Bringing college basketball to Norway – Torgrim Sommerfeldt 

Sports is one of the biggest industries in the world. Many prominent and successful sportsmen are known worldwide. Sports is the activity that every person would definitely want to try for different reasons. Although, together with the desire, sports are definitely a very risky industry. It is connected to many injuries and risk factors. There are many things that are not dependent on us while playing sports. Despite being accurate and trying to maintain health, sometimes not everything comes out as we want, independently from us. 

Many sportsmen have closed the door of the sports behind themselves. Unfortunately, many good sportsmen were forced to do so, due to the injuries and bad luck. Believe it or not, intensive exercising and trying to be in the shape all the time is not the only definitive factor for your success in the sports career. It is one of the industries where odds have to be in your favor if you really want to achieve the high peak of your career. 

One of the clear examples for the odds not favoring sportsmen is Torgrim Sommerfeldt. Torgrim is a former Norwegian basketball player, who almost joined the number of sportsmen closing the door behind them, despite many tries and different methods of treatments, his health condition did not let him show his full potential and to reach the summer of the career for quite some time. 

Torgrim was born in 1989 in Norway. He has been playing professional basketball since 2012. But, the road to 2012 was not the easiest to come over. Torgrim has years of treatment, surgeries and therapies behind him. He has faced some of the toughest moments in his life. Fortunately enough he was finally lucky to go back to sports, due to the very hard work and odds favoring him at some point. As simple as it is, better late than never. 

Torgrim is originally from Norway, but unlike many Norwegians he has chosen a different path in sports, not skiing, hockey or any other winter sports, like many others from the Nordic countries, but basketball. It was early in his teenage years when Torgrim decided that he wanted to go to US college and wanted to like in the US, just like his sisters. He wanted to be part of university life and to find his true passion. To be short, Torgrim chased his American dream. He finally reached it, but the value for the dream was quite high. He would either need to find a student loan to cover all tuition and fees or apply for an athletic scholarship.

Torgrim was 10, when he decided to join his sisters, he understood that in case he wanted to go to the US, he had to apply for the scholarship and cover the tuition fee. He applied, and got admitted to Manhattan University. At this point, he had already found his passion and knew what he wanted to do. He had already been part of the Norwegian basketball team and he had shown off. Due to his talent, the height and the passion for the sports, some big hopes were placed on him. Almost everyone around him understood Torgrim’s potential and wanted to see him playing for their teams. 

This was the point of Torgrim’s life when he thought that the dream was only one step apart and it was so close that he could touch it. Though, as the proverb says, the very white line is followed by the black line. The black line in Torgrim’s life began at a quite early age and he had to tackle a lot of problems, and he never bowed down on his way. 

Odds have been switched

Torgrim, now only 30 has already been one of the best Norwegian basketball players to create the history and dedication for the sports. Torgrim has suffered several health problems and has recovered from them in several years. Despite the long period of rehabilitation and treatment he has never lost hope and has always been passionate about going back to sports. 

Torgrim Sommerfeldt has been one of the most prosperous basketball players. Even during his recovery and treatment process many coaches and many teams have been thinking of the best and knew what kind of success he would bring to the team if he joined them at some point. Sommerfeldt is one of the Norwegian sportsmen to have the most amount of bets being placed on the Norwegian online sports betting sites and guess what? The ones who bet on his games were the right ones.

A long path of surgeries 

It was back in 2009 when Sommerfeldt thought that behind the mountain his American dream aligned. We verbally committed to Wake Forest. This happened after him playing in the Nike Hoop Summit in Poland. He even received a scholarship to the ACC school and was supposed to play in two yearly matchups with Duke and North Carolina. Those were two of the top basketball events all across Norway. 

Unfortunately, he was never able to accept the offer and were Wake Forest’s t-shirt as a long series of surgeries and treatments began. The surgeries and the whole treatment process took him three years. Mainly the problem was his knees. At that period he had six surgeries. Four out of six were on the right knee, while two were on the left knee, with the bouts of tendinitis and stress fracture. 

No one knew that the surgeries would take so much time, while everybody expected him to recover quite soon. After two years all of the offers to the teams and the scholarship were canceled as they could not wait for longer, especially with no guarantee of full rehabilitation. 

By the end of the third year, almost all hopes were gone. Torgerim was in great pain. Not only could he not play, but he was not even able to walk properly. You could see all of the pain and all of the pressure he had to take on himself in order to go for a walk and to stand on his feet. It was painful for him to move, while it was painful for others to watch. 

It was back in 2011, when former Manhattan coach Barry Rohrssena and his former assistant Scott Adubato decided to make Torgerim and offer to join Riverdale. They really hoped and expected him to provide even higher scores upon the return to basketball. Unfortunately, even at this point, his luck did not change. Exactly before the match he tore his meniscus, and thus was drafted for the match. 

It seemed like a perfect moment to start the season with Jasper in November of 2012, but he tore his meniscus in his right knee right before the match and stress fractures put him back on the back seats, somewhere on the sidelines. 

There was not much left from the hope. Tpregrim, his family and his coach have addressed every measure that was known to them in order at least somehow recover from the situation, but nothing really seemed to work. They have talked with every doctor and addressed every method of treatment. Everything worked for some time, but this time was not enough for Torgerim to go back to big sports. 

The last and the first spot

The last spot was the stem cell treatment. At that time, it was a risky method and no one really could guarantee that it would work. Maybe at that point, nothing could go more wrong, as they have used every other method. The most the could have happened was that stem cells would not work either. 

The procedure includes taking a very tiny part of the body fat and generating stem cells from your own fat, after that injecting them into the damaged area and waiting for the recovery of the tissue. Maddalo was the one to contact Doctor Steven Victor. Steven worked in the Lenox Hill Hospital. He is the CEO of Intellicell BioScience Inc, in New York City. he was the one responsible for the stem cell treatment method. 

Torgrim is not the only sportsman who had a similar procedure. Former Yankees pitcher, Bartolo Colon also underwent a similar procedure in 2011. It was not completely the same, but quite similar to the fat cell separation and transformation. 

Very surprisingly the procedure worked. Torgrim was making progress with the dwarf steps, but the progress was visible. One by one he was finally returning to his old life and making progress with his knees. The stem cells were exactly the right treatment, which opened doors to his basketball career once again. 

According to Sommerfeldt, he finally started thinking that the chances might not have been lost and that he could still overtake Manhattan and return his old fame. He thought that the very long treatment period and his suffering were for a reason and he had to fulfill his desire and follow the dream he has been chasing for his whole life. 

Torgrim has a position as the shooting Guard in Manhattan college and played for the Centrum Tigers for two seasons. He has been playing for Baerum for the past season, scoring 35 points. In the whole history of basketball, he has been one of the finger-pointing persons and his passion and dedication for the sports is incredible. Norwegian youth, especially the ones who are involved in sports mostly names Torgrim as their role model and point fingers while talking about the love and passion towards the sports. Indeed he is a very vivid example of how not to give up, even when the whole world conspires against you.