Junior big man leads team with humility

It’s 7:15 a.m. on an already sunny summer day.

The shrill beep of an alarm clock fills the bedroom. Junior Kyle Wolf begins his jog to the Lenexa Lasers swim team practice.

After a two-hour swim team practice, Wolf jogs home, grabs a bite to eat, and drives up to Lifetime Fitness, where he lifts weights, trots around the track, and works on perfecting his jump-shot.

By now, it’s noon, and while most high schoolers are just starting their day, Wolf heads off to mow a couple neighborhood lawns after already working out for four hours. Next up: an afternoon baseball practice with the Kansas City Sluggers.

To top off his already busy schedule, Wolf heads to Rockhurst basketball summer league in the evening.

From maintaining a consistent and busy offseason workout schedule, Wolf has morphed into the varsity basketball team’s leading rebounder and scorer, averaging over 15 points per game; all the while maintaining a humble attitude.

“[Going into this season] we knew Kyle would be a real big part of what we’re doing, but we did not expect him to be our leading scorer or rebounder,”Mr. Mark Nusbaum, head basketball coach, said

Because his shot has improved so much, Wolf has been allowed to shoot more this year than he did last year, according to Coach Nusbaum.

“We’ve given him the green light to shoot from the outside,” Coach Nusbaum said. “Now they have to guard him from 20 feet away from the basket, rather than 8 feet from the basket.”

By improving his shot and improving his endurance, Kyle has become a more rounded player on the court; thus making him more difficult to guard for opponents.

“Kyle can do a lot of things on the court,” senior Brian Fosselman, varsity basketball player, said. “He runs the floor really well for a player his height and he always plays with a lot of energy.”

Getting to be the leading scorer and rebounder was a gradual process, according to Wolf. He worked out at the gym almost every day in the summer: shooting, lifting weights, and jogging.

“Almost a hundred percent [of his motivation] has come from him,” Mr. Greg Wolf, father of Kyle, said. “His improvement has been more of a gradual progression where his focus and interest has gotten to a high level this past year.”

Kyle and his father have developed a special relationship through sports. They think of their workouts not as work, but as something they want and enjoy doing together, according to Mr. Wolf.

“I tried to go to the gym for around two hours in the summer,” Kyle said. “And on a good day I’d get around 300, 400, 500 shots, with my dad helping with the rebounds.”

Mr. Wolf, a former college basketball player at Pittsburgh State University, gives his son advice at the gym about his form and different basketball moves.

“I think of my dad as my role model,” Kyle said. “I try to follow in his example of being the only one of his siblings to go to college and playing basketball in college.”

Kyle is also a star in the classroom, maintaining a 3.5 cumulative GPA. But it would be impossible for anyone to know of his accomplishments due to his humble nature.

“It would be really easy for him to get arrogant because he is the team’s leading rebounder and scorer, but he stays humble about it. He never brings [starting varsity as a sophomore] up in conversations,” junior John Barry, a long-time friend, said.

On the court, Kyle brings a much more vocal personality to the team, contrary to his quiet demeanor within the classroom and at home.

“In games Kyle talks just as much as the rest of us,” Fosselman said. “During timeouts and at halftime he’s one of the more vocal guys, talking about what’s been working and what we can do better.”

His emergence as a leader on the court has helped Rockhurst to a 15-4 record and a #6 state-wide ranking on MaxPreps.com.

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