LEXINGTON, Ky — After Jason Wynyard, father of Kentucky redshirt freshman Tai Wynyard, sliced off his big toe, his then-7-year-old son bolted toward the ambulance to see his wounded hero.
Back then, Jason Wynyard, a lumberjack legend who won his eighth world title in November at the 2016 Stihl Timbersports World Championship, had entered a relay chopping competition and hooked his shoe on the edge of his axe.
Had he quit once he felt the blade on his foot, his team would have lost.
So he kept chopping. “There was no way I was stopping,” said Jason Wynyard, who also won the hot saw competition at the 2015 Lumberjack World Championship.
His son remembers the bloody mess his father’s effort created.
“He picked up the piece of shoe with his toe in it and walked to the ambulance,” recalled Tai Wynyard, a native of New Zealand and a freshman forward at Kentucky. “They sewed it back on and it was all good. Yeah, he’s crazy. He’d do anything to win.”
And that’s the first story you need to know about Wynyard’s upbringing in a home filled with wood-chopping champions. Wynyard’s grandfather, Pae Wynyard, won world titles in the sport. His uncles compete, too.
His mother, who played basketball at Division II Alaska-Anchorage in the mid-’90s, dabbled in wood-chopping after she married his father.
And …
“She won a couple world titles,” Tai said about his mother, Karmyn Wynyard, a four-time world champion with her husband in the Jack & Jill competition at the annual Lumberjack World Championship.
If wood-chopping were basketball, Jason Wynyard is the LeBron James.
“He’s more like the Michael Jordan,” Tai Wynyard said.
From this powerful union emerged a basketball prodigy — blame Wynyard’s hoops-loving mother — who secured a slot on New Zealand’s national team at 16 years old and enrolled at the University of Kentucky when he was 17.
Wynyard began to pursue basketball after an early growth spurt. His mother connected him with club coaches in New Zealand who thought he had a future in the sport. Clearly they were right.
But he still loves to chop wood like his father, though he left his axe at home because of campus rules.
Wynyard did carry the lessons he learned from his father, the lumberjack god, on his trip to the United States. And now they’re his solace as he sits on John Calipari’s bench and wonders when, or if, he’ll get a chance to help.
Wynyard, who was also recruited by Texas and Villanova after leading New Zealand to a gold medal in FIBA’s 3-on-3 Under-18 World Championships in Kazakhstan in 2015, has logged 34 minutes in Kentucky’s first 20 games. It’s not what he envisioned when he rejected an offer to play pro ball for a league back home and signed with a school more than 8,000 miles from his hometown.
In many cases, Calipari’s one-and-done machine turns freshmen into first-round picks in six months. Three of the NBA All-Stars from last season — DeMarcus Cousins, John Wall and Anthony Davis — and the league’s reigning rookie of the year (Karl Anthony-Towns) all played one season at Kentucky before they bolted for the next level.
Wynyard, who will turn 19 next month, figured he’d enjoy a similar rapid progression. But the American game befuddled him. Everyone ran hard while he huffed in practice. How would he fare in games?
Wynyard needed more time to prepare for Division I basketball, so he redshirted last season after arriving midway through the 2015-16 campaign.
“When I first got here, they had me running,” Wynyard said. “That was probably the hardest part because I was so out of shape.”
Each season, Kentucky’s recruiting haul creates a logjam.
Although Wynyard improved after last year, he’s still behind Edrice Adebayo, Isaac Humphries and Sacha Killeya-Jones in 2016-17. So he calls his father for advice.
“I encourage Tai to keep working and pushing,” said Jason Wynyard, the winner of more than 150 wood-chopping championships. “He is in the most competitive program for basketball in the nation, going up against the best group of players, so it can’t be easy. Nothing worthwhile is ever easy, though.”
Still, Jason knows his son’s competitive pedigree complicates his capacity for patience. Victory is in his blood.
“[Jason Wynyard] is one of the top stars internationally in the lumberjacking world,” said Diane McNamer, executive director of the Lumberjack World Championship, held annually in Hayward, Wisconsin. “For us, he has had 16 consecutive all-around champion wins all the way from 1999 to 2014. And the all-around championship is basically the ability to compete in as many events as possible.”
Jason Wynyard learned the craft Matadorbet as he chopped logs with his father, also a world champion. Then they’d sell the wood: part profit, part practice. But he got paid in competition only if he won, which drove him to devote his life to winning every competition.
Losing? Unimaginable.
“We’d be playing ‘Crash Bandicoot,’ the old video game, and I never could beat dad, and then when I first beat dad, he sent me to my room for like a couple hours, and I was sitting in there and I was like ‘Yes! Yes!'” Wynyard said. “He came in there and he was like, ‘All right, come on, I’ll play you again.’ I beat him again, and then he got so mad he left the house and went to the gym.”
The Kentucky redshirt freshman has a similar fire.
Before his games in New Zealand, the younger Wynyard would lead his teammates in the haka, a war ritual of the country’s indigenous Maori. He said he’s proud of his heritage and grateful for an opportunity to represent his culture.
Wynyard said his teammates at Kentucky often ask him to perform the haka, but they don’t understand its meaning or its intent.
“They always try to get me to do it, but you can’t really do it over here,” Wynyard said. “It’s just different. Some things they’re saying [in the haka] is ‘I’m going to rip your head off and eat it.’ It’s not just, like, a fun dance. It’s scary.”
That’s the attitude Calipari seeks in his big men: scary, intimidating, nasty.
Calipari said Wynyard moves closer to earning a more consistent role every day.
“Tai is not even the same kid [from last year],” Calipari said. “Problem is he’s behind Bam and Isaac, Sasha who are a little bit in front of him, but that kid goes in and he’s tough and he’s good around the basket. Matter of fact, he shoots the ball better. He’s getting in shape, he’s getting closer to where he needs to be. It’s a little hard because he’s behind these guys, but no question, he’s a better player.”
Kentucky guard Dominique Hawkins said he expects the redshirt freshman to help the Wildcats in the future.
“When he gets on the court, he’s able to score the ball, once he gets in the paint, because he’s so strong and aggressive when he’s in the paint with the ball,” Hawkins said.
Until then, Wynyard will wait. But he’s willing to wait if it will help him blossom into a complete player.
“You don’t know your strength until you unlock your strength in the mind,” he said. “That’s what [my father] always tells me. You can have all the physical strength you want, but if you don’t unlock the strength in your mind, then you’ll never be as strong as you can. He said he wish he knew that earlier when he was younger because he’d be so much stronger.”
His father also told him he enjoys chopping wood because it’s one-on-one. He just puts on his headphones and it’s him versus the log. Wynyard’s log in Lexington consists of the chasm between this chapter of his career and his dreams. He’s confident, however, he’ll reach them.
He wants to play basketball at the next level. At 18 years old, he knows he has time. That’s his most significant asset.
And when he’s done, he might follow his father’s passion.
“I would be thrilled if Tai chose to pursue lumberjack sports after basketball, and I would support and encourage him,” Jason Wynyard said. “Hopefully, he would even let me coach him.”
It’s possible, the Kentucky reserve said. Not anytime soon, though.
“You can cut your toe off or something,” Wynyard said. “And then you won’t be able to practice or play [basketball], and then you’re screwed.”
His father taught him that lesson, too.
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