They were leaving around 1 p.m., in time to arrive comfortably before the 7 p.m. tipoff. They always go to a bar for one beer before the game. This is a ritual they don't dare break.
Maggie is a sophomore on the Penn State basketball team, and all last season and this season, until the Michigan State loss, her parents went to an Irish bar. But they now have switched to a Mexican bar. Betsy realizes that if Penn State loses at home again, "we might have to go to the opposite of the opposite" - maybe back to the Irish bar, and even put a Penn State sweatshirt on.
But not yet.
Maggie is a star, a former Inquirer player of the year, a McDonald's all-American in high school. Last season, as a freshman, she broke the three-point scoring record for the Big Ten Conference. But she went 1 for 11 in the second-round game of the NCAA tournament, a loss, and vowed to shoot 100,000 shots over the summer. And she did.
That's 100,000 makes. Misses didn't count. One thousand shots for 100 days. She kept a spreadsheet.
Even her parents, who have grown accustomed to Maggie's basketball intensity, and are in part responsible for it, couldn't believe her pledge.
"Are you crazy?" her mother asked - and this is a mother who would sit in the car in her pajamas and shine the high beams on the Narberth basketball court late at night just so middle-school Maggie could shoot and shoot.
By the way, Maggie wouldn't wear long pants, truly nothing but basketball shorts, through seventh grade - not to school in winter (the teachers would call home), not even to church on Easter.
As Maggie explained, "I had to be ready if there was an opportunity to shoot."
Maggie did finally wear her first pair of jeans after her AAU team, consisting of girls a year older who had started to wear makeup and act like teenagers, performed what Betsy called an "intervention," and took Maggie to T.J. Maxx and made her buy jeans.
