Freshman Lennart Kober playing tennis in Germany as a boy. Courtesy | Lennart Kober

Freshman Lennart Kober does not remember the first time he picked up a tennis racket.

“My mom thought I was too young to start playing at five years old,” Kober said. “But I really wanted to play. I played with her a few times and then started practicing with my club.”

Kober arrived at Hillsdale last fall as one of the three new additions to the Hillsdale men’s tennis roster. Unlike his fellow freshmen, who hail from Georgia and Massachusetts, Kober grew up in Paderborn, Germany.

“As a child, I saw tennis as a fun sport to do,” Kober said. “I was not really that ambitious to play tournaments every weekend.”

Kober competed for his local club, TuRa Elsen, throughout his entire childhood until he reached his final year of high school.

“I transferred to a new club,” Kober said. “When I decided I wanted to play college tennis, that’s when I was like, ‘I have to do more to be able to play in college as well.’ The last year I lived in Germany, I was really playing a lot.”

During his final year in high school, Kober’s mother encouraged him to play college tennis in the U.S.

“She thought it would be a cool opportunity for me just to practice English and study abroad, which would be nice,” Kober said. “The last year, I played a lot and I was wanting to play more. She was just like, ‘I mean, if you want to you can just try it.’ I said ‘okay, why not just try it?’”

Kober said he emailed between 50 and 100 colleges in the U.S., seeking a school with good academics and a strong tennis program that could offer him a scholarship.

“Lennart reached out to me via email with a playing video last January,” head coach Keith Turner said. “My first reaction was that he had solid fundamentals and strong academics. Obviously getting accepted to Hillsdale is very difficult. In my experience, very few international players are able to get accepted here.”

Twenty-one international students currently attend Hillsdale College, nine of whom are varsity athletes, according to Financial Aid Director Rich Moeggenberg. Kober said Hillsdale was the only DII school that gave him a “valid” offer he considered.

“As soon as I saw what they could give me in scholarship and what they could offer me, I was deciding to go to Hillsdale,” Kober said.

Kober said he doesn’t know his own height — he estimates 6 feet, 5 inches — but he knows he is now the tallest player on the Hillsdale tennis team. Turner said Kober’s height caught his eye.

“The video he gave me showed a tall lefty which is a bonus,” Turner said. “He had good strokes. I saw him as a guy who wouldn’t necessarily be a lineup guy right away, but someone who had a lot of potential.”

While he participated in fall tournaments, Kober has yet to compete for the Chargers in conference play. However, Kober said he is honing his craft on the court.

“I’m working on my serves,” Kober said. “I’m tall, so I can have a really good serve because I can basically just slap the ball down. The taller you are, the better the angle to just smack the ball above the net.”

Tennis in Europe is usually played on clay while the sport in the U.S. is played on hard court, asphalt or concrete. Kober said he prefers the American style.

“I like playing on hard court,” Kober said. “We play on clay in Germany. It’s faster here, I like that.”

In addition to harder courts, spectators and fellow players are also noisier in the States, according to Kober.

“It’s louder here,” Kober said. “People cheer a lot and scream. I like that. You can feel the competition.”

Kober and his teammates said he is often loud himself.

“He’s very nervous when he plays tennis, so when he misses a ball he screams in German,” senior Bogdan Janicijevic said. “Our coach doesn’t really like that. Once, Lennart was really mad the entire practice, and coach said ‘please don’t do anything.’ The next second, we hear Lennart throwing his racket into the curtain and we burst out laughing.”

Kober’s move to Hillsdale was not his first trip to the U.S. Five years previously, Kober and his family vacationed out West, where they visited California, Utah, and Arizona.

“I told my parents I would try to live here later,” Kober said. “It definitely changed me and gave me one more reason to come here.”

When he was first making his college decision, Kober said he was looking for a bigger city, but Hillsdale presented him with the best offer.

“It’s kind of boring in Hillsdale,” Kober said. “But I also figured out that you’re spending most of the time on campus. It doesn’t matter as much as I thought.”

Since arriving in Hillsdale, Kober said he has been impressed by the patriotism of the college and the community.

“In Germany, it’s kind of tough to be patriotic after what happened,” Kober said, referring to events during World War II. “It’s just not typical in Germany to, for example, have a national flag in your front yard or to wear clothes with the flag on. The only exception is during soccer tournaments. If you are patriotic, people will quickly think you might be a Nazi or something like that.”

Although Kober studied English for ten years, as is standard for students in Germany, he said he struggled when he first arrived in Hillsdale.

“Being forced to talk – not being able to talk in German – I just had to speak English,” Kober said. “Just listening to it all the time improved my phrases and such.”

Kober said he enjoys fast food in the U.S. Among his favorites are Wendy’s and In-n-Out.

“The food is good,” Kober said. “But I don’t know if Saga really represents American food.”

Janicijevic, who grew up in Serbia before moving to the U.S. for college, said he thinks Kober has handled the trans-Atlantic move well

“I tried to help him out just like international people helped me out when I was a freshman,” Janicijevic said. “It was kind of the same – getting used to everything, having a little bit of trouble with language – but I think he got used to everything fine.”

Janicijevic also said Kober is a huge fan of Legos.

“His room is actually full of Legos,” Janicijevic said. “He has an Eiffel tower made of Legos. We all think it’s really funny. One of his goals is to work in Legoland one day.”

Kober confirmed his love for Legos.

“My room is full of them,” he said.

Besides a future Legoland gig, Kober said he plans to study economics or accounting and return to Germany after college.

“In Germany, we have these leagues where you can play tennis until you’re 60 or 70 years old,” Kober said. “I’m going to do that.”