The scale likes Richter

When Dylan Richter's friends attempt to raid the refrigerator at his house, they're stopped in their tracks by all the photos that wallpaper the outside.

They chronicle Richter's long athletic career -- from grade school on.

They also illustrate a stunning evolution.

"You'd be shocked by what Dylan used to look like," best friend and teammate Kevin Stineman chuckled. "And he laughs about it, too. His mom has every picture from every sport he's ever played hanging on the refrigerator ... baseball, volleyball, everything through the years. Oh my God, Dylan looked completely different when he was younger. I'm talking really different."

Before shedding what he calls his "baby fat" and becoming a chiseled force of muscle in the post for the Stevenson boys basketball team, the 6-foot-3 Richter says he used to be a "big kid." Really big.

And we're not talking tall.

"I was a stocky kid in grade school," Dylan said. "I was a really big boy."

Now, he's just big-time.

Last year, Richter came up "huge" in the Patriots' run downstate, which yielded a fourth-place finish.

Now, with a team-leading 16 points and 8 rebounds per game this season, the senior is a "big" reason Stevenson is sitting atop the North Suburban Conference Lake Division standings. The Patriots are 14-6 overall and 7-2 in the Lake, which is a half-game ahead of second place Zion-Benton (21-3, 6-2).

In Lake action tonight, Stevenson and Zion-Benton are at Lake Forest and Mundelein, respectively.

"Back in the day, I used to have a bowl (hair)cut, too -- a big, strawberry blond bowl cut," laughed Richter, who sports a buzz cut now. "My mom (Laurie) stuck that on me for a few years. My friends who see the pictures laugh and say I should get that haircut now, but there's no way that's happening. That haircut definitely did not help me with my big face and my big features."

Richter says in fifth and sixth grade he was growing out. Not up.

He stayed active through sports, but was always far meatier than almost all of his classmates.

"It wasn't that I was sitting on the couch eating ice cream all day," Richter said. "It was just a stage where I wasn't in balance. But I finally grew out of it.

"I never really went on a diet, or lost a bunch of weight. Actually, I've continued to gain weight as I've gotten older. I just started getting taller."

And better at basketball.

As Richter slimmed down, his game went from solid to spectacular.

"Dylan's always been good at sports," Stineman said. "Even when he was bigger, he could still get around. But since he got to high school he's been working out hard. He's played a ton of basketball and hit the weights hard. He worked his butt off and now, he's a lot more athletic."

Stineman cites Richter's first varsity dunk -- an alley oop against Palatine last year -- as a turning point in his career.

"From that point on, he's been so confident," Stineman said. "He gained like this swagger to him. He wants to get a dunk before every game now. He'll even talk about it and that hypes him up so much."

The hype on Richter continues to grow -- here and elsewhere.

He recently signed on to play college basketball next year about 15 minutes down the road from Stineman, who will be playing at SIU-Edwardsville. Richter was accepted at prestigious Washington University in St. Louis after having been courted by dozens of other Division III schools.

Meanwhile, coaches around the North Suburban Conference can't stop buzzing about him either.

They've seen Richter dunk while getting fouled, like he did against North Chicago this season. They've seen him pound his way inside for three 3-point plays in a row, like he did against Libertyville over Christmas. And they've seen him will his way to four offensive rebounds in one possession, like he did recently against Zion-Benton.

In a nutshell, they've liked what they've seen out of Richter. A lot.

"I had one coach tell me how impressed he was with Dylan and that he couldn't think of anyone in the entire league that he would want to trade him for," Stevenson coach Pat Ambrose said. "And it's true. Dylan is so valuable to us. You take him off our team and we wouldn't be anywhere near where we are today.

"I've had kids dripping with athletic ability before and that's Dylan. He's right up there. He can shoot and do all the basics, but he's also got all the intangibles. Like, he's got a tremendous sense of timing and touch and those are the things that you can't measure, but they're the things that make him so good."

Richter is also good in school. He sports a 4.2 grade point average and got a 31 on the ACT.

Ambrose says Richter is a "golden triangle" kid.

Not only is Richter smart and athletic, he's also a dynamic personality.

"He's just the sweet guy who everyone likes," Stineman said. "And he's funny -- a lot funnier than me. I'll sometimes take cheap shots at people. Not really mean ones. But I might make fun of someone to be funny.

"Dylan doesn't have to do that. He's just funny."

The pranks that involve Richter, and often Stineman, are endless. They've stolen a teammate's shoes before a game. They've called younger players on their cell phones from the back of the bus and pretended to be interested college coaches. They sing and dance in the weight room, and get their teammates to scream things like "lasagna" from the pre-game huddle for no good reason -- other than to be funny.

"When you're the big kid, you have to have a little something extra to keep you going," Richter said. "That's where all my laughing and joking around comes from."

Good for Richter that he's now getting the last laugh.