PORT ANGELES — There was a period in Kasey Ulin’s life when he didn’t want to pick up a basketball.
In the weeks following his banishment from a German professional league for failing a drug test, the former Forks High School star point guard simply couldn’t come to terms with what had become of his career.
Even something as simple and solitary as a shoot-around in an empty gym — an exercise he’d done countless times growing up on the West End — was too much to bare.
“Every time I picked up a ball, that’s all I could think about,” said Kasey, who tested positive for cocaine in January of 2008, leading to a two-year suspension from European basketball.
“I was like, ‘I don’t want to play, this isn’t fun.’
“I started doing a lot of other things, hunting and fishing and more hiking and more outdoors stuff, and then slowly . . . I remember I came up here [to the Peninsula College gym] and shot one day and I was like, ‘Oh man, that feels nice.’
“I hadn’t felt that joy in a long time.”
At 29, Kasey’s relationship with basketball has come full circle.
He and his new wife, the former Bracey Barker, 26 — a fellow pro basketball player Kasey first met while playing in Germany — are training for their return to the European professional ranks.
Weeks after marrying in Bracey’s native Bar Harbor, Maine, the newlyweds each signed one-year contracts to play for BBC Sparta of the Diekirch League in Luxembourg next season.
While Kasey and those close to him stopped short of calling it a shot at redemption, there’s a sense that this is an opportunity for him to end his playing career on his own terms.
“I just feel right now that this is just meant to be,” said Kasey’s mother, Cathy Jewett. “I think he’s in a really good place.”
For a pair of self-described gym rats like Kasey and Bracey, it was also the perfect wedding gift.
“It’s in our blood, you know,” Bracey said. “I feel like we’re going be the old people out there with a broken leg before we get off the court.”
Neither could stay off the hardwood during their past two years together on the North Olympic Peninsula.
Kasey played in the Port Angeles City League each winter — his team, Irwin Dental Center, won the title both years — while also serving as a Neah Bay High School varsity boys assistant coach during last season’s run to a second-place finish in Class 1B.
Meanwhile, the 6-foot-2 Bracey won a women’s City League title of her own this winter while also assisting Peninsula College women’s coach Alison Crumb.
Kasey had actually been contacted by Sparta earlier in the year to come play immediately, but he said he had commitments that he didn’t want to walk away from.
(He was also a para educator at Neah Bay School, middle school boys basketball coach and an assistant track and field coach to his mother at Clallam Bay.)
“I wouldn’t be able to respect myself if I did that [and left for Europe midway through the school year],” Kasey said.
“I was like, ‘You know if it works out later on in the year, you get Bracey to play, me to play, maybe a coaching gig too, we’ll work it out.’
“We just kind of kept contact [with the club president], and right around the wedding time, they sent the contract over.”
With Sparta offering Kasey and Bracey dueling playing and coaching positions for its men’s and women’s clubs, the couple couldn’t resist signing on the dotted line.
“I think we missed it,” said Bracey, who met Kasey during the first of her two years with EVO New Basket Oberhausen, in Oberhausen, Germany.
“We’re both really competitive, and that was a huge part of our life for so long.”
Indeed, both players have deep roots in the game.
Bracey won three state titles while playing point guard for her father, Brent Barker, at Mount Desert Island High School, then played four years at the University of Maine before graduating in 2007.
Kasey established himself as a Forks basketball legend in the late 1990s, setting the school’s career scoring record at 1,587 points in just three years on the Spartan varsity.
Still, the sweet-shooting guard was not heavily recruited coming out of high school because of his size — listed at 6-1 on the Spartans’ roster, Kasey actually measures out at about 5-10.
He responded with two big years at Yakima Valley Community College, and, following one year at Central Washington, eventually transferred to Dickinson State in North Dakota.
Upon leading all of Division II in scoring (27.9 ppg) as a senior, Kasey was offered a two-year contract with BG Goettingen in Germany.
He would go on to play three-and-half seasons overseas, leading the second German league in scoring one year before his career came to a screeching halt with the failed drug test.
“It was horrible, toughest time in my life by far,” Kasey said of the months following that test.
“On the one side, it was like, ‘Kasey, what are you thinking? That’s not you.’
“The other one is like, ‘Well, OK, you’ve made a horrible decision and now you’ve got to own up to it.’
“I completely leaned on God, on the Lord, to forgive me, to give me strength, to get me through it, to show me direction, and then realizing what an amazing person I had in [Bracey] and my family.
“I didn’t realize how awesome my family and close friends were.”
Kasey had actually met Bracey three months prior to his suspension.
After that happened, Bracey stood by Kasey and the two stayed in touch on a daily basis, even after she went back to Germany for one more season in 2008-09.
“It was hard, but I just kind of realized how good of a guy he was. Everyone makes mistakes,” Bracey said.
“It just didn’t feel right after I was over there [in Germany] for a year by myself. That’s when I came back out here and moved out to Washington.
“I was in Maine for a couple of months, and then I came out here with the intention that, ‘Oh, I’ll try out Washington for a little bit.’ Then I ended up being out here for two years.”
Said a grinning Kasey: “I had a plan.”
Kasey and Bracey are set to begin practicing with their respective teams in Luxembourg by August.
The official Diekirch League season lasts from October into early June.
Before Kasey and Bracey leave, however, they will host Kasey’s annual basketball camps in Neah Bay and Clallam Bay later this month.
If things go well in Europe, the two might decide to stick around for another year or two before settling down again in the States.
“The past two years since I’ve been home you see a side of life of guys just living every day life, and I know I personally took it for granted the blessings I had,” Kasey said.
“It just came naturally, and when you step back and step away from it, it was like ‘Wow, we had it pretty good.’
“Then to come back with a great deal . . . and all the pieces that lined up, it was just a blessing from God.”
Of course, it was also an indicator of how much Kasey’s talents are respected over in Europe.
“We really never got into [what happened in Germany],” Kasey’s mother said.
“He just came home and dug into rebuilding the life, and Bracey and him got closer and closer, and he got into coaching.
“Through the grace of God the negotiations opened up and he’s getting a chance to go back. I’m really proud of him for that.
“Just because a gray cloud comes into your life, you can make it go away.”