The eye of the Tiger set on St. Mary’s

Coming from a small town in Medford, Tigers basketball star Kael Hermanstorfer knew he wanted to continue his basketball and academic career at a university in a bigger town and he had multiple options in the University of Minnesota-Duluth, St. Scholastica, which is also in Duluth, and North Central University in downtown Minneapolis.  
However, he also didn’t want to go to a town too big.
Similar to Goldilocks, he’s found the town and university that’s just right for him in St. Mary’s University (SMU) in Winona.
Winona, a town with a population of about 28,000, satisfies his desire to go to a town bigger than Medford, while the fact that SMU is isolated from downtown Winona and has only approximately 1,200 undergraduate students on campus meets his wish of going to a town that’s not too big.
“The balance of big and small is a pretty good fit for me,” Hermanstorfer said. “Choosing St. Mary’s was a pretty easy decision.” His decision was even easier when he visited SMU’s campus and got to watch one of the Cardinals practices. He said it sealed his decision of where he wanted to be.
“They were doing a lot of the stuff I did in AAU and based on my skillset, I thought I would fit in well with the team and do well there,” he said.
The fact that St. Mary’s mens basketball team was practicing similar drills as his AAU was not a coincidence.
This past summer, Hermanstorfer’s AAU coach was St. Mary’s Assistant Coach Kyle Brown.
“It helped me get closer to SMU and develop relationships with the coaching staff,” he said.
While playing AAU basketball, Brown gave him an honest assessment of his game.
“He liked my defense, my work ethic and my ability to go with the flow of my team and not try to do too much. He also told me what he wanted to see me work on: ball handling, being able to finish at the rim a little bit better and better decision-making,” he said.
Since then, Hermanstorfer has focused on improving those aspects of his game that he was encouraged to work on.
“I think I’ve improved a lot. The big thing that I worked on was my ball handling so I could get to the rim and draw more fouls. I also worked my shooting and making it more consistent so I can shoot at a higher percentage,” he said.
In addition to being the right school to further his basketball skills, he thought it was the best fit for him going forward in his education.
Hermanstorfer plans to major in physical therapy, and he says SMU has a really good physical therapy program.
However, before he enters SMU’s physical therapy program, he wants to leave his Medford team in good shape.
“I want to get a winning culture started at Medford so when we graduate, they can continue that culture,” he said. “For this year, we just want to get more wins and get a few playoff wins along the way.”