Ann attended the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and went on to medical school at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. There she met Dave, who had grown up in Shenandoah, Iowa, where his family had a nursery business. They married in 1987, got their medical degrees in 1989, and served residencies in Omaha. Ann went on to build her career with Mid-City Ob-Gyn, where one of her patients was Leisha Hammer, whose son Trae she delivered. (When Leisha Hammer found out Akoy worked in Ann’s office, she warned him, “Stay out of my file.”)
Dave specialized in ear, nose, and throat and eventually landed at the Boys Town Ear Nose and Throat Institute on the campus made iconic by the 1938 film that starred Spencer Tracy as Father Edward Flanagan, founder of the orphanage. Boys Town was a symbol of compassion and charity, save for an episode of financial corruption in the early 1970s. “I really feel that the spirit of Father Flanagan is in everything we do,” Dave said in promotional video for the institute.
The Sjulins were committed to their Lutheran faith and did their best to pass it on to their three daughters. “God has blessed us in a huge way, and it’s our job to be a blessing to others,” Ann said. “It’s what Jesus would do.” The inclusiveness of Ann’s childhood and of Dave’s workplace informed the sensibilities of their daughters. “My kids have a lot of heart for people in other cultures,” Ann said. “Lotte always was drawn to kids who are multiracial. I remember one of her teachers adopted Chinese kids, and she wanted to be with them. We laughed and said, ‘What is the deal?’ and she said, ‘Oh, they’re so cute.’”
Lotte had not had a boyfriend before she met Akoy. Right off, she liked his “silly” sense of humor. She was an athlete, dedicated to fitness, and admired his athleticism. She came to appreciate his personality in full. “He could be super outgoing and super reserved; he found a balance” Lotte recalled. “He was personable. He knew how to talk to everybody, and everybody seemed to love him. It was fun to be around him, and he was cool to be in public with. People know who you are when you’re 6–8 and have all those championships. Anybody could strike a conversation with him.
“He always did something special, even if it seemed like he wasn’t listening. He recalled a lot of small details. I could tell he put a lot of thought into his day-to-day actions and how he treated people. He understood things differently than other people I had met, which I liked. He was an independent thinker—he relied on himself.”
Ann watched Lotte and Akoy’s deepening attraction with bewilderment. Sometimes Akoy arrived at their house after he had been out with Jessica. Ann thought the situation was “weird” until one evening Lotte told her that Akoy had asked her to Central’s homecoming dance.
“What happened to his girlfriend?” Ann asked.
“I guess she’s not the girlfriend anymore.”
Akoy wrote of his life as a junior with candor and humor. He was angry Adaw left her car with an empty gas tank more than once and expected him to fill it up now that he had a paycheck. “Should’ve never did it the first time!!” he wrote. But his admiration for Adaw was undeniable after she broke up a scrum between him and one of his brothers: “Wow! My mom stronger than me!!” Annoyed with an unidentified female, he borrowed from a song he had heard: “So you make love to me on Saturday and confess on Sunday?!?! Lmao #SMDH.”
Akoy’s humor could be ribald, as when he wrote of his teammate Tra-Deon Hollins, who had a girlfriend: “Tre just said who uses condoms these days? He ain’t lying!” Somebody did because he subsequently wrote, “My bro just went to the nurse and asked for a #condom.” For those who did not, but should have, he cracked, “Kids in the back seat cause accidents, and accidents in the back seat cause kids! #SMDH so true.” His humor could be irreverent, as in his reaction to the death of Apple CEO Steve Jobs: “[This] screws up my plans of getting the I-Phone 5 #DANGIT.” And he could poke fun at himself, noting that he danced awkwardly: “Being 6’9 and my knees trying to dance DO NOT GO TOGETHOR!!!!!!!”
When the first hint of cold came in mid-September, Akoy fell back on a stock gag: “This is when I wish I was still in Africa!” As temperatures dropped in October, he wrote, “It’s that time of the season when Africans don’t come outside and school absences go up. Cause they probably at home with that heat high as possible and cuddled under 6 blankets. Lol.” He skipped a Friday night football game “cause Africans and cold weather don’t mix.” He struggled with Nebraska’s frigid winters. “What was the first Sudanese person thinking when he came to Nebraska?” Akoy wondered aloud. “Going from 110 degrees to a place that gets below zero. It makes no sense to me.”
He took on his studies with a new determination that rendered them no more palatable. Of his Spanish class he wrote, “I already speak three languages!! I don’t have room in my brain to learn another language!!” Honors physics was a nightmare, and history demanded too much reading, though it provoked him to observe, “Learning about the Aztecs!! These fools were brutal. No regard for human life!!!”
The problem with school, Akoy decided, was that too much of it was irrelevant to everyday life. “I won’t need any of this unless we go into these fields,” he wrote. The writings of old English authors fell into his irrelevant category, as did statistics, pre-calculus, and biology. He wanted practical education that would help him apply for a mortgage, invest, raise children, or design a website. Government, history, and a business course taught by Colleen Lenners he deemed useful and relevant. Even as he groused, his grades improved dramatically, which delighted him. “I ask myself how I’ve gotten to care so much about school and getting good grades. . . . I’m even staying up this late doing homework,” he wrote. He answered his own rhetorical question: “Charlotte and the Sjulin family! thank you!”
On November 28, his birthday, Akoy wrote, “Man I feel old as hell turning 17 today! #oldmaniam.” But basketball season was just around the corner, and he could barely wait for it to start.
Prior to the season Akoy wrote, “The game of basketball brings great #joy to me!” Years later, when I asked him to describe his joy in basketball, Akoy said it gave him a sense of urgency, an outlet for his emotions, and a bond with his teammates. “In the end,” he said, “it’s just fun.”
12
Perfection
Akoy’s prophecy gained inspiration before his junior season. For the first time he learned, from Behrens, that he could make Nebraska history. Nobody ever had played on four straight boys Class A state championship basketball teams in Nebraska. Lincoln Northeast (1995–98) had won four straight in Class A, but no individual had played on all four. Jason Glock had played on Wahoo’s four-peat (1988–91) and Kelly Prater had played on Clearwater’s (1984–87). Falls City Sacred Heart (1988–91) had won four straight with Steve Simon a starter on all four, and Adam Froeschl, Kent Knobbe, and Jeff Schawang members of all four teams. Glock, Prater, and Simon were stars, but Wahoo was in Class B and Clearwater and Sacred Heart were in Class D, for smaller schools. Class A was the iron in Nebraska.
Energized by his newfound knowledge, in September 2011 Akoy wrote, “If I win state for the next 2 years I might be the only Class A player to ever win 4 state titles in a row! #lookatmenow.”
Indeed wherever Akoy went, people looked at all 6 feet, 8 inches of him. Yet even as he chased a record that by definition could not be broken, he began to worry about something that could: his body. He had been in two car accidents and taken hits in football as a sophomore. He had ridden long hours to grassroots basketball destinations across the Midwest. School desks and seats at public venues were too small. His diet as a young boy in Sudan and Egypt had lacked nutrients. The cumulative effect was a sore back that seemed more chronic than not. As the season got underway he wrote the following:
Yeah cant feel my back! #notagoodtobehurt.
Man why i always got to be hurt during basketball season?? can never be healthy!!!
Im gunna have a short career!!
He sought treatment in late December and wrote, “At the chirop
ractor for my back! lord i hope they can fix it!!” In late January he wrote of more treatment: “Chiropractor appointment! #bodyproblems.” By then his frustration spilled into his writing: “Injuries Injuries Injuries why i have so many of them!”
Akoy’s ailments were generally unknown to the public, which saw him as the durable engine of a juggernaut. Central was the preseason favorite of most of the coaches and savants in Nebraska. Expectations were so high that the Omaha World-Herald speculated that the Eagles might “run the table” for a perfect season, a feat last accomplished in 1988–89 by Millard South.
Though Akoy was the celebrity face of the team, he had plenty of support on a squad as deep as any Behrens had coached. Most notable was Tra-Deon Hollins, a junior 6-foot-2 guard and defensive prodigy whose training as a boxer gave him lightning-fast hands. Hollins had become a starter midway through his sophomore season and had nursed a few perceived slights. He thought he should have played varsity as a freshman, though Behrens had thought otherwise, and he believed his rep as a “defensive specialist” disrespected his offensive ability. He chafed in the shadow cast by Akoy.
“Tra-Deon had a chip on his shoulder about the attention Akoy got,” Behrens recalled. “He thought he was as good and as valuable, and he was probably right. They didn’t always get along at practice. They would go at it. Tra-Deon was an ultra-competitive type of kid.”
Now Hollins emerged as a team leader alongside Akoy. One teammate saw their leadership as a “good cop–bad cop” combination. “Tra-Deon was the bad cop,” recalled Tre’Shawn Thurman, then a sophomore forward. “He would get on you: ‘C’mon man, do your job.’ Then Akoy would come over and put his arm around your shoulder: ‘It’s all right man; we gonna get it right.’ Akoy had the knowledge of winning. Tra-Deon had the heart and hustle.”
Hollins’s immersion in basketball was made more complete by his girlfriend, Paige Muhammad, who started for Central’s girls varsity, which would go on to win state in early March. Two other starters were back from the 2011 championship: senior guard Darian Barrientos-Jackson and junior guard Deandre Hollins-Johnson. The fifth starter was the 6-foot-6 Thurman, another Scott Hammer protégé projected by Behrens as a future star. Thurman’s bloodlines traced to the defunct Tech High, where his great-uncles Larry, Ernie, and Kim Britt were standout athletes. Ernie Britt had played football and basketball alongside future Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Rodgers in the late 1960s. Senior forward Deshun Roberts, senior guard Mike Welch, and junior guard K. J. Scott, a prized transfer from Benson High and a cousin to Hollins and Hollins-Johnson, rounded out what became an eight-man rotation. Scott played grassroots ball for Hammer, and his transfer had further incited rival high school coaches against Hammer.
The season tipped off in early December, and Central won three games by wide margins to capture the Jamboree Tournament. In mid-December the Eagles ran their record to 6-0 as Akoy shot 80 percent and scored 21 points against Millard West. They rang in 2012 and won the Holiday Tournament with a 61–46 victory over South to improve to 11-0. At that point their smallest victory margin was 15 points. A buzz saw of a press was their trademark. “We trapped the whole game,” Thurman recalled. “Me and Tra-Deon were the first trap. I was on the ball; he guarded the guy who got the ball. We ran the full length every possession. Akoy was lucky—he got to sit back. If they broke the press, he blocked the shot. If they scored, I took the ball out and got it to Tra-Deon. Other teams might press a little and go back to half court, but we pressed the whole game. We had the depth; we could sub in three or four guys and keep it up. We had the conditioning—Behrens made sure of that. We had the speed, the depth, the conditioning, and talent to press the whole game.”
Akoy’s defense was an insurance policy. Behrens estimated that he blocked or altered 10–12 shots a game. A blocked shot was not enough for Akoy; the block had to be controlled. “When you block them out of bounds, everybody can ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ but they get the ball back,” Akoy told a reporter. “If I block to myself or a teammate, it provides us more possessions. I’ve learned to block softly to me or, if I see a teammate, I’ll block it to them. It all comes with chemistry, and my teammates know they have to be ready for the ball.” Opponents shot at 32.5 percent, compared to 47 percent the season before Akoy arrived. The World-Herald’s Sam McKewon described Central as “a controlled chaos of plugged passing lanes, quick traps, blocked shots, runaway dunks and sudden bursts of points. Speed. Defense. Pressure. Teamwork.”
Offense was distributed so that the top scorers, Akoy, Hollins, and Barrientos-Jackson, averaged a modest 12–13 points. Team goals prevailed, Behrens thought, because most of his players had been showcased on the summer grassroots circuit. “Nobody felt pressure to score,” Behrens said. “They were unselfish because we didn’t need anybody to put up huge numbers. If we kept winning, we would be on the news and social media. They realized they would get more attention than the guy on the .500 team who averages 20.”
The Eagles went to 19-0 after a 63–48 win over eighth-ranked Millard North. A close first half hinted at a pitfall of dominance. “We just kind of got lazy,” Akoy told a reporter. “Sometimes we can get a little complacent.” Then they beat fourth-ranked South, for the third time, 82–64, to go to 20-0. Things were good in school as well, as Akoy wrote, “Guess who made the Honor Roll #AkoyAgau feeling very educated.”
Against third-ranked Papillion–La Vista, Akoy was whistled for his fourth foul, after which he muttered to an official and was slapped with a technical, his fifth foul. His teammates played without him for the last twelve minutes and won anyway, 63–46, to go to 23-0. They beat Bryan by 17 and Bellevue East by 22 to get to 25-0. The state tournament was in three weeks and perfection seemed perfectly attainable, until suddenly it did not.
On Saturday, February 18, 2012, Akoy published a series of tweets:
About to go under the knife.
Torn meniscus ready to be fixed
Bye y’all! Tweet y’all when I’m out!
Now I know what it feels like to wear tights.
Tweeting substitute to fill in for Akoy while he is in surgery.
Should be wrapping up soon #thisdoesntevenhurt
Feels wierd to have a guy inside my leg #neveragain
This should take away all my pain #newagain
Thus did Akoy live-tweet his arthroscopic knee surgery at Nebraska Orthopaedic Hospital. It is believed to be the first live-tweet by a patient in surgery in Nebraska and possibly anywhere.
After his surgery Akoy wrote the obvious: “Who knew I could be so addicted to twitter #obsession.” Post-operative care seemed to suit him:
The nurse that’s taking care of me is #fineeeee
Mmmmm she is finnnee
Let the drugged up tweets begin
I love morphine
Local media were on the story by the next day. Behrens said that Akoy’s right knee had been “really bothering him” for a couple of weeks and that doctors had told Akoy he would be ready to play in the state tournament and possibly in the districts. Typically meniscus surgery requires six to eight weeks of rest and rehab before strenuous exercise. The notion that Akoy could play in the districts in a week and at state in two and a half weeks defied medicine and perhaps common sense. “But no, I’m not going to miss state!” he wrote. “Well hopefully not!”
Rehab began, and Akoy wrote, “I hate physical therapy.” He sat out the district semifinal against 4-19 Omaha Northwest, and the expected cakewalk turned into a nail biter. At halftime he lit into his teammates. “Some of the words shouldn’t be put in the paper,” he told McKewon. Central pulled out its tightest game of the season, 61–51, and punctuated Akoy’s value. Ten days after surgery he was on the floor for the district final against Kearney. In a limited role he scored 5 points as Central kept Kearney off the scoreboard until the second quarter on the way to a 59–36 win. The day after he wrote, “So I tried to play last night and I sprained my ankle! #badluck. I’m going straight back to
my crutches!!!”
Nineteen days after surgery Akoy was at the Devaney Center in Lincoln for the state quarterfinal. “Man I’m hyped,” he wrote. “I feel like we shouldn’t have school during the state tournament!” Central was 27-0 and was ranked twenty-ninth nationally by MaxPreps.com and thirty-seventh by ESPN, with an average margin of victory of 25.5 points. Not only were the Eagles good, they were colorful. As McKewon wrote in the article mentioned above, the team “is full of distinct personalities. They’ll gesture with Behrens on the court—or even have an animated conversation. Before tip-off, they chant and dance in a circle. Aside from Thurman—who sports Central purple Nikes—they wear a whole variety of shoe colors. A couple wear pink Hello Kitty socks.”
In pursuit of a perfect record Central sought a place among Nebraska’s all-time best, which included the unbeaten squads of Millard South (1989) and Omaha South (1960), as well as Central’s 1975 team, which had a single loss. A national schedule might have catapulted the Eagles into an ultra-elite that included the 2003 team of St. Vincent–St. Mary (Akron) with LeBron James; the 1989 team of St. Anthony (Jersey City NJ) with Bobby Hurley; the 1983 team of Dunbar (Baltimore) with Reggie Williams, Muggsy Bogues, and Reggie Lewis; the 1993 team of Oak Hill Academy (Virginia) with Jerry Stackhouse; the 2006 team of Lawrence (Indianapolis) North with Greg Oden and Mike Conley Jr.; and the 1964 team of Power Memorial (New York City) with Lew Alcindor (later known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). On the other hand, a national schedule might have exposed Central as no more than a local power. But that context, and a matchup with Oak Hill, was a year off.
The Eagles’ quarterfinal opponent was Omaha Bryan, a 17-9 team they had twice beaten by wide margins. This time Bryan figured out how to neutralize the Central press. Central led 32–29 at half and 41–38 after three quarters. Late in the fourth quarter Bryan’s Ethan Mantalvo stole a pass and scored on a layup to cut Central’s lead to 52–50. Then he stole another pass and hit two free throws to knot the score with 1:14 left. Hollins was whistled for charging with 22 seconds left. The Devaney Center held its collective breath.
Citizen Akoy Page 11
