Sisters help Mustangs gain national ranking

India and Saadia Timpton play different styles of basketball.

Saadia, 16, is a 5-foot-8 junior guard for the Myers Park girls’ basketball team. Her strength is offense.

Her older sister, India, 17, is a 5-foot-10 senior forward for the Mustangs, and she plays better defense.

“My mom always used to say, ‘Put them together and you’d have a heck of a basketball player,’” Saadia said.

For the past three years, the Timpton sisters – who are 13 months apart in age – have been key parts of the Myers Park varsity girls’ basketball program. In their three years, the Mustangs have just 10 losses. Myers Park was undefeated last year before losing in the Western Region final.

In the last season the two will play together, Myers Park started 11-0 (through Dec. 27) and is nationally ranked, sitting at No. 22 in USA Today’s Super 25 poll.

Saadia averages 13.3 points and 3.3 assists per game. India averages nine points, 8.3 rebounds and 3.3 steals per game.

The sisters’ complement each other on the court and help each other off it. Saadia helps India with offense, India does the same for Saadia with defense.

Saadia and India have been playing together since they were in elementary school and motivate each other to work out. They are each others practice partner or rebounder when they play at the hoop at their house or at the YMCA.

The also have a connection on the court – India calls it their “telepathy” – that many other players don’t have.

“At home we can talk about the games, we can work out outside and stuff like that,” Saadia said. “We encourage each other. We know what each other needs to work on and when we’re in the games, it’s like we have a sister thing and we see things that other people don’t see.”

“It’s a lot of fun when I give her a pass and then she scores because we’re really learning each other’s game and it’s just like clockwork,” Saadia said.

Head coach Barbara Nelson, a longtime coach for Providence Day and Wingate who is in her first year at Myers Park, said sisters on the same team can have a positive or negative effect.

“They can be exclusive: they only want to pass to each other, they only want to play together. These girls are not exclusive,” Nelson said. “It’s very positive on this team. It’s not a negative thing at all.”

Nelson wants the Timptons’ familial bond to spread to the rest of the team. The Mustangs return several talented players from last year’s team, including sophomores Aliyah Mazyck and Rydeiah Rogers, but Nelson said the key to their success is playing together.

She uses team building strategies like having the team practice defense while attached with elastic bands so the players have to move and guard together.

The team didn’t play as one unit early in the season, but Nelson said she saw it in a 67-32 win over Butler in December.

“We’ve been working really hard on just trying to do everything as a team,” Nelson said. “Just trying to teach them to play like a woven group of young ladies and I just see the progress happening.”

The Timpton sisters, who started playing in high school together when India was a sophomore and Saadia was a freshman, have been a constant on a Myers Park team that has gone through three coaches in three years.

Wes Hepler left two years ago to become the boys’ coach and Dustin Terrel left after last season to become an assistant women’s coach at Wingate.

Nelson said the two have been hard workers this year.

“Saadia is a warrior and India has natural leadership tendencies, so they bring the warrior mentality and the leadership mentality to a team, which is important to have,” she said.

Saadia and India were disappointed with how the team finished last season, losing in the state semifinals after winning all 31 of their previous games. They want to get back there and win, but they’re careful not to look ahead.

“We were successful last year but we have to remember that this isn’t last year, this is a new year,” India said. “And just as we lost in that last game (last year), we could lose today, tomorrow, any other day with this new group.”

India said she’s not thinking much about this being the last year she will play with her sister in high school.

“I know that it’s my last year so I want to go ahead and do the best that I can with my team,” she said. “I’m not really thinking about the sister aspect of it yet. I think that will more hit senior night.”

The Timptons watched the Rogers sisters, Rydeiah and Roddreka, play their last game together last year before Roddreka graduated and went on to play at Georgia Tech. Rydeiah talks about getting to see or speak with her sister this year. But Saadia knows that it won’t be the same next year without her older sister.

“I’m really excited for her to go a play Division I basketball and stuff like that, but it is going to be different,” Saadia said. “When I got home I always have my parents but it’s not the same talking to them as it is talking to my sister. Or (if I) go outside I’ll be shooting by myself now.”

It’s not just basketball that the sisters do together. India finished a debutante program last year and Saadia will do the same this year. Both sisters (and Mazyck) volunteer for Jack and Jill of America, a youth leadership organization.

Saadia is getting interest from several colleges and says she has offers from Winthrop and Seton Hall.

India is signed to play at UNC Greensboro next year. When she goes up there next year – which she says she would like to do “with my diploma and my state ring” – India knows that she has her sister to thank for it.

“If it wasn’t for Saadia I wouldn’t even play basketball,” India said. “I rode horses. That was my sport. I used to always have to go to practice with her and sit on the side and eventually the coach was like, ‘Why don’t you just step in?’ ...

“(Saadia) was like, ‘I don’t want India to play basketball, that’s my thing.’ Then we started playing together and it ended up working out.”