About Max

Max Ruppe Jr. has been perfecting his ball handling skills since age 10. It took him two weeks to learn how to twirl a ball on his fingers and less than five months later, he was able to twirl a ball for over one hour. A fan of the late Pete Maravich, he had heard Maravich could twirl one for up to one hour and this motivated young Max to spin a basketball longer.

Max practiced hours everyday as a teenager.  He attracted attention at basketball camps and even helped with the ball handling clinics as one of the campers! Wake Forest University asked him to perform some basketball halftimes when he was fourteen to display his spinning, ball handling, and dribbling trick. By age 16, he could spin six simultaneously.

Frustrated by coaching differences and major injuries both his junior and senior high school years, Max practiced little during his college years at UNC-Chapel Hill. This dormant talent began to become more apparent soon after Max's graduation from college. In January, 1986 Max spun eight basketballs in the 1987 and 1988 Guinness Book of World Records.  He also held the World Record briefly in 1990. Max began to do a number of performance mainly for church, school, and civic groups.  He has performed for several local television shows, P.M. Magazine, Spectacular World of Guinness Records, as well as Internationally. He has appeared on "Just for the Record", an Australian television show, "Wonderful People" in Thailand, "Game of the Goose" in Spain and a Japanese television special called "Super People". Max has also performed overseas for Youth for Christ.

Max has traveled all over the globe sharing his extraordinary talent. Max considers his ability a God given talent and encourages others to use the abilities they have to impact their own lives and the lives of others.