Rupp was born September 2, 1901 in Halstead, Kansas to Heinrich Rupp, a German immigrant,[1] and Anna Lichi, an Austrian immigrant. The fourth of six children, Rupp grew up on a 163-acre farm that his parents had homesteaded. He began playing basketball as a young child, with the help of his mother who made a ball for him by stuffing rags into a gunnysack.