USMA IN THE NEWS

Hoop sisters a world apart

Marin Catholic grad leads team and platoon in Iraq

By Scott Ostler
San Francisco Chronicle
March 15, 2007 

It's hoops playoff time, and two former Bay Area prep superstars loom large for their respective teams. 

At Stanford, the performance of Brooke Smith will be vital to the NCAA hopes of the Cardinal. 

And in Baqubah, 30 miles north of Baghdad, in the playoffs of a makeshift league of soldiers of the 215th Battalion Support Brigade, second lieutenant Adrienne Payne will be expected to provide floor leadership by the Bravo Company Pitbulls. 

The Pitbulls lost a playoff-tuneup game Monday night to the always-tough Charlie Company Witchdoctors, but in your bracket for the Camp Warhorse playoffs, you have to ink in the Pitbulls to go all the way. People who know Payne will caution you not to bet against her. They say she's a leader. 

Besides, Lt. Payne has her good buddy rooting for her. 

"I opened my e-mail this morning to find a note from Brooke," Payne said Tuesday via e-mail. "It definitely brought a smile to my face." 

Payne will try to catch news of Smith and Stanford via ESPN in the mess hall. In Army's '06 media guide, Payne names her favorite basketball player: "Brooke Smith." 

Basketball brought Smith and Payne together a decade ago, then pulled them apart. From sixth grade through high school, they were inseparable, sisters joined at the hoop. 

As Marin Catholic High co-captains, Smith and Payne led the Wildcats to the '02 state CIF championship. Smith, the 6-foot-3 NorCal Player of the Year, went to Duke, and eventually wound up at Stanford. Payne was not contacted by any Division I schools except Air Force and Army. She opted for West Point, where in four years, she mostly sat. And rehabbed. And led. 

On Feb. 2, Payne was deployed in Iraq, a second lieutenant with a platoon of 28 soldiers. They repair and maintain heavy equipment, like tanks and Humvees. They recover vehicles that break down or are attacked. They go on convoys. War permitting, one night a week, some of them play basketball. 

Recently some of the Bravo Company guys (there is one other woman in the company) approached Lt. Payne, told her they heard she had played some ball at West Point. They needed help in the backcourt. Payne hesitated. But it's basketball, she couldn't resist. 

She's the only female in the league, and at a slender 5-5, she's not exactly intimidating. She sat on the bench for the first 10 minutes of the first game. She's the only commissioned officer on the team, but rank means nothing on the court. 

Soon after checking into the game, Payne put a crossover-and-spin move on her defender and broke his ankles (figuratively). The crowd went nuts. Now the word is out: The Looey can ball. She hasn't seen the bench since then. 

"When I'm on the court," Payne said, "I feel like I'm thousands of miles away from the war." 

Smith's first memory of Payne is from fifth-grade CYO ball. Adrienne was a tiny guard who could dribble with either hand, and her Petaluma team always beat Brooke's team. Soon they became CYO and AAU teammates, and along with two other teammates, went to Marin Catholic. 

Smith was the star, a graceful and powerful center. But from the first day, Payne ran the show. 

"Adrienne was the shortest player, but she's the one who made our team go," coach Rick DeMartini said. 

When Payne injured a shoulder and was sidelined late in her senior season, Marin Catholic lost the North Coast Section championship game. She returned for the NorCal Division IV title game and the CIF title game, and Marin Catholic couldn't be stopped. 

"First play of the state championship game," DeMartini said, "Adrienne got the ball stolen, and I thought, 'Uh-oh.' She didn't have a turnover the rest of the game. She led the team with courage and guts." 

At West Point, Payne started a game her freshman year, played well, but she injured her left shoulder in the next game. After her sophomore year, she fell off a cliff during a night training mission and tore the labrum in the same shoulder. 

"The doctors told me there's no way I would play basketball again," Payne said in a phone conversation from Iraq. "They told me if I wasn't careful, I wouldn't be commissionable. It was hard (to go against what they said), because one of the doctors was a colonel. But I just knew better." 

So she rehabbed, and rejoined the team as a senior (there's no redshirting at Army) and continued a remarkable career. There was a coaching problem at West Point, the women's coach was fired before Payne's senior year and Maggie Dixon was hired. Dixon, only 28, was a breath of fresh air. She hired an assistant, Dave Magarity, who had not coached women. The Black Knights jelled, and pulled off a miracle by going 15-3 down the stretch and making the NCAA playoffs for the first time in Army's history. 

"When we made our move, Adrienne started to play more," Magarity said. "You could start to see she was a really good player before all the injuries." 

"I accepted my role on the team," Payne said. "I was not a star, nor would I ever be a standout player for Army basketball (after the injuries). I really had to look in the mirror and ask myself, 'What can I give this team?' It came down to effort and attitude. ... It was about making the best of what I had." 

Magarity coached men's college basketball for 23 years but quit, burned out. He was an administrator when Dixon coaxed him back to coaching. A large Philly guy with a deep, booming voice, Magarity loved working with Dixon, and he was bowled over by Payne. When Dixon died suddenly just after the '06 season, Magarity passed up an NBA job to accept the head-coaching job at Army, at least partly because of his experience with Adrienne Payne. 

"She touched my life," Magarity said. "She's an incredible young lady -- a warm person, a great personality, and in the true sense of the word, a leader. She would bring something to practice every day. She played so hard. Maggie loved her to death, (Payne) was really, really special. ... She gave me back the love of being around kids and coaching. ... She's a kid I think about every single day." 

Payne didn't complain about her injuries. She saw a bigger picture. Her freshman year, the team got news that a player who graduated the previous year had an arm blown off in Iraq. The husband of a former team captain was killed in Iraq in November. 

In the West Point Cemetery near Payne's dorm, several graves have been dug in recent years for men and women who were athletes at West Point before being deployed in Iraq. 

Payne was scheduled to be stationed in Germany, but she traded Germany for Iraq so she could be on the same deployment schedule as her boyfriend, a lieutenant stationed in Baghdad. 

Payne laughed when it was suggested that in her new job, she is still a point guard. 

"It's a different role," she said, "but it's similar. You help direct and support the team. You gotta be vocal and involved." 

You gotta lead. Go Pitbulls.