The Eschmeyers’ basketball fairytale: From Indiana to Peak to Peak

LAFAYETTE — Evan Eschmeyer first spotted Kristina Divjak as she walked off the basketball court at Northwestern University.

He was a 6-foot-11 junior center, she was a freshman shooting guard. He thought she was hot.

“Oh, please! I was wearing a sweatshirt!” she recalled with a hearty laugh.

So began the Eschmeyers’ hoops fairytale.

Evan and Kristina starred at Northwestern, fell in love, got married, had three kids, and extended a lineage of basketball royalty with deep roots in America’s heartland.

The Eschmeyer family — mom, dad, the twins, Alexandra and Elijah, and youngest daughter Mila — recently gathered in the Peak to Peak Charter School gym to talk about basketball, their excitement over the Pumas’ upcoming season and Nikola Jokic.

“We love the ‘Joker,’ ” said 9-year-old Mila.

“We sure do, but it would be annoying for people to watch Nuggets games with us,” Kristina said. “We pause the game, stop the action, and teach the kids. ‘Did you see what Nikola did there?’ ”

“It’s kind of like watching game film,” Elijah chimed in.

Elijah is a 6-foot-7 senior forward with a quick-release jumper. He’s coming off a season in which he averaged 16.1 points and 6.7 rebounds per game for the boys team. In June, he averaged 30 points and 10 rebounds a game at the prestigious Section 7 tournament in Glendale, Ariz. He’s still mulling over possible college offers.

His father, who played four years as a backup center in the NBA for the Nets and the Mavericks, is the head boys coach at Peak to Peak.

“I think this is the best team in school history that we have put together at Peak to Peak,” said Elijah, who’s been slowed by a right knee injury but hopes to be ready for the Pumas’ opener vs. Centaurus on Tuesday. “We lost some seniors, but we have a lot of threats and I think we have a lot of great chemistry. We can do some great things this year.”

Alexandra (everyone calls her Alex) is a 6-5 center/forward who recently signed a letter of intent to Stanford. She can play inside and outside and dribbles like a guard. Last year, Peak to Peak won a school-record 21 games and advanced to the Class 4A Elite Eight behind Alex, who averaged 23.5 points and 13.1 rebounds a game.

Her mom, who led the Big Ten in scoring as a junior, averaging 22.1 points per game, is the assistant girls coach under Joe Howard.

“We could absolutely have a really strong season,” predicted Howard, who’s entering his seventh season at Peak to Peak. “We lost some key seniors and will play some freshmen, but any time Alex is involved, you suspect you will have a very strong team.”

Listening to the Eschmeyer clan talk basketball is akin to watching the movie “Hoosiers.” Their love of the game is pure, and their hoop heritage extends back to Indiana.

Kristina’s dad, Ron Divjak, was a schoolboy star and a legendary coach. He is a three-time inductee into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame — as an individual player, as part of the 1960 East Chicago Washington High School team, and as a coach. He and Kristina are among the few father-daughter combinations that have won state basketball titles in Indiana. Kristina was a starter for the 1994 Lake Central girls state championship team, earning her scholarship to Northwestern.

Alex, Elijah and Mila called Ron “Djedo,” which is Serbian for grandfather. It was Ron who taught the twins to shoot from the outside when they were young kids. When the twins played overheated one-on-one games in their driveway, Djedo was the ref who tried to restore order when tempers flared. When he died in 2022, the Chicago Tribune published a colorful obituary:  “In the late 1950s and ’60s, the boys basketball players at East Chicago Washington were treated like royalty. And no one was bigger than Ron Divjak.”

Evan has his own rich history. He was born and raised in New Knoxville, Ohio, a village of less than 1,000 on the state’s western edge.

“It was a small-town sports mecca, close to Indiana. It’s the Hoosier story. It really is. When we go back to visit the farm, the kids work out at my old high school gym.

“Basketball was a religion there. Everybody idolized Bobby Knight.”

During Evan and Kristina’s time together at Northwestern, they frequently worked out together and competed one-on-one. Their competition was fierce, and in 1999, Kristina got the upper hand. She won the Big Ten scoring title, while Evan lost his title by a tenth of a point.

Evan is the only player in Northwestern men’s basketball history to be named a three-time first-team All-Big Ten selection. He is the Wildcats’ second-leading career scorer with 1,805 points.

The Nets selected him in the second round of the 1999 NBA Draft. After four seasons, chronic knee injuries and five surgeries ended his NBA career. He returned to Northwestern to earn a degree in the university’s elite law-business double-degree program.

He’s worked as an investment banker, but basketball remains his passion. He and Kristina encouraged their children to play, but he never pushed them.

“We always played basketball, but they never forced it on us,” Alex said. “I think it was in middle school that we really got into the game and really took off. But our parents never pushed us, they let us make our choices.”

Peak to Peak, now in its 25th year, has made its academic mark as one of Colorado’s best college preparatory schools. Athletics are now beginning to thrive, and both the boys and girls teams have high expectations for the 2024-25 season.

“This is the closest-knit team I have ever coached,” Evan said. “That’s exciting. We don’t have a lot of banners up there right now, but we have a lot of guys who’ve been in this program for three years and are tight. They are learning to push each other.”

The girls team is built around Alex, who played for Team USA’s under-age 17 women’s team that won a gold medal at the FIBA World Cup in July. She was one of 12 players chosen out of 42 invitees from across the country.

“Alex has an excellent 3-point shot, but she emphasized her inside game in practices leading up to the tryouts because she figured that was her best chance to make the team,” Howard said.

But it’s Alex’s approach to her team that Howard loves most.

“She really cares about her teammates and wants everybody to have success,” he said. “She’s had a lot of personal success and some really big stats games, but she is more interested in team success — making sure everybody has fun and everybody is involved. She’s one of the best teammates I’ve ever coached.”

Alex filled some giant basketball shoes. Her mom was only 6-1, but she was a dynamo and was elected to the Indian Basketball Hall of Fame’s 2020 Silver Anniversary Team. Kristina’s sophomore, junior and senior teams combined for a 70-7 record. She was a Nike All-American, a Parade All-American third-team selection, and was named one of USA Today’s top 25 players.

The Eschmeyer family’s love for each other is evident. They finish each other’s sentences and revel in their shared memories. Alex plays the violin and Elijah plays both the acoustic and electric guitar. He plans to play the national anthem, Jimmi Hendrix, electrified-style, at a school event before his senior year ends.

But it’s basketball that ties the family together.

“We are competitive people and basketball is a really fun, high-tempo thing to be watching together, sitting on the couch,” Kristina said. “The kids grew up doing that, and I grew up doing that with my family. That was part of my growing up in Indiana.

“And basketball’s just so much fun. You can just roll out a ball and play in the driveway. Everybody joins in.”

Including Mila, who honored her big sister by wearing a Stanford Cardinal sweatshirt at the family basketball gathering. Mila is projected to be tall, too, but probably not 6-5 like Alex. Still, Mila’s already conjuring her own hoop dreams.

“I think basketball’s really cool and we just want to keep it going, so yeah, I’m gonna play,” she said.

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