RIGHT: Bobroczkyi dreams of following fellow 7-7 players Gheorghe Muresan and Manute Bol into the NBA. LEFT: “Nobody has ever trained anyone like him,” Spire’s Brandon Strausser said of Bobroczkyi. Olympic and Paralympic training facility, and the small town of Geneva, Ohio, has become a beacon for athletes. Built in 2009, the complex has been christened as a U.S. It is part of the Spire Institute, a 750,000-square foot facility on an unassuming 175-acre plot about 45 minutes east of Cleveland. The Spire Academy provides specialized training, schooling and living accommodations for high school and postgraduate athletes. He’s thousands of miles from his family in Romania, and for any teenager that would be difficult enough. This has become normal for the coach, because Bobroczkyi’s high school experience is anything but. “I just don’t want him to get bombarded.”Ĭlark spanned the arena for different routes to reach the rest of the team in the upper deck. “Where did they go?” Clark asked before Bobroczkyi made a break for it, wondering where the rest of his players were sitting. His young coach, Justin Clark, stood protectively beside Bobroczkyi outside the locker room afterward.
6-foot-2 at 8 years oldĪ half-hour earlier, Bobroczkyi watched his Spire Academy teammates win the opening game of the Flyin’ To The Hoop tournament, which is considered one of the premier high school basketball events in the country. Already he has reported three Instagram accounts for using his name and videos of him.īobroczkyi can relax around his teammates at Spire Academy, which is based about 45 minutes east of Cleveland. He shooed away all photo requests from older spectators, refusing to be a trophy on their Instagram and Facebook accounts. He signed at least a hundred items, nodding after each child thanked him. Little kids, giggling, chased him and formed a line to get his autograph in their tournament programs, which advertised Bobroczkyi as an “attraction” even though he hadn’t played a second in the game his team just won.
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He walked up a section full of students and kept his head down. Hundreds of people whipped out their phones and began recording, some trying to be discreet, as if they felt bad about filming a 17-year-old who has never had a say in being 7 feet 7 inches tall. Finally, he spotted his teammates in the stands and made a run for it. He peeked out and could see that people were already gawking. He couldn’t find his teammates.īobroczkyi stood behind a black curtain by the entrance of the gym. He put a red hood over his head and made his way through the cinder-block hallways of an unfamiliar arena. Robert Bobroczkyi was the last player to emerge from the victorious locker room, arching his neck just enough to fit under the doorway.
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