For the Juanita High School varsity girl’s basketball team, beating Redmond in the first game of the 2009-10 season was a victory that was a long time coming, according to twin varsity seniors Kimberly and Michelle Baba.

The twins have played basketball since the fourth grade and spent the last three years on the varsity team. And in fact, the whole Baba family has “infiltrated” Juanita High School athletics. In addition to the twins, an older brother reached seventh in state in his weight category for wrestling, and a younger brother currently wrestles for the Rebels. Hence, Juanita High sports fans are quite familiar with the Baba name.

Kimberly, shooting guard, and Michelle, point guard, juggle the responsibilities of basketball, academics, and working successfully, but have little spare time during the season.

“Coach demands 100 percent commitment, so there are six practices a week,” said Kimberly. “You have to make it to all of them; you have to be on time.”

“You have to be 20 minutes early, ready to go,” Michelle added.

The balancing act is hard, but the twins believe that they have the hang of it. The great thing about the varsity team this season, according to the girls, is that this year is the first time that team members have been as close as they are.

“This is the first time that everybody’s like, ‘let’s all hang out,’” Kimberly explained.

The varsity team is currently 5-1 in league. Their success this season, according to coach Sam Lee, is that the players all get along so well.

Lee has coached girls varsity basketball for Juanita High for the past three years. He returned to coaching prior to the Baba twins’ first year on the team, after retiring from his first stint as the Juanita coach from 1998-2001.

“Part of the reason for the team’s success (this year) is that they all generally like each other, which is kind of unusual in girls’ team sports,” Lee said, adding, “It’s hard to get 12 girls all on the same page.”

“They have not excluded anybody because ‘I’m a senior, you’re a sophomore,’” added Lee. “They really learned to bond as a team, and that helps performance on the floor.”

As for the Baba twins, Lee described them as some of the hardest working players he has ever coached.

“They just never have an off day physically,” Lee said. “In games they’re always working hard and they have so much energy on the floor that the rest of the people kind of feed off them.”

For Michelle, it’s the team aspect of the game that draws her to basketball.

“I love the fast-paced action and the intensity of it,” she said. “But it’s the team bonding that occurs and the working together towards a common goal that I really love.”

“Everybody should participate in some sort of sport as a kid,” added Kimberly. “You learn so much from it. You learn commitment, you learn how to lose, you learn how to win and you definitely mature a lot.”

The Baba twins, two of the four seniors that co-captain the team, are highly respected by their teammates.

“They are great team players, and they work really hard,” said Molly Grager, a sophomore on the varsity team.

Sarah Storm is a student in the University of Washington Department of Communication News Laboratory.