A favorite son of Aurora has a day
At the Oct. 14 Aurora City Council meeting, Mayor John Laesch proclaimed Kenny Battle Day in Aurora every Oct. 10, the birthday of the former West Aurora basketball star.
Laesch, a Newark native who “could barely get above the rim,” clearly enjoyed saluting the “King of the 360s,” as in dunks.
“It’s a great honor,” said Battle, 61, in a Wednesday phone call.
“It’s an honor that showcased all the hard work that I’ve done not only in Aurora but around the state as well as around country. From someone who represented Aurora’s top tier from the beginning till now,” he said.
The No. 27 overall pick by the Detroit Pistons in the 1989 NBA Draft but immediately traded to the Phoenix Suns, the 6-foot-6 Battle spent four seasons in the NBA. He displayed his 360 in the 1990 Slam Dunk Contest.
Named to the University of Illinois’ Illini All-Century Team in 2005 and inducted into Illinois’ Hall of Fame in 2023, Battle helped lead the “Flyin’ Illini” to the 1989 Final Four. The Kenny Battle Inspirational Award is given to the Illini player who shows the most hustle and determination.
Battle scored 1,112 points in two seasons for the Illini after scoring 1,072 points in two seasons at Northern Illinois University. The Huskies also named Battle all-century and put him into its hall of fame.
An All-American his senior year at West Aurora, the two time Upstate Eight Conference MVP earned induction into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association hall both as a player (1996) and as a member of the 1989 Illinois team (2016).
Averaging a double-double in 1983-84 for West Aurora, Battle led all scorers in the 1984 finals tournament. The IBCA recalls he made the winning free throw in a 55-54 win over St. Joseph in the Class AA third-place game.
“My highlight was when coach Gordie Kerkman gave me the opportunity to join the varsity as a sophomore,” Battle said.
He was surprised it took this long to earn some sort of salute from the city, but is satisfied and proud now that it’s happened.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “Good things come to those who wait.”
Grace on wheels
Glen Ellyn’s Elizabeth Boguslavsky started skating at 5, when her mother gave her and her twin sister, Annie, inline skates so they could all roll around the park.
The girls haven’t stopped. Moving to conventional skates, roller skating has become “a big part of my identity,” Liza Boguslavsky said.
“I feel like I’ve met so many people through skating,” the 2025 Glenbard South graduate said.
She’ll join three of them at the 2025 Artistic Skating World Championships in Beijing.
Qualifying this July as a Senior Quartet at the USA Roller Sports 2025 Indoor National Championships in Reno, Nev., Boguslavsky, Caroline Langer of Villa Park, Aurora’s Isabella Poppe, and Samantha Krusza will compete in the world competition Oct. 30 in China.
Annie Boguslavky usually is part of this group, which teamed up four years ago at since-closed Lombard Roller Rink. An injury sidelined her and launched the older, more experienced Krusza into the rotation.
Krusza skated out of Lynwood Skating Club near the Indiana border. They now train at Funway in Batavia.
This will be the group’s fourth straight world championship appearance. They debuted in Argentina in 2022 followed by competitions in Columbia and Italy, where Liza Boguslavsky also competed in Junior Solo Dance.
“It’s not like we were on the podium,” she said, “but it was cool to be there.”
Having fallen in love with roller skating, Boguslavsky never connected with ice skating in the few times she tried it. On roller skates, friction on wood or concrete makes jumps, spins and stops an unusual challenge.
“It’s definitely an interesting sport … You have to have a different style of performance to work with the floor,” Boguslavsky said.
Neither parent — father, Yuriy, from Moldova, and mother, Yelena, from Belarus — had a skating background. At first, starting with those trips around the park, “it was really not a serious thing at all,” Liza Boguslavsky said.
It’s certainly become one.
“I feel like roller skating has been definitely the biggest experience of my life,” she said.
“Being a skater, being an athlete, just taught me how to work hard in general, across all aspects, whether academically or in the sport.”
doberhelman@dailyherald.com