Catch a Star

by Tamika Catchings

  On and off the court, we were now one another’s sidekick, and I valued that deeply. We’d been like twins ever since I could remember. Tauja not only spoke for me but she really could read my thoughts. She could sense like no one else how I was feeling at any given moment—if I was frustrated or what I found funny, what troubled me or made me purely happy.

  At the same time, something inside me yearned to be just me, Tamika, not “a Catchings Sister.” While I wanted the connection with Tauja, I also wanted to be myself, seen for my own abilities and valued for who I was personally. It was just the seedling of an inner conflict that would grow in the next two years—on the one hand cherishing the sister partnership we had, but on the other hand desiring my own independence.

  Meanwhile, what Tauja and I were doing on the court, together, was becoming really special.

  “There go the Catchings Sisters!”

  I opened my eyes wide toward Tauja, and we stepped it up to get to the checkout counter before more people noticed us and started talking. I hoped we could duck out before anyone followed us.

  For me, these sightings were now overwhelming. At the mall, the grocery store, the movie theater, in the hallways at school—pretty much everywhere we went—more and more strangers recognized us from our games and the newspapers. The buzz was about such equally matched sisters, so close in age, just twenty-one months apart, “taking over the court,” as one reporter said.

  “Star basketball sisters.” “The Sister Act.” “Daughters of an NBA father.” The headlines kept on coming. “The Catchings sisters are to basketball what the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, are to tennis,” the media reported. “Champions.” “Competitors and rivals but blood and best friends.” “A powerhouse together and just as strong apart.”

  A trip to the mall was no longer just a trip to the mall. Other kids, parents, and adults, most strangers to us, stared and called us by name. Sometimes they followed us or rushed forward asking for autographs. They took pictures and wanted to talk, shake our hands, give us hugs. We couldn’t go anywhere without getting noticed.

  The shy girl in me was getting called out, and it was hard. Not the same kind of hard as with the put-downs and bullying in grade school, but still unnerving. How do you tell people who mean well with their compliments and admiration that you just want to be treated like everyone else? How do you turn away from anyone excited to meet you?

  Tauj didn’t seem as troubled with our celebrity as I was. She loved meeting new people and thrived in the spotlight. In college Tauja would take a job as a customer service rep for a mortuary. No joke. And she was good at it, selling burial plots to people while they were eating dinner. She was always caring, and outgoing and genuine in zeroing in on what you needed. She could engage anyone in conversation about anything, sell coffins to the living. People loved her.

  I leaned on that magnetism, and it was called out a little more every day. A lot of our high school games were televised. Photos of us appeared everywhere. There was footage of Tauj flying down the court like a gazelle and of me shooting from the outside or laying the ball up on the glass.

  Coaches, our own and the ones on opposing teams, were constantly remarking on us as sister players. Everyone commented how we were a package deal, the Sister Act of the game.

  Our coach, Frank Mattucci, handled our celebrity well, and he was careful not to give either of us reasons to resent the other. Rather than compare us, Coach Mattucci praised both Tauj and me for our strengths. He pushed us equally on what we could work on to improve. He said comparing us would be like comparing a Monet with a da Vinci. Can’t each be remarkable in her own way?

  I liked that. He put in words what I’d been feeling for a long time, both on the court and in the classroom—in life, really. We are each gifted in a special way. God made us with some aspect of his own image, and we are, in our own unique way, God’s work of art.

  Reporters, of course, remained fascinated with the differences between Tauj and me. They began to come to practices, seek us out before and after games. I’d stand behind Tauj or to the side and just smile. I had a hard time hearing and even more difficult time speaking. My self-consciousness had only grown without the hearing aids or the speech therapy. Besides, Tauj could talk her way into and out of anything, and I was fine with her speaking for me.

  As much as I was pushing myself during this time, it was a golden period. I was coming into my own, even in playing alongside Tauj. I was just fifteen years old, not able to drive a car yet, but really good at driving a ball. More determined than ever, I knew I could be better, and I embraced that, relishing the challenge ahead.

  Coach Mattucci knew he had something special going into the 1994–1995 season. Besides Tauja and me, he had Katie Coleman, a sharp-shooting guard who could drill threes. But Coach Mattucci had another secret weapon—himself.

  He had coached Class A ball with Luther North, and in four years had compiled an astonishing 102–14 record. In 1990 he came to Class AA Stevenson, which had had a struggling program. His philosophy was sometimes called “the Mattucci Way”—an emphasis on tough, relentless, stifling defense, and within a few years it was paying off.

  In my sophomore year, Stevenson would go 32–2, making its way easily through the postseason contests to the state finals.

  In the championship game, we would play a strong team from Chicago, Mother McCauley, which had achieved a lot in the first year of a new coach. They had strength on the inside with a big strong center, but we felt we could do some damage with our speed.

  And with our defense. We came out playing a full-court press—Coach Mattucci’s strategy to take a quick advantage in the game. And it worked. We forced turnover after turnover, scoring most times we had the ball. At one point several minutes into the game, Mother McCauley had not yet even taken a shot. By the five-minute mark, we led 10–0.

  On one play, I had been fouled, made my free throws, and one of the Mother McCauley players was taking the ball up the court. Tauja was defending to one side and edged around to the player’s left. Seeing that, I raced from front court on the opponent’s other side. The player, seeing me, turned the other way and ran into Tauja, who slapped the ball away and took possession. It was the Mattucci Way, stifling defense.

  It was also the Catchings Sisters Way, an intuitive sense of the game from years of playing each other on our driveway. It was a beautiful thing.

  That championship game became a physical game, a lot of scrapping for the ball, elbows flying, some hard bumps bruises, and blood. Katie Coleman went down for a time with a severe blow to her head. Mother McCauley climbed back into the game when we relaxed our full-court press.

  I got into early foul trouble, and Coach kept me on the bench for part of the second quarter. But Tauja played great in my absence, at one point scoring a tough layup inside while getting fouled. She sank her free throw, then raced down to the other end to defend an opponent racing in for a basket. Tauja got there first, planted her feet, and took the charge.

  Stevenson weathered the comeback, and we started building our lead again. At the half we were up by eighteen points, within sight of Stevenson’s first girls’ basketball championship.

  During halftime, selections to the All-State team were announced. It is one of the highest honors in high school sports. Both Tauja and I were chosen and accepted our awards on the court. The Catchings Sisters were considered the best in girls’ high school basketball that year.

  The second half was never close. We would win by thirty points, which I think was the greatest point spread for a championship ever. When the final buzzer went off, Tauja and I screamed, jumped up, and embraced each other. I had done well, scoring twelve points, despite foul trouble early. Tauja excelled, scoring eighteen points, the high scorer for the team. And it was our tandem defense that had set the tone for the game and helped Stevenson jump out to a big lead.

  The Catchings Sisters, in just our sophomore and junior years in high school, had made eve
n bigger headlines. But there was one headline coming that Tauja and I didn’t expect.

  The award for the best female player in Illinois high school basketball is called Ms. Basketball of Illinois. It’s an award given by a ballot of coaches and media throughout the state. The award is made several weeks after the high school championship game.

  Any number of players could rightly have been so honored, not the least of which was Tauja.

  Instead the award was given to me. I never expected it. For one thing, they don’t give it to underclassmen. They had never given it to a sophomore before.

  In writing about the award that year, a Chicago Tribune reporter said, “What strikes you most about The Kid—after you have witnessed her cool demeanor, have been awed by her abundance of God-given talent and watched her stop defenders in their tracks, dart up the floor and soar toward the basket like a hoop-seeking missile—is her age. What strikes you most—after you have certified her NBA bloodlines and charted her limitless future—is that she is still only 15 years old. 15. Too young to drive. But not too young, the record shows, to drive her opponents to distraction. Old enough to lead a team, the record shows, but not too old to act like a kid.”1

  What the writer had right was that I was still a kid. I was a six-foot, fifteen-year-old who could play basketball. But I still struggled publicly with all this celebrity. I was asked how I was handling this award and the attention I was getting. “It’s difficult,” I said, “when people come up to you—people you don’t even know—and congratulate you. Everybody wants to be your friend. My sister, Tauja, and I and a friend were at the mall one day when two guys walked up to us and said, ‘Wow! Aren’t you the Catchings Sisters?’ Sometimes I sit in bed at night and wish I could go somewhere where nobody knows me. People are always treating me like I’m someone special.”

  I was also afraid of the world out there without Tauja standing in front of me. But lying in bed the night of the Ms. Basketball of Illinois award, I was grateful for my opportunities at such a young age, happy to see what I could achieve. In a way, I wanted to be Tamika and not “one of the Catchings Sisters.” I wanted so much more from basketball, and I wasn’t sure Tauja wanted that for herself. I wanted to go pro, and that still seemed a long way away. But I was willing to work for it. The court was my life, where I came alive inside.

  So I prayed this was only the beginning.

  The next morning I got up and glanced at the Ms. Basketball of Illinois trophy, but then quickly fixed my eyes on that scrap of paper on the mirror, my goal written in my seventh-grade penmanship: “One day I’ll be in the NBA.”

  I put on my sweats, grabbed my basketball, and headed to the gym.

  6

  Texas

  A lot of our kids had played together for many years, from junior high and now in high school. When Tamika walked out onto the court, they had to acclimate themselves to playing with someone who could do things they weren’t ready for. They had to learn to play up to her level—her power, her strength, her quickness—and her ability to make a pass that you might not be expecting.

  Sara Hackerott, head coach, Duncanville High School girls’ basketball, 1993–1998

  “This is the worst decision I’ve ever made. I can’t do this.” I was in tears and inconsolable the night before starting another new school, in another new town.

  I’d moved back to Texas—with Mom and without Tauja—and I felt utterly alone. I was the one who decided to make the move, and Mom, after plenty of “are you sure” questions, packed up our stuff and we headed to Texas.

  But now I faced another new school, and this time truly on my own, without Tauja by my side as interpreter, defender, protector, and sometimes peacemaker, my very ears and voice much of the time. The memories of all those “firsts” in Abilene years before came crawling back: the first time meeting new kids, the first time they saw me as different, the first time being called out for not fitting in. You never really escape the weight of those firsts.

  I began to feel paralyzed with fear. It had been a while since I’d felt overcome like this. I’d worked so hard in Deerfield to find my place at school and discover the language where I was fluent—on the court, working out and practicing till I earned the other kids’ and people’s respect.

  Now I was back to the same old challenges, the same old feelings.

  Poor Mom. I really put her through it. “I can’t believe you brought me here,” I cried at one point. “I hate you for making me move.”

  I didn’t hate her and she knew it. And, of course, she never made me move with her. I was just so done-in that night. She kept trying to comfort me. She reminded me I’d chosen this. She knew I would get through. She believed in me.

  But that night before I started my junior year in Duncanville, Texas, she had one distraught daughter and faced as much of an unknown as I did about how we were going to make this work.

  For her, it was about putting the disappointment and losses of divorce behind her. She had a lot of support in Texas, all her family—my grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins. You need people who love you to be by your side, not just figuratively but physically, when you’re starting something new. It’s like their presence, their touch, gives you courage and strength.

  Kenyon had just started college at Northern Illinois University. Tauja would be starting college in another year and was living with Dad. So Mom felt the timing was right for her to start a new life of her own.

  Her decision was a life-changer for all of us. Since the divorce, Kenyon, Tauja, and I had found our own ways of maintaining our connection as a family. While we had no longer been under the same roof every night, we had been together during the day at school. We had eaten lunches together, hung out, played together on the same basketball and other sports teams, and talked on the phone every day. We were living just minutes apart, and when we needed to meet up, we could. We fought to stay close as siblings.

  But that same closeness that had helped us kids get through those years, especially Tauj and me, may have been the thing that was so hard for Mom. For her, living separate and yet so close was the constant reminder of a family that was broken and a marriage that had failed. For Mom, moving to Texas was a way of putting all of that behind her, making it just a distant memory in the rearview mirror.

  But for me, being umpteen miles from Tauja created a huge empty space inside. Those 960 miles might as well be 960 million, I thought that night before beginning my junior year in Duncanville.

  I picked up the phone that night and called Tauj. “I can’t believe I’m starting school without you,” I cried.

  “I know. Me too,” she said.

  We cried together for a long time.

  My decision to make the move with Mom was my own, but it was one I made after a lot of discussion with Tauja.

  In hallmark style, she was quick to speak out about what she was going to do. This was her senior year of high school. She didn’t want to miss that, finishing with all the kids she’d gone through school with the longest. She didn’t want to move back to Texas.

  I got that. Graduating with your high school friends was a big deal.

  More privately I thought, Tauj and Mom still butt heads a lot. It will be tough on all of us if they keep fighting a lot.

  As for me, I wanted to stay with Mom. The more I excelled in basketball, the more Dad’s expectations were in high gear, and the struggles in our relationship were at their height. Besides, I couldn’t bear to think of Mom being all alone.

  Always that team player part of me, even at home, you know?

  There was another thing. I had, quite frankly, been growing tired of “the Catchings Sisters” circus constantly surrounding us. I wondered what it would be like to play without Tauj, not part of a “Dynamic Duo,” or “Powerhouse Sisters,” or any of the other media-clever names they called us.

  The idea of going solo was not directed at Tauja. Maybe it reflected my own inner sense of destiny. My destiny. Maybe it reflected wha
t I knew: that for Tauja basketball was a thing, not the thing. For me it was the thing. The only thing. And I wasn’t sure how I could be all I could be playing basketball if I were to most people simply a Catchings sister. The younger one.

  If I moved to Duncanville, maybe I could see just how good I was or could be. I thought, I’m ready to be on my own, to be wholly, completely Tamika Catchings, not just a part of the Catchings Sisters. So, I reasoned, the move could be good. Duncanville wouldn’t be like Abilene. I’d have cousins and aunts and uncles around, more support. I knew them. We’d made trips from Illinois back to Texas for Christmas all these years. And I knew my place now. I knew I could get respect on the court.

  I wanted to be, needed to be, just Tamika.

  On the practical side, I was halfway through high school. I reasoned that I would have two years to make my mark, whether I stayed in Illinois or went to Texas, and one of those years I’d be playing without Tauja anyway. She was going to go off to college.

  And so I had decided. I would move to Texas with Mom.

  In that decision, Tauj and I made a pact. We’d find a way to play together in college. This separation would be just a couple of years, then we’d be back together. It would be okay.

  My decision was announced to my school and then the press. The Chicago newspaper headline, one that many never expected, read, “Illinois Ms. Basketball Taking Her Trophy to Texas.”

  “Tamika, you’re going to go through this like you always do,” Mom told me that night I was in a fit of tears. “How can you know you won’t like this school? You haven’t even been there a day yet. Give it a try. If you don’t like it here, you can always go back to Deerfield and live with your dad.”

  In all my reasoning about making the move, I hadn’t thought long enough about how much I needed Tauj by my side, not only in the game but after and in practices when reporters wanted interviews or strangers wanted to meet me. I’d relied on her for so long. I’d always looked around for her in difficult or new situations to speak for me, to be my ears. I don’t think I realized till that night before starting school in Duncanville just how silent I’d stayed around the court and in school for those first sixteen years of my life.