When Parker Bjorklund walked off the court after a crushing 69-53 defeat to Robbinsdale Cooper High School during the 2017-18 Chaska boys’ basketball season, he had his mind made up. He was done with the game of basketball.

Despite scoring an impressive 24 points and 15 rebounds in that final game of his senior season, Bjorklund had no plans to continue playing at the college level.

“There’d be a few D-III coaches coming to my games, and literally right after the game, I’d go straight to the locker room, because I didn’t even want to talk to the coaches because I had no interest,” Bjorklund said.

Bjorklund’s thoughts were on businesses he had started years earlier. Back in middle school, Bjorklund, along with his brothers Gavin and Carter, had started a network of parody social media accounts that had accumulated a large following.

“It came to the point where, you know, my brother’s like, ‘Yeah you can, at this point, start making money. You have enough eyes in front of you that people would pay you to, you know, promote their business, website, brand, app, pretty much anything like that,’” Bjorklund said.

What started as a fun hobby among brothers kickstarted a passion in Bjorklund.

“The goal wasn’t to make money, it was honestly just having fun with posting content,” Bjorklund said. “I just had so much fun with the fact of just like growing an account and just building it and you know, seeing like the engagements continue to build and build,” Bjorklund said.

It was that entrepreneurial spirit and convenient geography that led Bjorklund to St. Thomas.

“I decided to choose St. Thomas because it was close to home, had a good business school, it just seemed like the easiest kind of route to go,” Bjorklund said.

For an entire year, Bjorklund effectively didn’t touch a basketball, until Connor Souba — a friend and former teammate — invited him to join his intramural team in the Spring of 2020.

Souba grew up in Chaska alongside Bjorklund, playing youth basketball together, and originally came to St. Thomas to play football. While he never ended up on the team, he made connections with football players and they started an intramural team together, the “Beesechurgers.”

Souba recruited his hometown friend and it was soon obvious that Bjorklund was a tier above his competition, which irked some opponents.

“I remember distinctly, this one game. We were just dominating this team and Parker probably had like eight dunks this one game,” Souba said. “And by the end of it, they were like making sarcastic comments like, ‘We get it, you can dunk,’ trying to demean him because they were demoralized after he just had dominated them all game.”

The Beesechurgers went 4-2 before the spring intramural season was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Souba used to play pickup with Bjorklund too and was outmatched.

“We used to go just play one-on-one and stuff and I could barely stand a chance. You can’t play ‘make-it take-it’ because I would never touch the ball,” Souba said.

Souba described Bjorklund as “uber-athletic” when they played together. Bjorklund heard similar compliments from his opponents as well.

“Pretty much everyone was in my ears like, ‘Why don’t you play here? Like you should try out for the team,’” Bjorklund said.

These remarks he heard while playing in the fieldhouse were the sparks that rekindled Bjorklund’s passion for basketball. Then, the school year came to a screeching halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While stuck at home, he reached out to Josh Rodenbiker, the current director of basketball operations, who was an assistant coach at the time.

“I started off slow,” Bjorklund said. “I was like, ‘Are there any open gyms that I can come to?’ You know, showing interest but not being like, ‘Can I try out for the team?’.”

Bjorklund said people cast doubts on his ability to play college basketball, especially after being away from the game for so long.

“People were saying, ‘What are you doing? You haven’t even played in two years, like what do you possibly think?’ And I was like, ‘It doesn’t hurt to just give it a shot,” Bjorklund said.

The timing was in Bjorklund’s favor as St. Thomas was eliminating its junior varsity team, and holding tryouts to finalize its roster moving forward. Bjorklund was able to find his way into the tryouts and caught coach Johnny Tauer’s eye.

“I was really raw, wasn’t that great, but the coaches saw some potential in me so they just kind of kept asking me back,” Bjorklund said.

Souba had seen first-hand just how great Bjorklund could be and said he didn’t doubt that Bjorklund could play at the collegiate level.

“I had no doubt. The team was good obviously, but I was pretty confident,” Souba said.

 

Bjorklund experienced another stroke of luck in terms of timing when St. Thomas was forcibly removed from the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. After weighing its options, the university made the monumental transition to Division I, and basketball with most other sports, joined the Summit League.

Now Bjorklund, who had just got back into organized basketball with a shortened D-III season, would be regularly matched up with NCAA tournament frequent visitors and disruptors like North Dakota State, South Dakota State and Oral Roberts.

In 2021-22, St. Thomas’ first Division I season, Bjorklund averaged 12.6 points and 6.3 rebounds, including a 26-point performance against Kansas City. In his second, he scored 15.1 points and grabbed 5.5 rebounds per game, earning him a spot on the All-Summit League second team.

Bjorklund was now facing a level of competition he never even imagined. He recalls a matchup during the 2022-23 season that all of social media got to see. Grant Nelson, now a senior forward at Alabama, spun past and dunked on Bjorklund. That clip made it to Nelson’s highlight mixtape that was viewed 4.8 million times on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“He’s one of the dudes you know, we’ve gone against Creighton, Marquette, it’s not just him. There’s a lot of dudes that are crazy athletes you go against but it’s been fun,” Bjorklund said.

Now in his second grad year and third season of Division I basketball, he’s been named to the all-conference second team again after averaging 13.5 points on 48.1% shooting and 4.7 rebounds.

After a commanding 85-63 win over Oral Roberts, in which Bjorklund had 19 points, 7 rebounds and four assists, Tauer reflected on how far he’s come as a basketball player.

“He’s scoring about the same number of points, maybe even slightly less than he did last year, yet I think he is so improved in every other area of the game that doesn’t show up in the stat sheet,” Tauer said.

For Bjorklund, it won’t be any of those season averages or career highs that stick with him the longest when he reflects on his path.

“It’s now what you do and the accolades you get, but the actual journey itself and there’s bumps in the roads and it’s just embracing those bumps,” Bjorklund said.

“I’d say the end of this year, I’ve reflected and it’s been a lot more surreal than it was in the midst of it,” Bjorklund said.

Joining him in St. Thomas’ starting lineup are two other grad students, forward Brooks Allen and guard Raheem Anthony. Allen stayed the course with the Tommies through the Division I transfer, and Anthony joined them this season after being a standout for Division III St. Mary’s University in Winona, Minnesota.

“(Tauer) is a super smart coach along with all the other coaching staff. So regardless of what level you’re at, there’s talent and you know he can find that talent for sure,” Bjorklund said.

Allen counts himself and his teammates as lucky for having Tauer navigating the program through these unprecedented past couple seasons.

“We’re all so super grateful for our coaches just for being so open-minded. I think a lot of other Division I coaches would see a guy like Parker who played intramurals ask if he could try out for the team … and they’d probably be like, ‘I don’t know, probably not,’” Allen said.

Bjorklund’s career at St. Thomas came to an end on Monday, March 11 after a 59-49 loss to South Dakota State in the Summit League semifinals. In the postgame press conference, he shared advice for future Tommies.

“Believe in yourself, work hard every day, stack those days. There’ll be days where you know, you might not want to get up and do it, but I hope the younger guys see what us seniors did was just fight and work hard every day,” Bjorklund said.

Tauer looked back on Bjorklund and his teammates’ journey after the postseason loss.

“They epitomize the values of our culture, of our university and they are also unbelievable role models for younger guys in our program,” Tauer said.

Bjorklund finished with 1,210 career points, No. 26 in program history, and nine behind Tauer’s collegiate career. He also sits three rebounds behind Tauer, with 479.

After actively avoiding any notion of basketball, six years later, Bjorklund could see himself continuing to play basketball after college and is “definitely interested” in playing professionally overseas.

Bjorklund says he’s not aware of anyone with a similar story to his.

“I haven’t heard of anyone taking a few years off and then wanting to join back, so it’s definitely weird,” Bjorklund said with a shrug. “But that’s what I did.”

Adam Mueller can be reached at muel7541@stthomas.edu.