How We Met Her Side of the Story: On a Sunday evening in November 2009, my cousin Jenny and I went to basketball open gym at New Holstein High School like we usually did during basketball season. Little did I know, this particular night would change my life forever.

There were more people there than usual, so the boys’ basketball coach, Ken Stephany, decided it would be best to split everyone up (this wasn’t just open gym for basketball players it was for the entire community) into teams and have a little “win to play” tournament. These weren’t captains pick sort of teams. Ken split the players up into teams and then we started playing. There were maybe 4 girls mixed into 3 or 4 teams so the likelihood of actually getting the ball was slim to none. However, there just happened to be this one guy that would pass to a girl and that guy was Jason.

I have no idea what came over me, but J would pass me the ball and I would shoot and score to win the game every single time! We won so many times in a row that we had to take a break and give the other teams a chance to play. We were walking off the court and J walks up to me and asks “is all you do is shoot and win?” I politely smiled at him and walked away! You better believe I was interested in talking to him, but I froze! All I could think about was how this good -looking, older guy (that I knew was one of my older sister’s close friend’s brother) was trying to talk to me! He may say my smile is what caught his eye, but I think it might have been my jump shot.

A few weeks passed where Jenny and I didn’t go to open gym due to the holidays and our own schedules. Then, in early January we started going again and J was there every time! He would say hi and start a conversation and I got the courage to actually talk as well. I couldn’t stop thinking “man this guy is so nice and funny, but he talks about the weirdest things!” (ex: he would ask why girls always eat ice cream when they are sad and if they would actually just eat it right out of the container when being broken up with.) Our conversations turned into challenges of one-on-one, he would attend girls' games and I would go sit and talk with him after my games (he would use analogies comparing me to types of cheeses when I was crabby after a loss (a true Wisconsin boy right there). Then, he invited me to go to away boys’ basketball games where he would get lost driving because driving somewhere from St. Cloud was foreign territory to him.

Looking back, I realize that I fell for him the night that we were placed on the same team, but J became my best friend before becoming my boyfriend. I still have that best friend today, I’ve just been able to call him my boyfriend, fiancé, and can’t wait to call him my husband! We have endured long distance, living in four different states thus far, adopting a crazy dog, crazy work schedules, including J traveling half of the year, and so much more, but I would not trade the past 10 years for anything.

Now, if I had it my way (let’s be real if everyone had it their way), I wouldn’t have had J wait 10 years to propose so thank you all for your patience! We cannot wait to celebrate our long-awaited day with all of you!

His Side of the Story: Most of you have either met Jodi and I through sports or will, at the very least, recognize how large of a role sports have played in our lives. That includes the story behind how we first met. Unless the Packers are playing on Sunday Night Football, there isn’t a heck of a lot going on in rural Wisconsin at 6:00 p.m. on a Sunday night in the fall. As a result, my weekly routine from 2003-2011 included playing basketball for a couple hours every Sunday night at New Holstein High School.

On one particular evening, a quartet of female hoopsters strode into the gym and were among a group of approximately twenty people that were divided into four teams with one female on each. As fate would have it, Jodi and I ended up on the same squad. Men have often been criticized for not passing the ball to women enough in these co-ed type of events so I set out to make sure that Jodi was involved heavily in our squad’s up-tempo motion offense.

As a guy who was often scolded for not shooting enough throughout my basketball career, I was content to play the role of distributor all night. It just so happened that Jodi made the winning shot in three or four consecutive games off of my passes. Yes, she had a great smile and wasn’t bad looking, but her shot-making ability was definitely the most attractive thing about her at the time.

Even though she was rude and basically ignored my compliments after these basketball games, she eventually decided I was worth talking to. I began going to her games, she started to attend mine and before too long we began making decisions together rather than individually.

Our careers in sports have taken us all over the country and allowed us to have some really amazing experiences. We have lived in separate states for parts of three summers and lived together in four different states. It is not the easiest lifestyle, but having Jodi with me the entire time has made decisions much easier. In the end, it doesn’t really matter where we are living or how far away we are from home because as long as we are together life is good.

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