Leopold's Stroder is the Southeast Missourian player of the year for boys basketball

The Leopold High School gym would be Kyle Stroder's sanctuary, if Kyle Stroder were the kind of person who needed a sanctuary.

But he is not, and so the Leopold High School gym instead is simply Kyle Stroder's second home.

"The difference in him and everybody else is a lot of kids will hang their head and think, 'Man, tomorrow I'll get back at it,'" Leopold coach Andy Beck said. "Kyle's going to go up there to the gym after the game. There's games where he's stayed around, there's games where he's come back and he's in the gym playing. He's going to go to work. He's not going to pout and think about 'What did I do wrong?' In his mind, it's 'I didn't shoot enough the day before. I didn't shoot enough last night, I didn't shoot enough in practice.' So he's just going to go to work. He's going to go back at it and get more shots up. That's all he's really worried about."

Stroder has spent hour after hour, day after day, year after year in the gym, most often by himself, always competing against himself.

"What people think has never really bothered me," said Stroder, the Southeast Missourian boys player of the year. "I'd rather prove it to myself. I'm more satisfied with proving to myself that I can do something."

Kyle Stroder averaged 21.9 points a game for the 24-3 Wildcats this past season. (Laura Simon)

It's the kind of statement that is easier to say than to live by, but Stroder isn't hard to believe as he sits under a basket in his second home with a ball in his hands.

He is quiet but confident, calm but competitive, poised but passionate.

As he shifts, a handwritten message is exposed on the back of his shoes. One says "Why," the other says "not?"

"It motivates me just with anything," Stroder said, adding he'd ask himself the question whenever he was tired and wanted to quit shooting or on days when he didn't want to head to the gym. "If you think you couldn't do something, you just say, 'Why not?' and it's like no reason why you couldn't, I guess."

Questions about things like his personal motivation and philosophy are difficult for Stroder to answer. He hasn't spent much time thinking about them. He doesn't come to the gym to think and made it clear that that would only distract from his work.

He doesn't come here to get over the bad games, to fret over his form or to escape from reality or worry about the future.

"I'm critical of myself, I guess, but I don't just think and make myself go crazy sitting here and thinking," he said.

Stroder doesn't need a sanctuary. He needs to shoot.

"He's not worried about his elbow being in, he's not worried about his feet being off, he's just 'I didn't shoot enough,'" Beck said. "He doesn't analyze that much stuff. He just plays."

*

The way Stroder sees it, his athletic abilities are a gift from God, and to not spend all the time he can getting the most out of those abilities would equate to shameful ingratitude and wasted blessings.

"I think He's a lot of my success," Stroder said. "He gave me all my ability and all the opportunities I've had.

"I never wanted to let it go to waste."

That's why the Leopold senior came here every day in the summer since his freshman year to shoot shot after shot.

Every other day, even on the hottest days of the year, he rode his bike the three mostly gravel and hilly miles between his first and second homes to keep his legs in shape.

Then he spent hours in the sometimes suffocating heat of the tiny gym with no air conditioning, often shooting more than 1,000 shots in a day.

"It definitely paid off," Stroder said. "I'm glad I did it. There were days when I didn't want to get up and go over [here]. I don't remember who, but they told me to work even when other people wouldn't. I think that really helped me. It's what I always told myself when I didn't want to do something."

He wasn't in the gym as part of some off-season shooting program or at the encouragement of a coach. He wasn't there because someone told him he should be or because he wanted someone to see him there.

"No one has really had to tell him," said Carlton Thoma, a longtime coach, assistant and teacher at Leopold who first saw Stroder play in elementary school. "He drove over here and came to the gym, like last summer, he was in there every morning in the summer. You could come here at 9 o'clock, and Kyle was in here shooting. He's got a lot of inner drive about him. That's made him good, I think. He's got a very level head on him. That's made him excel."

Beck, who took over the Wildcats program before Stroder's junior season, said Stroder's work ethic helped make his teammates better.

"It eliminates excuses and it eliminates the other kids saying they can't be there -- they've got this going on, they've got that going on because he has all that going on too, and he finds the time to get there," Beck said. "If you're the player who's not in the gym, it's kind of hard for you to have anything bad to say about him when he's in there busting his butt every day and everybody knows it. …

"It gets other kids in the gym. If that makes a kid get in there for just 10 minutes more a day, that's helping our team get better, which is kind of what makes him as good as he is, is he makes everybody else better."

Beck instituted a "5,000 Club" last summer. In order to join the club and get his name on a plaque in Beck's office, a player had to make 5,000 3-pointers between the final day of school in May and the first day of school in August, documenting it using the school's shooting machine, which tracks makes and attempts.

Within the first week of summer, Beck got a text from Stroder saying, "You're going to have to up that number."

"In one day he went up there and made 1,200," Beck said with a mixture of disbelief and admiration. "1,248 I believe was the number."

The machine, a common sight in many gymnasiums, passes a ball back to a player after each shot. Players can decide to shoot from one spot or have the machine rotate around the court.

"I broke that thing this summer because I came up here on the Fourth of July, and I got to a thousand and it just stopped moving," Stroder said.

"It'd still shoot out the ball, so I kept shooting until I got annoyed by that. We ordered the part and me and coach fixed it."

He also found other, more creative, ways to work on his skills.

"He has a little game he does," Beck said. "He put [out] little water cups. He put them empty on the bleacher and he'll go anywhere in the gym and make a pass and try to hit that little cup. It's just something as simple as that. He is the most competitive kid when it comes to having a basketball in his hand."

That competitiveness was not often displayed outwardly in Stroder's four-year career on Leopold's varsity team. He rarely shows emotion during games and doesn't say much on the court.

"It's not really obvious, but I can see it, coach Thoma can see it, the kids can see it," Beck said. "It's just a whole other look he has. I don't know how to explain it to you. You can tell in his mind he's completely focused and he's ready to do whatever he's got to do to be successful."

His competitiveness is more likely to visibly show in practice than anywhere else, but he's not the kind of athlete who treats a casual game like a cutthroat competition.

"Kyle is an unbelievable competitor," Thoma said. "He's quiet about it, but he's just an unbelievable competitor. He wants to win. That's what he wants to do.

"He has the ability to separate a kickball game from a basketball game, more the seriousness of it. To me that goes to his maturity, his level of maturity. A lot of kids can't do that."

For Stroder, the line is clear.

"If it was anything with basketball, then I'd have to win," he said.

*

Stroder and his teammates won more often than any basketball team in Leopold history this season. They finished with a 24-3 record, and Stroder averaged 21.9 points, 5.0 rebounds, 2.9 steals and 2.4 assists a game.

He made 44 percent of his 3-point attempts and shot 46 percent from the floor.

All but one of the Wildcats' regular-season wins came by double digits, with the only exception being a two-point win on the home floor of eventual Class 2 final four member Oran.

Seventeen of Leopold's wins were by at least 30 points.

"I was kind of surprised that we actually beat teams like that early in the year," Stroder said. "That's when I realized that I thought we had a chance to be really good this year. Winning the Woodland Tournament is what made me realize that we could be good this year."

The team was only the second in school history to win the season-opening tournament and it did so in dominating fashion, winning by 59, 36 and 18 points on the way to the title.

"I think it was just seniors," Stroder said. "We had seven seniors this year, and I think in a way we all led the younger guys. A lot of the younger guys stepped up for us. It's just all the time we put in, the time we spent together that I think really helped us."

The Wildcats' only regular-season losses came at the Southeast Missourian Christmas Tournament, when they dropped games to Notre Dame and Advance -- a team they would later beat on its home floor -- on back-to-back nights.

Although Leopold eventually lost by five points to Notre Dame, both Stroder and Beck singled it out as a pivotal moment in the season.

"In that last quarter you could kind of see that he was getting to the point where he has was getting frustrated," Beck said. "We had been down 10 the whole game. We jumped out down 10 and we stayed there the whole time. I think it was three possessions in a row there he hit 3's with two guys all over him and brought us back into that game. That was kind of one of those moments as a coach and part of our team that you could just kind of see that, 'Wow.' That stood out to me. That was a big-time stage."

Stroder finished with 33 points in the game. He scored 13 points in the fourth quarter and made four 3-pointers in a three-minute span.

"Notre Dame knew they didn't want him to have the ball at that point," Beck said. "One of those he hit with two guys all over him, and it was just one of the toughest shots I've seen him shoot all year. He brought us right back into that game. We ended up losing there at the end, but it was one of those situations where we could beat anybody -- on any given night we could beat anybody. That showed it that night even though we lost. But if he gets hot, there's no stopping him."

The rally sparked surprising emotion from the usually stoic Stroder, who unleashed a big fist pump at one point, the first and only one Beck ever saw from him.

"I think it was just I started feeling it," Stroder said. "I was making a couple shots at the beginning of the fourth quarter, and then we took the lead closer to the end, and it was just a really emotional game. I always try to be humble, but it's just like all the emotions came out."

Beck calls Stroder's on-court demeanor "stone cold." It's a state of mind that mostly came natural to Stroder, but it's also how he feels the game should be played.

"I'm always conscious about it because I want to represent my school and my family the right way, but I think with those games where those times get tough, you have to keep composed because you know you have other teammates looking at you and seeing how you react," Stroder said.

His play at the tournament earned him a spot on the all-tournament team. While he'd been playing on the varsity level since his freshman year, he hadn't often been in the spotlight and had previously proven to himself he was "one of the better players around."

"I just remember when we left and got to our car, I just started crying," Stroder said. "That's when I realized that all that time I put in did pay off."

*

Stroder talks a lot about hard work paying off. It's a lesson he's learned from basketball, and the thing above all others he hopes Leopold underclassmen have learned from him.

Of course, the work doesn't always pay off in exactly the way a person wants. What Stroder wanted more than anything was a district championship. It would have been the first for his school and, in his mind, something to be remembered by.

The Wildcats, though, were upset 64-58 by Scott County Central in the district championship game.

"I just wish I could go back and change it," Stroder said. "There's different moments in the game where we should have slowed it down. I think we just came in overconfident being the No. 1 seed. You can't really take anything for granted that time of the year, though."

He's watched tape of the game, during which he scored 26 points, many times, but he always turns it off before the end.

"We had those days with the snow and stuff where it got cancelled, but I think we were focused and ready," he said, still searching for reasons and explanations, more for himself than anyone else. "I don't know. There was just something that we didn't have, I guess.

"It kinds of motivates me because it would've been the first district title and everything. After I watch it, it just makes me want to work even harder."

Stroder was back in the weight room and back in the gym shooting the day after the crushing loss.

"He's been in the weight room now more than he was the whole two years," Beck said. "He's in there every day now, ready to work out. Not necessarily as much in the gym as he normally was. The challenge for his Division I basketball is he's got to get stronger, and he's been working his butt off every day, even in P.E. If we're not doing something in P.E. that day it's 'All right, put me a workout together.' He'll text me at 10 o'clock at night, 'Coach, give me a workout for tomorrow.'"

Stroder has yet to decide where he'll play next. It's not certain he'll play at the Division I level immediately or in the future, but it's certainly his goal.

He leaves the details about his dreams out of any discussion of his future. Aside from talking about hard work paying off, his most frequent resolution is to never put a limit on what he thinks he can achieve.

"Play college and then maybe if I could play somewhere after that or -- I mean, I don't want to set limits for myself or anything like that," he said when asked about his future plans. "I think it's just how motivated and how hard you work and if it's what you really want to do."

*

This Leopold gym suits him better than any place could.

Like him, it's quiet and humble, and the results of work and action are easy to spot, from the worn wooden bleachers to the banners hanging on the walls.

Like him, it comes alive during games and is respected by opponents for being tough to face.

Beck has added a college 3-point line to the floor with tape, specifically so Stroder can spend his hours shooting from his future range.

"I've had a couple who worked as hard, but there's no one who exceeded his ability to work hard," Thoma said. "I would classify him as as hard of a working kid as I've ever coached or been around or helped coach."

The work hasn't gone unnoticed by younger players.

"I know he puts in a lot, but I still don't think that's even the start of it," Leopold sophomore Austin Bucher said. "He's always there an hour before practice. He stays probably until an hour after."

Bucher was inserted into the starting lineup this season after Joe Elfrink, the team's second-leading scorer, was injured in January and missed all but the final game of the season.

Stroder became a mentor and friend to Bucher, and two people that didn't talk much before began to work together.

"It's just because I look up to him, I guess," Bucher said. "I don't really talk to many other people, but it's easier to talk to him. He makes it easier to understand."

Bucher started to stay with Stroder after practices, something he said he never even thought about doing before. They competed against each other in shooting games, which Stroder almost always won, but Bucher learned from the senior.

"Mental toughness," said Bucher when asked what Stroder had taught him. "Whenever I miss a shot, I always put myself down, but he always tells me, 'Keep your head up. Keep shooting.'"

Bucher expressed amazement at how simple Stroder makes that look, and how he can avoid being bothered by misses or off nights.

"It happens all the time to me, and he's just, 'Keep shooting, keep shooting,' always encouraging me," Bucher said.

Stroder doesn't realize it yet, but his ability and willingness to "keep shooting" -- in the summer heat, in games, before practice, after practice and many other times -- guaranteed he'd be remembered long before his career ended.

"Kyle's that kid that's always in there working, that makes you work harder," Beck said. "His roles were limitless. He had so many roles on our team at any given point. That could be he's going to come out and score 30. That could be we needed him to get 10 rebounds. That could be anything. He was always ready for that challenge, I think."

While Stroder isn't looking forward to leaving his second home or Leopold behind in order to pursue whatever will come next, he's eager for the challenge.

"I think I have a lot to look forward to in the future," he said, "a lot more to achieve."