second round), Amba Kongolo (North Carolina Central, fourth round) and Jacklyn Winfield (Southern, fourth round) were selected. It wasn’t until Ameshya Williams-Holliday (Jackson State, third round) in 2022 that a player from an HBCU was drafted.
Grambling has never had a player drafted to the WNBA, and Pierre believes Hill could have been based on how she fared against opponents from bigger schools. He also believes Hill would have been an even bigger sensation had she played in today’s name, image and likeness era.
“She just was in the wrong era,” Pierre said.
After the draft, Hill chose to play professionally overseas. She headed to Serbia to compete with ZKK Kraljevo of the First Women’s League of Serbia (ZLS).
And guess who recorded another quadruple-double?
On Jan 26, 2020, a month after her 24th birthday, Hill had 15 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists and 10 steals in an 86-62 win against ZKK Partizan 1953.
“They made it a huge deal,” Hill said. “They threw me a huge party. I was on the news. It was a big deal there because (a quadruple-double) had never happened in that league.”
Covered two of these when @shakylaa_ was at @GSU_TIGERS and now she added to her impressive resume with a professional quadruple-double #womensbasketball🏀 #goat pic.twitter.com/OQOGnUfanv
— 𝘽𝙧𝙞𝙖𝙣 𝙃𝙤𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙙 (@brianhoward33) January 25, 2020
Her team went on to win the Serbian Cup. The team also played in the WABA (Women’s Adriatic Basketball Association) League and was 17-1 when Serbia shut down basketball because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hill averaged 13.3 points, 8.1 rebounds, 6.3 assists and 5.7 steals in the ZLS. She averaged 14.3 points, 6.4 rebounds, 6.1 assists and 4.2 steals in the WABA League and was the Defensive Player of the Year. She said she wanted her play that year to send a bigger message than delivering quality stats.
“How people talk about the SWAC and HBCU sports, they kind of downplay it,” Hill said. “That was kind of like vindication for myself, and also like, ‘OK, I am really a hard worker.’ Outside of the skills it takes to score, you definitely have to have a lot of grit and a lot of grind to get a quadruple-double because it’s not only time-consuming but energy-consuming.”
Hill wanted to give the WNBA a try in 2020, but she said a training camp contract with the Indiana Fever didn’t pan out because of the pandemic. She then played for Bashkimi Prizren of the Kosovo Women’s Basketball Superleague and won the Kosovo Cup in 2022.
Murray and Diaz said they weren’t surprised Hill had success in Europe. Diaz said she wouldn’t mind watching Hill give pro basketball another shot. Hill, however, is content with her current life. She said she is “completely done” with playing and also doesn’t have interest in coaching.
When she graduated from Grambling, Hill ranked third on the all-time scoring list with 2,052 points. She also ranked second all time in rebounds as a guard with 925.
Diaz said with the way Hill spoke during film sessions, it’s no surprise she’s pursuing law. Hill said she’s considering Southern, Howard and Texas Southern for law school. She also wouldn’t mind returning to her home state of Arkansas to practice.
“I can see her as a lawyer because she likes to debate and she likes to talk,” Pierre said. “She’s passionate. She lights up a room. She has a big personality that’s contagious.”
Hill is ready to take that passion to law school. She said she is leaning toward studying corporate law, but she is keeping her options open. Being a district attorney was a goal at one time.
The only thing that delayed that plan was basketball. And those quadruple-doubles.
(Photo: Ken Murray / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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