Student-Athlete of the Week-Gage Gruidel

At 6-feet, 5-inches, Niwot power forward Gage Gruidel may look like a natural-born basketball player, but due to a severe illness during infancy, he has had to work harder than most to achieve his athletic goals. In 2021, those include leading Niwot boys basketball to a second straight winning season and helping a youthful program build a better future.

"I just have loved every minute that I've played for Niwot, and my coaches especially have just brought me up to a level I never thought I could achieve," he said. "Since we have such a young team, I just hope to take all the knowledge I can from the past four years I've played and help those younger guys and lead us somewhere, so when I leave the program, I'm happy with how I left it and what we represent as the whole entire organization."

Gruidel's condition has mystified his doctors over the years, and, as a young child, he had to endure dozens of procedures and treatments. Fortunately, the worst effects have eased as he's gotten older, and, these days, his condition is largely manageable. But he still has to be cognizant of his limits.

"It's harder to move for me physically," Gruidel said. "I'll sometimes have to sit out of drills to recuperate, but it's really just about putting in my own work, and getting over those obstacles, so I can do the things that I can do physically and go out there and play."

Since 2017, Gruidel has been getting out and playing for Niwot, on the court and on the diamond, where he pitches and plays first base. But he considers basketball his primary sport, and is looking forward to taking his spot in the Cougars' starting lineup in 2021. As a junior, he played in 20 games off the bench, and will be one of the few starters with any varsity experience at all this season.

Of course, Gruidel is aware that his senior season will be anything but typical. Not only is Niwot transitioning to a new league and new opponents, but players will also be forced to contend with masks and other health precautions that could ultimately impact play on the court.

"I think it most definitely will present some issues conditioning wise because it is hard to run up and down with a mask covering how you breathe and affecting that," he said. "But the guys have managed during practice... I think it will be an obstacle, but it's something that we're getting trained up to face, and I think I don't think it will be too bad."

For second-year head coach Clayton Wittrock, the veteran is making good on his intention to leave the program better than he found it, and not just with his basketball skills.

"He's just such a natural leader," Wittrock said of Gruidel, who was elected captain by his fellow seniors. "He's a vocal leader, but it's those actions too. He's doing the little things that will show those other guys that this is what it takes. He doesn't say, 'You guys gotta do it,' he just does it."

In the classroom, the senior maintains a 4.0+ grade point average, in a mix of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes. His favorites so far have been biology, psychology, and Mr. Dimit's AP language class, which he said, "caught him off guard."

"He makes you think about the outside world and problem-solving with his writing. It's more about analyzing instead of reading something and transferring that knowledge on to a test or something like that. It's actually about higher thinking, which I really enjoy."

After graduation, Gruidel plans to study biomedical engineering at either CU or the University of Oregon, and hopes to enter the medical field someday. As something of a medical mystery himself, he wants to better understand human biology and its complex interactions.

"Since I've come from a background where I've had to deal with a lot of medical stuff, I want to study what makes us humans like genetics, and DNA, and ways we can control illnesses that are more uncommon, and just things in our genetics that we can fix. I guess I'm trying to look for something that I can solve. I want to help people is the bottom line of it. I know what it's like to go through all that stuff."