The Utah Jazz added a new fan this week: Miss America.
Abbie Stockard, the Auburn student who won America’s top beauty pageant, is dating Jazz center Walker Kessler.
The third-year big man watched the competition with his head coach Will Hardy. And when Stockard won, his stunned reaction went viral.
“I was freaking out. I couldn’t even talk to the waiter. It was wild,” Kessler said.
Walker met Stockard with the help of his mother, Andrea, and Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl.
The Kesslers were at an Auburn-Alabama game during Kessler’s rookie year and saw one of the dancers on the floor. Andrea Kessler asked Walker if he knew her, which he didn’t.
Three weeks later, Andrea reached out to Pearl to see if he knew. The coach asked around, and a short while later helped Walker make the connection.
“You know how moms are, so she takes a picture of this random girl who’s a dancer on the court, and says, ‘Do you know who this is?’” Walker Kessler said. “I’m like, ‘Mom, you cannot take pictures of random people. Like, that’s weird. That’s just some stalker activities.
“Later, she texts me, ‘Hey, I asked Bruce Pearl, who that girl was. This is her name.’ I was like, ‘Alright, Mom.’ Well, might as well.”
He didn’t realize at the time that Stockard was in beauty pageants, or could eventually become Miss America.
“She spends hours every day [preparing], like she’s got a massive binder with 500 different just random things,” he said.
The Jazz happened to be playing in Orlando last week, the same city where the pageant was being held. Kessler finished the game in time to see the top five awarded and Hardy tagged along.
“He was hilarious,” Kessler said. “When they announced the fourth runner-up, he was like, ‘Oh, we are in it now.’”
Hardy had his own reasons for being invested.
“I was asking a ton of questions,” he said. “I for sure got nervous at the end, because I didn’t know what I was going to say to Walker if she got second, honestly. I did figure out that, apparently, there is something in the world that will make Walker not talk, which was good to find out that it is possible.”
But on the serious side …
“The nature of pro sports is like the business part is talked about a lot. That’s the part that’s very public. The human parts of being on a team are still very real, though,” Hardy said.
And now the Jazz have added Miss America to the fan base. Even Kessler didn’t see that coming.
“Not on my bingo card,” he said. “Incredible. You know, it’s props to her. She deserves it.”
