When he is not at school, Jake Goretzke can be found on the basketball courts at the Lodge working on little aspects of his game. Standing at 6 foot 4 inches, Jake has a body built to play basketball, but it’s also his body that kept him out of the game until his senior year.

“I was going to play sophomore year because that summer I grew four inches,” Jake said. “But then I found out I had patellar tendonitis and I couldn’t play”.

Patellar tendonitis, commonly known as jumper’s knee, is an injury that occurs when continuous stress is put on the Patellar Tendon, like jumping or playing basketball. This overuse creates tiny tears in the tendon which worsen, causing pain in the knee.

“It took a lot of physical therapy to get back, and to make sure I wasn’t rusty I was at the Lodge all the time. I worked a lot on my low post offense. What motivated me was that I just love basketball and I knew how good this team was going to be and I wanted to be a part of it,” Jake said.

His hard work landed him a spot on the team senior year, which coaches and players believed had a strong shot to win the district tournament, hosted this year at KHS.

The Pioneers went 20-8, winning nine out of their last ten games entering the district tournament, earning key wins on the road against Vianney and Lafayette. The season ended shorter than the players would have liked, when KHS lost to Webster Groves 65-56 in the district championship.

“The Webster district championship game was hard because it was so unexpected and we all thought we would win. They ended our season and their fans rushed onto our court,” Jake said.

But with the ups and downs of the season, Jake picked up valuable lessons thanks to persistent coaching.

“Mental toughness was something that our coaches preached at us everyday and it was the reason we ended up losing a couple of games. But after we started working towards it we were able to overcome it,” Jake said.

Although the season is over, Jake and his 6 foot 4 inch frame still make the frequent commute to shoot around at the Lodge with his now former teammates.
“The best part about the team was what we did off the court,” Jake said. “We were always hanging out and having fun”