Sisters, sisters; There were never such devoted sisters…

@ Rochester

Sometimes I forget that this is supposed to be a basketball blog. My bad, basketball blog readers, that’s on me. I guess I advertise this blog the same way One Tree Hill was originally advertised – that the main focus would be basketball, and what a let-down One Tree Hill turned out to be in that regard! So, to bring the blog back to focus, I’m going to talk about an aspect of the game that I really miss over here: my sister. I’ll explain.

In the 4^th quarter of the movie Love and Basketball Quincy asks Monica what was missing from the game that eventually made her want to stop playing. Spoiler alert!: Monica eventually confesses it was actually the absence of Quincy. Now, I’m not about to try to play my sister in a one-on-one game for her heart (just typing that made me giggle to myself), but I can surely understand why Monica was so happy at the end of the movie having Quincy (someone she loved) in the stands cheering her on.

@ Moravian

One of the loneliest things about being over here (other than not really speaking the language) is coming out of the locker-room after games and looking into the stands to find zero familiar faces (I guess I should really say zero familiar English-speaking faces, since I now recognize a lot of our fans). Running up to my sister, Mom, and Dad after games was one of my favorite parts of a game-day in college. They’d always tell me I played so hard and did great (regardless of how I actually felt I did). I feel like once you hit a certain level of play, when people expect a certain amount of points, rebounds, blocks, steals, or whatever from you, it’s just nice having a few people in the stands who you know will love you unconditionally regardless of whether or not you made your 3s, foul shots, or layups. Plus, now that I’m a lot of miles from home with no one to talk to after games, there’s also nobody to take such flattering pictures with like the ones you see here.

she even took a picture of the pre-game passing!

I also really miss having a non-basketball-player’s perspective after games to point out things I would never ever think about. For example, back in college, our guards and posts would split up to work on position-specific drills during warm-ups (e.g. the guards would get the hoop for a few minutes to shoot 3s and then the posts would get the hoop to work on post moves). Of course while one group was shooting the other group would be closer to half court doing some other non-shooting drill. The posts always opted to do some kind of passing. As a player I never thought anything of it, it seemed normal enough that we would pass while the guards shot, and I guess it still does, but I remember my sister telling me one time that she really thought we should practice our passing before games if we wanted to win. She was kidding (or at least I think she was), but I think that’s hilarious, and it is comments like that that I miss more than anything after a tough game.

@ Senior Night

While I was home I was lucky enough to enjoy the spectator experience with my sister at a TCNJ basketball game. After driving down four hours to Marymount University and having to pay nothing to get into the game (up top!), we relished the intensity level of the refs, what my half-time speech would be, and how I was never ever as little as how some of the players out on the court looked (which I wasn’t; I’m pretty convinced I was 5’8”, 150 lbs. out of the womb). Not to mention how we spent about three hours of our ride home working on our British accents ‘requiring’ and ‘declaring’ things only Russell Brand would truly understand. She made that road trip fun as hell and I’m so glad she went with me – actually, I don’t know how she came to so many of my college games without someone to giggle and speak British with; she must have been so bored.

She’s always there to support me, make me laugh, cheer me on, and giggle with me. I guess that’s why there really isn’t anything on this earth comparable to having a sister.