Written By Sam Ekstrom
The crowd roared as he was introduced. Kendal Shell, a walk-on with only three minutes of conference playing time under belt, received as loud a Senior Day ovation as his teammates Sunday at Williams Arena.
Shell, a senior, played 1 minute, 23 seconds, notched one assist, then slipped his warmup back on and took a seat on the bench. And that was that. Those 83 seconds were Shell’s payoff for his hard work this season.
The movie Rudy is perhaps the most accurate portrayal of the journey for a walk-on collegiate athlete. Your odds of making the team are slim. You’re not under scholarship, yet your time commitment is massive. Your only value is that you are an extra body for the starters to work against in practice. And you are expected to work as hard as anybody with no expectation of playing time.
Great toil; little reward. Most walk-ons don’t end their careers getting carried off the floor. Rather, their jersey number gets recycled back into circulation, their name removed from the roster, and they are replaced by the next sucker with naïve fantasies of basketball fame.
It’s nearly impossible to create an identity for yourself as a walk-on. But most people close to the Gophers program know the name of Shell, one of the Gophers’ five seniors, who is leaving the program – no longer as a walk-on, but on scholarship after head coach Richard Pitino rewarded him for the final three semesters of his Gophers career.
During key moments of home games at Williams Arena, Shell’s face will fill up the jumbotron as he urges fans to make some noise and get out of their seats in a prerecorded video. If they angled their eyes down towards the bench area, though, they’d probably see him doing the same pump-up routine in real life.
“Kendal, he’s like the hype man,” said fellow senior Andre Hollins.
“Every game he’s always loud and extremely encouraging,” said senior Mo Walker. “He has a great attitude that doesn’t change, no matter what. Winning or losing, he’s going to be always positive.”
Shell made the team as a walk-on under Tubby Smith and stayed aboard for the Richard Pitino era, at which point he decided he would serve as the team’s emotional leader from the bench. Despite playing just 86 minutes, taking 21 shots and scoring 17 points over his four-year career, Shell played a big role from sidelines, shaping his identity by waving towels, clapping his hands and requesting standing ovations from the partisan crowd.
It’s not glamorous, but it’s a position in which Shell excels.
“Looking back on it, it was kind of cool just really not having any expectations,” said Shell, who played high school ball in Missouri, “just kind of coming out here. No one really knows you. You’re just making a new name for yourself.
“I’d see my teammates saying, ‘Yeah, Kendal, he just gets us hyped. He’s always bringing it every day.’ I’m going to do that for them. It helps a lot. Really, like last year, it’s just fun. When I get up on the court, I can see the whole crowd looking at me, getting all up. … I just enjoy it. I just have a lot of energy naturally.”
Having played under two different regimes, Shell has seen a lot. He played on an underachieving Tubby Smith team as a freshman, then watched the Gophers make the NCAA Tournament his sophomore year, which preceded Smith’s departure from Minnesota. Now he’s undergoing a reverse dynamic under Pitino – overachieving the first year and underachieving the next.
It’s been a roller coaster ride, to say the least, which has given the senior an opportunity to be a mentor, particularly to Mike Lukashewich, the young freshman from Appleton, Wis., who walked on and made the team mid-season.
“I know how it feels when he came in,” said Shell, Lukashewich’s roommate on the road. “Kinda didn’t know anybody, didn’t really know what to do or how it is, so I just kind of let him know how it is and let him know you’re just the same as everybody else.”
Lukashewich is a 6-foot-3, 180-pound guard who competed against seven other walk-ons before the season and eventually nabbed the roster spot left open by the untimely departure of DaQuein McNeil.
“It’s hard to fathom the fact I’m part of a team again out of high school, and the fact that it’s this team, part of the Big Ten,” said Lukashewich, who specialized as a spot-up shooter at Appleton North High School. “There’s a good group of guys, and it’s really fun being a part of something special.”
The appeal of being a walk-on is often intrinsic, as Lukashewich alluded to: being a part of something special. The work put in will not pay monetary dividends; but it does provide a memorable experience that can be valuable in building character – or simply constructing a résumé. For Shell, the next step is finishing his master’s in Sports Management and then working for a college athletic program or professional franchise. His time spent with the Gophers will only strengthen his chances of landing a job in that vocation.
“It’s just been a great journey,” he said. “I don’t regret any of it from when I came on campus.”
That leaves Lukashewich as the man who will receive the torch from Shell when he graduates. Not too different from Shell, Lukashewich was quiet as a freshman; just trying to grow acclimated to the culture. He’ll be staying on campus over the summer to work on his game and aims to take the next step within the program.
From the outside looking in, it doesn’t appear like it would be fun to be Kendal Shell or Mike Lukashewich. It takes a special kind of personality; a patient, unselfish, humble attitude, a desire to learn and a tireless work ethic.
Young basketball players don’t endeavor to grow up and be a walk-on, resigned to be a towel-waver, warmup-wearer or jumbotron gimmick, some cynics might say. But when one talks to a person like Shell and hears the praise they merit from their peers and superiors, there comes a realization: We admire the Kendal Shells of the world because we know, deep down, that we could never do what they do with as much respectability.
“Every day he’s brought it emotionally,” said Pitino after the season-ending loss to Penn State. “When he graduates, he’s going to be a great employee for someone one day.”
Sam Ekstrom is a staff writer for Cold Omaha at 105 The Ticket and a play-by-play broadcaster in Burnsville, Minn. Hear him on 105 The Ticket Sunday mornings from 8-10 a.m. on “The Wake Up Call.” Follow him on Twitter @SamEkstrom for further insights.