By Tara McMinn Irby

Winning that state championship in 1987 left an indelible mark on my life. I didn't understand it at the time, but it was foundational to who I've become.

Through the simple act of playing a game, I learned discipline, perseverance, and how to set goals. I learned how to operate under pressure, how to come under authority, how to be coachable. I learned collaboration and coordination—not as abstract concepts, but as lived, daily practice.

More than anything, it taught me what it meant to be part of a team. It taught me camaraderie. That deep trust, friendship, and loyalty that grows naturally among people who spend real time together, chasing something in common—that's the soil the life lessons grew out of.

That sisterhood wasn't built in the big moments. It was built in the small, repetitive, unglamorous ones. It was evening practices after a full day of school when nobody wanted to be there, and somehow everybody showed up anyway. It was bus rides to away games, crammed into vinyl seats, someone's playlist blaring through a shared speaker, homework half-done on our laps pretending we were giving it real attention. It was letter jackets that gave that all important sense of belonging and the annual portraits complete with dressed-out players, suited-up coaches and committed managers that forever commemorated the moment–that we had been there and that we were there together.

It was learning each other's rhythms so completely that we could read a look across the court and know exactly what it meant. It was covering for each other's mistakes without being asked, because that's just what you did. It was celebrating a teammate's big shot louder than you'd celebrate your own, because her win was the team's win, and the team's win was yours.

Going through high school alongside the same girls you battled beside on the court created a kind of loyalty that's hard to name. We weren't just teammates. We were classmates, locker partners, study buddies, confidantes. We watched each other grow up in real time: through breakups and bad grades and family stuff, through growth spurts and growing pains, through the awkward years and the ones where we finally started to feel like ourselves. Basketball gave us a reason to be together constantly, but what we built in those repeated hours together went far beyond the sport.

There's something about shared suffering—sprints you didn't want to run, losses that stung, coaches who pushed you past what you thought you could handle—that bonds people in a way ease never can. We didn't just play together; we suffered together, sacrificed together, and eventually triumphed together. And when that state championship moment finally came, it didn't feel like an individual accomplishment. It felt like something we had built brick by brick, practice by practice, bus ride by bus ride—together.

That's the part people don't always see when they hear "state champions." They see the trophy. We remember the sisterhood that made winning it possible, and honestly, the sisterhood is the part that stayed with us long after the banner went up.