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Stephanie Li

Junior Nik Elsaesser has been playing basketball since seventh grade.

“I really enjoyed watching it and a lot of my friends played and it was something that I was better at than some of the other sports offered to me,” he said.

Playing on the sleek, shiny floors of the basketball court requires special shoes.

“A lot of [the look] is the high top look but also how they’re shaped in general because of the specific movements you have to make in basketball. It’s a different look and it gives off a certain vibe that most shoes can’t,” Elsaesser said.

Usually student athletes buy their shoes from big retailer stores like Nike or Adidas, but Elsaesser finds his basketball shoes at local stores.

“A lot of the time I do the searching process through the internet and I then I go to local stores in Minneapolis … to buy my shoes. With the SPA team, we have the team store and that’s where I got my shoes last year,” Elsaesser said.

Elsaesser plays guard to small forward position. He recalls a game the team played against Minneapolis Edison.

“Last year, my sophomore year, I was wearing our team shoes but I had just switched the laces from blue to yellow because I thought the blue was just too generic and we had played Minneapolis Edison and I scored the most points in that game that I’ve ever scored,” he said.