Local basketball players

WHAT’S IN A NUMBER?

LOCAL HOOPERS REFLECT ON THE DIGITS THEY WEAR

When Abe Rocksvold takes the court for Regis basketball, he wears the number 22. It’s the jersey he’s worn since he made his varsity debut three years ago. He’s kept the number because he said he’s made a name for himself in it, but it’s not the number he originally wanted as a sophomore and in hindsight, had he known what last month was going to bring, he said wishes he had switched numbers when this year started.

Rocksvold has been a Kobe Bryant fan for as long as he can remember. He grew up in a household of Laker fans because his father, Adam, fell in love with basketball watching the Showtime Lakers of the 80s. That love was instilled in him since Rocksvold’s birth in 2001, so naturally he came of age in the 2000s watching Bryant and the Lakers.

“I was just a huge Kobe guy growing up,” Rocksvold said. “He was the only person I ever watched, I ever cared about. … Even when the Lakers were bad for his last few years, I still wore number 24 because he was the man, he was the best.”

Rocksvold said he used to come home from elementary school, hop on the computer and spend hours watching highlights of Bryant’s greatest moments — from the ally-oop to Shaquille O’Neal, to the 81-point game against the Raptors, to the laundry list of game-winning shots.

So when he got the news late in January that Bryant, his daughter Gigi Bryant, and seven others died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, Cali., Rocksvold was devastated.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “Kobe Bryant was like a part of our family.”

Looking back, Rocksvold said he wishes he switched to wear 24 this season. He’s worn a Bryant number dating back to his earliest basketball days at the YMCA in second or third grade when he wore the number eight, Bryant’s original number from 1996 to 2006. When Rocksvold started playing AAU in fifth grade, he chose number 10, Bryant’s Olympic number after Bryant helped to lead Team USA to a gold medal in 2012. Eventually, like Bryant, as Rocksvold matured, he decided to switch to 24 on his AAU team, Wisconsin City Hoops.

“That’s who I model most of my game after,” Rocksvold said of Bryant. “He motivated me a lot to play basketball, so to have his number kind of feels like that’s who I am, that’s how I play basketball.”

For Rocksvold, it was Bryant’s “Mamba mentality,” that made Bryant special: his never-give up attitude, his unflappability and his willingness to play through pain. When he puts on one of Bryant’s numbers, he feels he adopts that mindset, embodying Bryant on the basketball court. Other locals have adopted similar reasons for wearing their jerseys. Eau Claire North’s Dalton Banks wears three because he grew up loving fellow 6-foot-1 point guard and NBA legend, Chris Paul.

PHOTO BY BRANDEN NALL Osseo-Fairchild’s Madison Hugdahl prepares for a shot while splitting the defense of Altoona’s Dru Nicolet, left, and Kennedy Trippler on Friday, Feb. 14, in Osseo.

For Eau Claire Memorial’s Caden Boser, 33 has two meanings. It’s the number his mother and his uncle both wore when they played and it’s the number Larry Bird wore, the Celtics legendary small forward that Boser models his game after.

Others take different approaches to choosing a number. Osseo-Fairchild’s Makayla Steinke reasoning for wearing number 10 is – to use her words – “kind of dumb.”

“In fourth grade I was given the option of like 1, 10, 23 and 33, and I was 10 years old, so I picked the number 10,” she said with a laugh.

Her teammate Madison Hugdahl doesn’t wear 22 for any particular reason other than it’s not 14, the number she used to wear to copy her older sister until she decided to step out of her sisters’ shadow and carve out her own path.

At Chippewa Falls, Peyton Rogers-Schmidt chose number one for a similar reason. He wanted to be different from everyone else and despite his favorite player being LeBron James, he didn’t want to wear 23 because it’s synonymous with Michael Jordan more so than James.

“I’m just trying to be different from everybody else and be my own person,” he said of wearing number one.

Whether the reason is as simple as McDonell’s Eion Kressin’s “it was the last jersey available” or aspiring to adopt the mentality of the players you aspire to be, it seems everyone has a reason for picking their jersey.

PHOTO BY BRANDEN NALL Eau Claire North’s Dalton Banks comes down after a basket against Chippewa Falls on Friday, Jan. 24, at North.

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