SPOKANE — A soccer-spurning German exchange student ending up in basketball-bonkers and football-frenzied Neah Bay just seems right.
Ole Nedderoff, 16, a sophomore from Bad Essen, a town of more than 15,000 people in the northwest portion of Germany, didn’t have his choice of destinations.
Instead, he was placed with the Winck family, parents Andrea and Andrew and children Elisha, Courtney and Kayla, in Neah Bay.
And he couldn’t be happier.
“It was kind of crazy and scary to leave, but once I was here I loved it,” Nedderoff said this week by phone during the Neah Bay basketball team’s bus ride to the state tournament in Tacoma.
“This is the best place for me. I love the community. Everybody knows everyone, and I love the focus they have on sports.”
The natural beauty of the area impresses him, and the timberlands of Western Washington help stave off homesickness.
“It kind of reminds me of northwestern Germany,” Nedderoff said.
“There’s just not that much rain.”
Or very much soccer.
Nedderoff said he played when he was younger, but basketball has always been his sport of choice.
That makes him out of the ordinary in a country that just won soccer’s biggest prize, the World Cup.
“I don’t know what boy in Germany that did not play soccer,” Nedderoff said.
He was fine with being placed in a school district that does not offer the sport.
“I was kind of happy about that,” Nedderoff said.
“From what we know in Germany and what I have seen in Seattle, soccer is coming to the U.S. and getting more popular, but it’s not my game.”
Nedderhoff said he hasn’t seen a real surge in popularity for basketball in his home country, despite the long, All-Star career and NBA title won by fellow German Dirk Nowitzki of the Dallas Mavericks.
“As Dirk won the NBA MVP and won the NBA championship, I’ve seen it in some German newspapers, but mostly just the basketball newspapers,” Nedderoff said.
“But you have to look for it. It’s not front page.”
Back home, schools don’t offer team sports. Instead clubs fill the void, with teams being divided up by age group.
“You play for a club team, and players are on U[nder]-14, U-16, U-18,” Nedderoff said.
Nedderoff has enjoyed the ride in his six months in America.
And as a manager of the state-champion football team and a player on the state-qualified boys basketball team, he’s had his share of long bus trips during his time in Washington.
The football team went as far as Lyle, along the Columbia River Gorge, up to Bellingham for a tussle with Lummi, and to back-to-back trips to the Tacoma Dome for the state semifinals and championship.
Now, with a trip to Spokane under his belt, Nedderoff has seen all that Washington has to offer.
He hasn’t played a great deal for the Red Devils. The 6-foot-2 Nedderoff averages 2.1 points in his 10 games played. But that’s not really the point.
“I think the players can learn from me, I can learn from them, the cultural thing,” Nedderoff said.
“I try hard in practice and I like giving them competition.”
That’s exactly what Neah Bay coach Stan Claplanhoo said of Nedderoff.
“Ole’s got real nice size at 6-2, so he can really give us good looks in practice,” Claplanhoo said.
“I usually put him on Abraham [Venske] or John Reamer in the post.
“And he’s just a good kid. I don’t have to worry about him on or off the court.”
Nedderhoff will head back to Germany in June, having learned much about U.S. history, which he said was his favorite subject in class, the Makah tribe and the American appetite for sports.
“It’s way bigger here,” Nedderoff said.
“In Germany there is just soccer. Not so much on TV. Here, there are five or six channels and I love it.”
And he’ll head home with priceless memories — a state title, a state tournament visit and friendships.
“I’m very happy,” Nedderoff said.
“I could have ended up anywhere, but I’m glad it was in Neah Bay.”
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Sports reporter Michael Carman can be contacted at 360-452-2345, ext. 5250 or at mcarman@peninsuladailynews.com.
