As Gavin Kensmil worked his way toward a breakthrough of a basketball season, he occasionally spied the video crew on his junior college campus. They showed up at a few of his games. That was kind of cool, although Kensmil also knew they weren't there for him. They were there to film his cheerleading team, which Kensmil found interesting. He'd met some of the subjects of the future documentary, remembered them from the second summer session, and they seemed nice enough. But he didn't quite get the fuss.
A year later, "Cheer," a six-part documentary on Netflix, has turned the Navarro College cheerleading team into social media stars, Academy Awards red-carpet hosts, New York Fashion Show attendees, "Today" show guests and "Ellen" visitors. The Navarro College Cheer Instagram account counts 505,000 followers and the #navarrocheer hashtag on TikTok includes 49.8 million views. News that Lexi Brumback, who had been kicked off the squad at season's end for possession of illegal substances, was returning to the team for the not yet confirmed Season 2, merited a sit-down interview on "Entertainment Tonight," and the New Yorker and The Atlantic have weighed in on both "Cheer" and the cheerleading phenomena.
Of course, long before Netflix found the team, it was doing just fine. It had won 13 national championships prior to the 2019 season that Netflix chronicled, and five times captured the grand national championship, which means the tiny junior college in Corsicana, Texas, enrollment 9,000, bested all comers, including Division I teams. But there is nothing like the one-two punch of bright lights and seizing the moment, the series showcasing the squad's skills, and its success cementing their legitimacy. (Spoiler: They win the 2019 title.) "As good as they are, I'm not sure anyone was really aware of how good,'' Kensmil says. "Obviously now everyone knows.''
Kensmil could say the same about himself and his current team. After one season at Navarro, Kensmil transferred to Stephen F. Austin, where he is the starting big man on a team that is 26-3, hasn't lost since Jan. 8 and beat Duke at Duke. But like the cheerleaders, the Lumberjacks live in the shadows, succeeding in the low-major world of the Southland Conference, where top-25 votes are impossible to earn and at-large bids improbable to receive. Their chance comes now, in March, when the bright lights of the NCAA Tournament give Stephen F. Austin a chance to shine. "After we beat Duke, I was watching "First Take." It's one of my favorite shows, and Stephen A. Smith was like, Stephen F. Austin? Who are they?'' Kensmil recalls. "Bro, this is what we're up against, and this is when we can show people who we are.''
For most of his childhood, Kensmil fancied himself a soccer player. "It was the love of my life,'' he says. This isn't unusual in Suriname; the sport is king in the small South American country. But at the age of 11, a growth spurt turned the once-fluid soccer player into a gangly mess, his big feet and big build earning him the ridicule of his more agile teammates. Kensmil's worried mother insisted he try something different, so she parked her son in a basketball gym where his size was an advantage. The sport suited him better, but it wasn't going to lead Kensmil anywhere, at least not if he stayed in Suriname. So at the age of 15 he left home, beginning a circuitous route that would include three countries, more than 10,000 miles of travel and enough stops and starts to extinguish the dreams of most people.
Kensmil spent three years in the Canary Islands, playing for the Canarias Basketball Academy, but unable to turn the heads of college coaches, he crisscrossed the North Atlantic to Trinidad for an exposure camp with Caribbean Hoops. That led to what Kensmil thought was his ticket, a chance to play for Division I Iona in 2017-18.
Play, however, turned out to be a subjective term. Kensmil logged just 4.6 minutes per game, and unhappy with his limited role, he left Iona for Navarro. "I've been rejected lots of times,'' Kensmil says. "Multiple times, I could have quit but it's like a relationship. Somedays, it's uh-uh, I don't feel this anymore. You have to do it for bigger reasons than yourself. I always believed in myself, and bet on myself every time. I believed I could.''
There is no better explanation for the jump Kensmil made from Iona to Navarro than that. He had more of an opportunity and more playing time, of course, but still the improvement had to come from somewhere deeper than just more touches, because the same player who averaged but 1.1 points and 1.0 rebounds per game at Iona led the Bulldogs in scoring, rebounding and field goal percentage, averaging 14.5 points, 6.5 boards and shooting 69 percent from the floor. Twice he scored 30 points, and five times he posted a double-double. At 6-7, 255 pounds and with two years of eligibility left, the kid who couldn't get a whiff of interest years earlier was more than an intriguing prospect. "I want to help my mother and my sister,'' Kensmil says of his motivation. "And I just believed if you worked at something, you eventually get rewarded.''
Keller is trying to guide SFA to the NCAA Tournament for the second time in four seasons.
It's a 125-mile drive from Nacogdoches to Corsicana, and Kyle Keller happily made the trip to check out Kensmil. Keller is, by any definition, an old-school basketball lifer. He came up in the profession the long way, climbing through his own tenure at the juco level before landing with Eddie Sutton at Oklahoma State. His time there was marked by a tragic twist of fate, Keller opting at the last minute not to fly with the Cowboys home from a game at Colorado in January 2001, giving up the seat to his cousin. Nate Fleming, along with nine other staffers, were killed when the plane crashed. Keller remained in Stillwater when Sean Sutton took over, moving on to Kansas to work with Bill Self after Sutton was let go. Three years later he joined Billy Kennedy at Texas A&M, and when Brad Underwood left Stephen F. Austin for Oklahoma State in 2016, he finally got his first swing at a D-1 head gig. He was 48 years old.
From his own run up the ranks, Keller understood that SFA couldn't be built or maintained like programs at his more glamorous stops, at least not if the Lumberjacks wanted to be successful. He needed older guys to complement the ones he wanted to grow on his own, and his current roster, with six junior college transfers and a former D-2 player, exemplifies his plan. One of his assistants, Jeremy Cox, saw Kensmil first, comparing him to T.J. Holyfield, who transferred two years earlier from SFA to Texas Tech. "Smart defender, commands the low post, really good hands,'' Keller says. "He was the perfect high-low player for us.''
Except Kensmil wasn't sold. He turned Keller down three times, hoping he could find a more high-profile landing spot. "Eventually I did my research and realized that it's a low-major conference but a really good mid-major team,'' Kensmil says. And the player who spent so much of his career waiting to be noticed also realized that, like Navarro's cheerleading team, it wasn't about where he played, but what he did with the chance.
On the Friday after Thanksgiving, Keller called his seniors together before a pre-practice meeting. He explained that the Lumberjacks' future essentially was in their hands, that they would dictate how the season played out. Three days earlier, Stephen F. Austin pulled off arguably the most stunning upset in decades, becoming the first non-ACC team in 20 years to beat Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium. The Lumberjacks suddenly went from nowhere to everywhere. Nate Bain, who scored the buzzer-beating layup in overtime, saw a dormant GoFundMe created for his family after it lost everything in Hurricane Dorian, surge with donations, and the players' social media requests dinged endlessly on the phones.
But on that Friday morning, Keller could see his players were exhausted, emotionally drained and mentally spent. When the meeting ended, he wasn't entirely sure what to expect in the Lumberjacks' next game.
They beat Arkansas State by 17. "We took 16 charges in that game,'' Keller says. "That's who we are. We definitely gained a lot of confidence in beating Duke, but that game against Arkansas State, that propelled us to where we are.'' Kensmil figures largely in that identity. Keller says he is "our Doke,'' likening Kensmil's importance to that of Udoka Azubuike at Kansas. Constantly drawing extra attention in the low post, Kensmil is able to kick the ball to open shooters if he can't win on the blocks. He admits the extra attention took some getting used to, especially since it has meant some of his numbers (11.6 points and 6.8 boards) are slightly less gaudy than they were at Navarro, though his assists (1.9) are up. "Coach always tells us there are no jealous stars,'' Kensmil says. "It's really easy to get caught up in the
I'm a scorer, but it takes really mature players to understand what it takes to win. Winning is our priority, so you put your egos aside.''
Neither Kensmil nor Keller, however, is kidding himself. What Stephen F. Austin has done this season, while special, will equate to shouting into the wind if it doesn't win the Southland Conference tournament. (As the No. 1 seed, SFA will have to win two games to secure the automatic bid.)
Although our Ken Pomeroy recently built a strong case for an at-large bid for the Lumberjacks, they know that's not likely. "We don't even talk about it,'' says Keller. "All of this is null and void if we don't make the NCAA Tournament.''
That, Kensmil thinks, sounds an awful lot like what the Navarro cheerleading team went through in "Cheer." The show's tension centered on the squad trying to master an insanely intricate and dangerous pyramid required to win yet another national title. The girls failed in practice repeatedly but when the pressure was on, they hit the routine to near perfection. "Beating Duke, I mean, of course that was a big deal for us. We're a bunch of junior college guys,'' Kensmil says. "But right now, it's do or die. That win doesn't matter. Our record doesn't matter. Nothing else matters. We know we're a good team. We just have to do it.''
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