Argus Leader boys basketball POY: How Jacoby Mehrman's sacrifice and dedication fueled his basketball dream

In 2018, Fortnite had an iron grasp on millions of people across the world. The free-to-play third-person shooter game’s popularity had skyrocketed since its inception in August 2017.

According to Statista, Fortnite had amassed over 200 million users by November 2018.

Jacoby Mehrman, then in sixth grade, wasn’t immune to the Fortnite craze. He first started playing Fortnite on a trip with the Tryon brothers to a basketball tournament in Omaha, Nebraska. Tytan Tryon had a TV in the back of the car, which is where Mehrman started playing.

He kept playing throughout the summer, but once October rolled around he had an announcement for his parents.

"'I’m done playing Fortnite,’” Mason Mehrman remembers Jacoby Mehrman saying.

“He was like, almost emotional,” Mason Mehrman recalled between laughs. “I was like ‘Yay!,’ because I was always like 'why are you on that stupid game?’”

Mehrman made the difficult decision to uninstall the game in seventh grade at the peak of its popularity, while his peers continued to play, because as much as he might have enjoyed it, it was ultimately a waste of his time. The time he was spending on the game was time he could’ve spent in the gym, working towards his basketball dreams.

“That's how he's always been,” Jacoby’s mom Theresa said. “Just as a kid, he knows what he has to do to get where he wants to go.”

That story comes as no surprise to those who know the 2023-24 Argus Leader Boys Basketball Player of the Year. His discipline and dedication to his basketball dream has been at the forefront of who he is.

When Mehrman was eight years old, his mom, Theresa Mehrman, got him involved in different basketball camps around the area. By the time he was 12, he was going through individual workouts with specific skills coaches. And When Mehrman was in fourth, fifth and sixth grade he asked his grandparents to gift him certificates for workouts for Christmas.

“I just, I love working out and trying to get better, so much,” Mehrman said. “And I just thought that was better than any toy. I just had a lot of fun doing it, so, the more I could do it, I was happy with it.”

Theresa Mehrman would love to take credit for his discipline and dedication, but “it’s in his DNA. It’s just how he’s built,” she admits.

“It gets to a point where sometimes we're like, ‘hey, go do stuff,’” Mason Mehrman said.

But Merhman says that level of sacrifice – deleting Fortnite and prioritizing practicing basketball over hanging out with friends – is one of the things that’s separated him.

Although his dad played football at Augustana, basketball has always been Mason Mehrman’s favorite sport, so Mehrman grew up watching every big NBA and college game, envisioning himself as the game’s protagonist.

“I just loved basketball so it was fun for me to try to see how good I could get,” Jacoby Mehrman said. “I wanted to see myself there someday … it motivated me and like I wanted that to be me someday. I wanted to play college basketball. I knew that from a pretty young age. So I just always had that in mind, and I wanted to just be the best.”

Mehrman will play for the University of Sioux Falls next season.

Leading by example

Every school day from September through March, through the heat of summer and the literal freezing cold conditions of winter, Jacoby Mehrman woke up and drove to Harrisburg High School well before the school day started to get an extra workout in.

It became part of his everyday routine this season. Wake up, get to the school gym at 6:15 or 6:30 and get on the shooting machine.

“I don't know if we had a kid (who) comes in every morning,” Harrisburg boys basketball coach Scott Langerock said. “He never misses a workout, (and) I know there's a lot of kids that don't miss workouts, but the thing that sets him apart is his workouts are purposeful.”

“He's got a goal every workout,” Langerock continued. “He's going to make X amount of shots. He's going to make X amount of those kinds of shots. He thinks about that.”

Langerock recalled at least four times in his career that Mehrman stayed after a game to work on his shot. After a long trip back home from a road game, all the other players went to their cars to drive home because it was 11 p.m., but Mehrman went back to the gym to get more shots up.

“He likes shooting with his friends and playing with his friends and all that,” Langerock said. “But he also knows that if he wants to separate himself, he has to put in the extra work on his own.”

Mehrman’s work ethic set the tone for the 2023-24 Tigers basketball team, a squad that entered the season with incredibly high expectations.

One of the team’s biggest challenges this season was staying present at the moment through the dog days of the season. They couldn’t skip steps in the process, skip to the state tournament in March during the dreary months of December and January.

Luckily, Langerock said he didn’t have to bust anyone’s chops too hard, mainly because he had Mehrman to set the standard for effort in practice. If the team needed to be locked in and communicate better on defense, Mehrman’s voice would be the loudest one in the gym. If the focus was on rebounding, he would go down and grab three straight rebounds off the glass.

The Tigers dropped regular season games to Sioux Falls Roosevelt and Aberdeen Central but finished the regular season with an impressive 17-3 record, and even defeated Mitchell 62-53 on Jan. 2.

"That’s probably one of the things we’re most proud of.”

Harrisburg’s semifinal matchup against the Lynx was as physical as it gets. Both teams were whistled for a plethora of fouls and had key players in foul trouble.

Tigers junior point guard Braeden Feeldy broke his wrist and just before halftime Mehrman came off a ball screen and banged knees with another player.

His knee swelled up quickly, limiting his mobility for the rest of the game but he stayed on the court, gritting his teeth and grinding his way through the final two quarters.

“If you know me, you know, I'm probably not going to let anything keep me off the court,” Mehrman said. “We talked with the trainer, and he was saying if you can't move, we're not going to let you play. So, just kind of (tried) to tough it out and I wasn't going to let him tell me I couldn't play.”

Brandon Valley made big plays down the stretch to defeat Harrisburg 61-52.

The next day Harrisburg faced Washington in the third-place game and while some, including Mehrman, doubted whether he would be able to play, ultimately he suited up and took the floor for his team.

“That's probably one of the things that we're most proud of,” Mason Mehrman said. “Because he knew he couldn't play like he wanted to, but he still went out and played for his teammates.”

Running on fumes and pure passion, the Tigers defeated the Warriors to place third in another game that went down to the wire, 50-48.

Mehrman ended his career as one of the most decorated scorers in South Dakota high school basketball history. His 1,209 points ranks 17th all-time in Class AA history and seventh in Harrisburg history.

“He raised the expectation as an individual player of the commitment and the sacrifice and the work ethic, and probably more than anything, that competitiveness that it takes to be great,” Langerock said.

Jonathan Fernandez covers high school and college sports for the Argus Leader. Contact him at jfernandez1@argusleader.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JFERN31

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Jacoby Mehrman named Argus Leader boys basketball Player of the Year