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UW men's basketball: Stiemsma has overcome adversity, from motorcycle accident to depression
Greg Stiemsma remembers reading one tale that claimed he wrecked his knee before his senior year at Randolph High School after hitting a deer while driving a motorcycle home drunk from a party. Another story claimed that he hurt his knee while popping wheelies on a motorcycle in front of friends.
Stiemsma, who was awestruck at the time by the amount of fiction written about his knee injury on Internet message boards, has never gone on record to tell the real story of what happened to his right knee during the summer of 2003.
But as the 10th-ranked University of Wisconsin men's basketball team prepared to play Penn State tonight at the Kohl Center -- a game in which the Badgers can clinch a share of the Big Ten Conference title with a win -- Stiemsma cleared the air.
"It's probably not the best story," shrugged the Badgers' reserve center, who will be honored tonight with three other teammates during Senior Night festivities before and after the game. "It's really nothing special."
The 6-foot-11 Stiemsma said he wrecked his knee in front of his family home when he fell while driving his father's Harley Davidson Wide Glide around the Fourth of July. After getting permission from his father, Rick, to take the bike to a nearby holiday party, Stiemsma hardly got out of the driveway when he realized he had given the Harley too much gas and, after popping the clutch, quickly lost control of the heavy bike.
"I tried to put my (right) foot down to kind of control it and rolled it right on top of myself," said Stiemsma, who felt pain in his right knee as he tried to crawl out from the Harley on top of him.
The diagnosis a few days later was a torn anterior cruciate ligament. Stiemsma, who had already accepted a scholarship to play for the Badgers, has been playing catch-up every since.
"It was just one of those fluke things where it happened a certain way and I fell a certain way and it changed my life a little bit," said Stiemsma, who had no idea at the time that he would endure more bad news over the next few years that would help define his career with the Badgers.
As a freshman at Wisconsin, Stiemsma broke a bone in his foot and played just 10 games. As a sophomore, a promising season ended after just 16 games when he learned he was clinically depressed at about the same time he was being declared academically ineligible.
As his college career nears its end, Stiemsma could look back and say that he never came close to realizing his potential as a basketball player. His career averages include 2.4 points, 2.1 rebounds and 1.0 block in 9.6 minutes per game.
But Stiemsma has no intention of ever looking negatively at his four years at Wisconsin.
"I think those things affected everything. I'd be a liar to say it's not affecting me now even still," he said. "You just try to learn from those things and what I've done wrong."
Stiemsma a go-to guy
And Stiemsma has learned a great deal.
Besides defining the role of team player on the Big Ten's ultimate team this season, Stiemsma reached a long-time goal by fulfilling a key role off the court as the go-to player for advice on everything from basketball and family to girlfriends.
"I've talked to him about all three of those," said junior swingman Joe Krabbenhoft. "He's a great player and a great person, but even more important, he's as good a friend to everybody else on this team. I don't know if there's anybody on this team who wouldn't feel comfortable talking to Greg about anything."
Stiemsma doesn't just talk to his teammates. Friends back home in Randolph keep in touch. He is also an eager speaker to church groups, kids at basketball camps and any place else that invites him. His message is often the same and it dates back to the first time he spoke after his troubling sophomore year.
"I go up in front of these kids and I'm getting introduced and they say I only played the first half of the year. So what do you say to those kids?" said Stiemsma. "I embraced that. I said I made mistakes but I haven't given up. That's the point, you have to stay at it."
Battling depression
Stiemsma also tells others not to make excuses.
That's why he didn't talk publicly about his depression immediately after being declared academically ineligible. But it was clear to him after being diagnosed that he was battling depression as far back as high school.
"There were times in high school when I wasn't enjoying basketball or school and stuff. I think I just dealt with it back then. I don't think the pressure was as high back then or the consequences, either," said Stiemsma.
Going to school and playing basketball at Wisconsin was another story. Stiemsma remembers coming to grips with the harsh reality of his poor decisions made under the spell of depression. "I was thrown in the fire and forced to grow up a little bit, whether I was ready for it or not," he said.
At that time, Stiemsma was a hot topic of conversation once again on message boards, in the grocery store and everywhere else Wisconsin fans congregate. "One thing is you have to have is thick skin," said Stiemsma, who stopped going to message boards and learned to turn off all negative talk in his life.
"Just the ability to brush things off and encourage is a big thing," he said.
Last summer, after Stiemsma spoke to a church group, the minister asked him what they should pray for him. "The first thing that came to mind was courage," he said. "To want to play through the adversity no matter how big or small it is; to not be afraid to fail and not be afraid to be successful. Success can be a scary thing, too."
Stiemsma thought about that just before he tied his season high with 10 points and blocked three shots during the Badgers 80-55 win at Penn State on Jan. 15. "So I go out and have a decent game and we win big. It was a big win for us on the road because we hadn't played well there in the past," Stiemsma said proudly.
Like a rock
When Stiemsma attended a Promise Keepers convention with his dad when he was barely in high school, he was asked what he wanted to be remembered for. He said he wanted to be a rock. "I wanted to be the guy who people come to for problems. I want to be the stable guy," he said.
He's been just that for the Badgers on and off the court during his senior season.
"It's great if I can come in and get six points, get a couple deflections or hedge out on a screen to keep a guy from getting a 3," Stiemsma said. "It seems so small to a lot of fans watching. They don't see on a stat sheet that I played hard or had contributions without assists and rebounds.
"But I think I'm fitting into my role now. I'm getting comfortable as we try to put this thing together. This team, I think we're starting to hit our stride at a pretty good time."
'Wouldn't trade it for the world'
Stiemsma will most likely play pro ball over the next few years and will return to school to take the last three classes he needs to earn a degree in Agricultural Journalism. By then, his starring role on the message boards should be over, although the question of whether he should have redshirted his freshman year may be debated for decades.
"I don't regret not redshirting," said Stiemsma definitively. "Five years is a long time to be here."
Whatever happened to the Harley? It was Stiemsma's dad's dream bike and he had just bought it a few months before the accident. He sold it later that summer.
"My dad felt awful. He still feels bad to this day," Stiemsma said. "Should I have been riding it? It would be easy to say no. I had experience but it was probably a little too much bike for me at the time."
Wisconsin was too much of a school for awhile, too. But Stiemsma still found a way to ride it to success.
"If they had told me on signing day that I was going to go through all of this, it would have been a more scary thing. But I wouldn't trade it for the world," said Stiemsma.
"Every experience I've been through, every mountain and valley, it's been worth it," he added. "It has made me who I am and I'm pretty happy with the guy I am right now. I couldn't say that two years ago. I'm back to being pretty happy again."
