The road less traveled

Until this season, a common sight after Virginia basketball games was seeing Tom Jonke in a steel cage.
There, in the bowels of John Paul Jones Arena, down the hall and through a set of double doors from the team’s locker room, Jonke — an honor roll student who had earned an international baccalaureate diploma in high school — performed one of his many managerial duties: laundry.
“You get a taste of pretty much everything,” said Jonke, referring to the job of a basketball manager.
Well, last Thursday Jonke (pronounced Yonk-ee) got a taste of something that he would have never fathomed three years ago when he was a freshman at Virginia.
Jonke found himself on the court at John Paul Jones Arena — only he wasn’t filling water bottles, picking up warmups or scribbling on a clipboard.
The 6-foot, 170-pound economics major, who looks more like Bill Gates than a Division I college basketball player, was wearing a real Virginia uniform with his name and the No. 10 on the back — and he was playing in the actual game.
Can you say surreal?
“That would be the word for it,” said the senior, who had a rebound and no turnovers in three minutes of action against Rider.
“I was trying my hardest not to be nervous, but I was excited. I wanted to get a shot up, but I didn’t want to force it. I didn’t want to turn the ball over. That was my big thing — try not to make a mistake.”
Until this season, Jonke’s biggest concerns were rebounding for teammates during practice; running the clock and recording stats; and keeping cups of Gatorade filled to the brim.
As a freshman, Jonke had seen a want ad in the Cavalier Daily for basketball managers.
For Jonke, it was an
opportunity to stay around basketball — a sport he loved and had grown up playing, but was never good enough or big enough to pursue seriously after high school.
Jonke had thought about trying to make the team as a walk-on during his first three years, but former Virginia coach Dave Leitao already had more scholarship players than he knew what to do with.
That all changed last April when Leitao was replaced and a few roster spots opened up. Jonke, who is from Commack, N.Y., decided that he would go out for the squad the next fall under new coach Tony Bennett.
Jonke’s sports at Commack High School had been volleyball, basketball, and track and field. In track and field, he did the pentathlon. Following his senior year, Jonke was named the school’s male athlete of the year.
But it had been over three years since Jonke had played any competitive basketball. Even at Commack, Jonke didn’t regularly start for his team, which wasn’t exactly Oak Hill Academy. Jonke said his team’s starting center was about 6-foot-2.
“I didn’t have a stellar high school career,” Jonke joked.
Jonke spent this past summer going to the gym every day and playing in a summer league with friends.
Eventually, Oct. 19 came around. That was D-Day — the date of tryouts.
Jonke was one of eight Virginia students to arrive at the arena’s practice court at 7 a.m. With the Virginia coaching staff watching, the players went through a few drills, then scrimmaged. The whole session lasted about an hour.
“I was just trying to give as hard an effort as I could because I didn’t know exactly what they were looking for,” Jonke said. “You can’t go wrong with playing hard.”
After the tryout, Jonke wasn’t sure how he’d done.
“I went home and I was pretty nervous,” he said. “I didn’t know if I would hear back that night or not.
“We had practice the next day and I didn’t know if I was coming in as a manager or as a player.”
After a sleepless night, Jonke arrived at practice. Ronnie Wideman, the team’s assistant director of basketball operations pulled Jonke and Doug Browman, another walk-on candidate aside. Wideman told the pair that they could begin practicing with the team.
Still, Jonke wasn’t sure if that meant he had made it.
But after about 10 days of practice, he was told to go and meet with the NCAA compliance director. The next day he was instructed to visit the team’s equipment manager and to request a uniform number.
“I was like, ‘Oh, this good,’” said Jonke, smiling.
That night, Jonke called everyone he could think of — his parents, his brothers, friends.
“I told everyone, ‘You’re not going to believe this, but I’m going to be No. 10 this year,’” Jonke said. “They were all really happy. They were like, ‘I’m coming to the game in a No. 10 Virginia jersey!’”
Bennett said the staff had been impressed by Jonke’s energy during the tryout.
“He was so amped up and revved up to show his best,” Bennett recalled. “Just watching him out there, knowing how much it meant to him…”
It made Bennett’s day to be able to play Jonke for the three minutes of the team’s blowout victory over Rider.
“I was so glad to get him that time,” Bennett said. “He worked so hard. I was glad to be able to reward his servant’s mentality because that’s what he’s done for three years.”
Jonke’s teammates were thrilled for him, too.
“He lives and dies UVa basketball,” said junior Will Sherrill, a fellow walk-on who has earned quality playing time this season. “He’s always in the gym working out. I’m so glad that he got an opportunity this year.”
“We’re all so happy for him,” added Virginia sophomore Sylven Landesberg.
Jonke, who still performs some managerial duties — he makes the team’s road trips in that capacity — said his father, John, seemed a bit confused when he called him after the game to tell him that he had played. After all, it was only the third game of the season.
“He said, ‘What? Really?’ He had no idea,” Jonke said.
“But then he was really excited for me. My younger brother was really excited for me, too.”
Ditto for Virginia student Dre Sherrill, a buddy of Jonke’s who is on the school’s track team. Sherrill was out in full support of Jonke at the Rider game. Afterward, he got within earshot of Bennett as the first-year coach was walking off the court.
“He said, ‘Virginia basketball is 1-0 when Tom Jonke is in the game!’” Jonke said. “That was pretty funny.”
Aside from being undersized, Jonke says the biggest challenge of going up against ACC players in practice every day has been their speed and strength. “I feel like I can’t move sometimes on offense because of their defense,” he said. “In high school, you don’t play against guys that are that strong and that quick.”
Jonke laughed when asked how he would have spent his college years if he hadn’t responded to that ad in the Cav Daily his freshman year.
“Who knows? I’d probably be in the Econ Club or something,” he said. “Who knows.”
Clearly, Jonke wouldn’t trade his time with the team for anything, though.
“The coolest part,” he said, “has just been getting to experience what an ACC basketball player gets to experience.”
Jonke isn’t sure what he’ll do after he graduates this spring, but he said he’ll definitely look into coaching. Jonke still keeps in touch with ex-Virginia manager Tim Mein, who is now an assistant coach on former UVa assistant Drew Diener’s staff at Cardinal Stritch, an NAIA university in Milwaukee.
“It could be a fun career,” Jonke said. “It’s an option I want to keep open.”
Surely, it beats doing laundry.