2 sisters join boys team
Sequoia Charter boys basketball team welcomes 2 girls after their team was hit hard by COVID-19.
Every day after school, Mia and Jenna Robert showed up to Sequoia Charter’s gym in Mesa to play.
The sisters would shoot baskets. They’d run up and down the court. They’d play one-on-one. Anything to have a semblance of a basketball season.
In January, when school resumed after the winter break, they were all that was left of the girls basketball team.
One player had six members in her family come down with COVID-19. A player from Italy was told by her family to return to her home country after Arizona became the nation’s hotbed for the virus.
Three other players’ parents decided it was safer for them to be at home, and not playing basketball.
But the Robert sisters weren’t ready to pack it in.
Welcome to the boys basketball team.
Sequoia Charter boys coach Chris Holloway added the sisters to his roster, giving him a total of 10 players in their first season in AIA, transitioning from the Canyon Athletic Association, where last year they went 21-2 and came a game away from reaching the championship game.
“They work out a lot, so I was like, ‘Hey, diverse, let’s get it,’ “Holloway said.
They both get playing time. In Sequoia’s 59-53 win over Mesa Arete Prep this past week, Mia, 17, a junior, started
for the 8-5 Stallions, who are ranked 12th in 2A in the AIA playoff seedings.
“They can shoot the ball,” Holloway said. “They’re tough.”
It has taken an adjustment period shooting and handling the bigger boys ball, one that is heavier than what the girls use, for Mia and Jenna, 15, a sophomore. Especially shooting from 3point range.
They’ve worked with a trainer on weekends to help them with their strength in their legs to get behind the ball when they shoot it.
They’re getting better and their confidence has grown.
“Other than the ball, its the same hard work,” Mia said. “We had been practicing a lot over the summer.”
Mia and Jenna have been part of Victor Rodriguez’s small club program called Gladiator Basketball that he and another coach has been funding for three years. Boys and girls practice and play against each other in that club program.
“They’ve been playing against boys for two years,” said Rodriguez, who is the sisters’ stepfather. “Going up against boys here was nothing new to them. They’d box out, make them work on the offensive end. They just wanted to have an opportunity to play for a team.”
Rodriguez was hired to coach Sequoia Charter’s first AIA girls basketball team this season, after the Robert sisters transferred from American Leadership Academy Ironwood, where Mia made all-region last season, helping the school reach the state playoffs.
“It wasn’t until Jan. 9, when we went back to school, it was clear there wasn’t going to be a team,” Rodriguez said. “They were the only two left. We had seven off and on coming out since August.
“People started getting sick and the season was lost.”
The girls’ mom, Kaara Robert, a nurse, came down with COVID-19 in early June, Rodriguez said. He said COVID-19 hit Kaara hard enough to keep her from working until August, right before school year began.
Because she was working in Mesa, and with the ongoing pandemic, the Robert sister transferred to Sequoia, where it was only a 10-minute drive from work, instead of a nearly hour drive to ALA-Ironwood.
“They just wanted the opportunity to play and compete,” Kaara said. “When we first started coming, they felt a little awkward. Now they just show up every day and work hard.”
Rodriguez told Coach Holloway that he wouldn’t find two harder workers in the Robert sisters.
Senior guard Taj Holloway, a returning starter from last year’s 21-win team who is the son of the head coach, said they weren’t treated any different.
“It gives us more players,” Taj said. “We don’t ever exclude them.” Chris Holloway calls it “a big family.” Mia and Jenna were heartbroken when they found out the girls basketball team was down to just them. But now they feel fulfilled, and believe when they return to play with girls against other girls in the summer they’ll be that much better.
“It was hard to go through that,” Jenna said about the girls basketball season being canceled. “Me and my sister, we’re really into basketball. It took a toll on us. When we heard about the boys letting us play, we just wanted to be out there.”
Athletic Director Robb Floco said the sisters are part of the Stallion family.
“You put a whole bunch of obstacles, or potential obstacles, in the way, and these things happen,” Floco said. “They’ve been a part of the campus.”
The school itself has been on again and off again with in-person learning based on COVID-19 cases since August.
“That’s part of the uncertainty that we live in,” Floco said. “It’s OK for two weeks, then it’s not OK for two weeks. It gets kind of silly.”
There is a chance that the Sequoia Charter basketball team will reach the 16-team 2A tournament. That would mark the third straight year Mia has been part of a state tournament team.
The sisters knew it would take a while to gain the respect of the boys on the court. But it’s there now.
“We’re all like family,” Jenna said.