For Kingmas, it’s about a love of the game

By Rich Myhre

For The Enterprise

MILL CREEK

Because they are siblings, Kristi and Brett Kingma have some things in common.

Some, but not many.

After all, they are distinct not only in age, gender and hair color, but also in personality, certain likes and dislikes, and even the occasional quirk.

“They are,” dad Gregg Kingma confirmed, “different kids. Totally different.”

Of course, give each one a basketball and the similarities start to jump out. For starters, they come from good athletic bloodlines, with Gregg an ex-college basketball player and mom Gail a former star distance runner. But what unites the two Kingma kids more than anything is a shared love of the game and an extraordinary desire to excel.

And it’s been that way as long as anyone can remember.

“You could just see it in their eyes when they were younger,” Gregg Kingma said. “We talked to them about practicing and preparing to be good, so maybe they had a different mindset from other kids. But they still took it on themselves. They were totally focused and fully engaged in what they were doing.

“Kristi definitely set the precedent because she’s the oldest,” he said. “Whether it was soccer or basketball — and she did it very quietly, never saying it — she wanted to be the best. You could just see the look of determination she had that (said), ‘I’m going to do this.’”

Brett, who was three years behind his sister in school, noticed and soon followed her example.

“I just remember at a very young age, they both had that look in their eyes,” Gregg Kingma said. “And now that they’re older, you still see it.”

With another hoops season at hand, the Kingmas are about to excel once again. The 20-year-old Kristi is a junior on the University of Washington women’s team, while Brett, 18, soon will be starting his senior season at Jackson High School before moving on next year to the University of Oregon.

They learned the game together, practicing for hours in the neighborhoods of Mill Creek and in their own backyard, where there is a three-backboard basketball court. And not just playing one-on-one or H-O-R-S-E. They also had other showdowns, like dribbling races or contests to see who could spin the ball on a finger the longest.

“Anything with a basketball,” said Brett, who helped lead Jackson to the Class 4A state championship game last winter.

For both, the idea of being merely an average player was never an option.

“I knew what I wanted from an early age,” Kristi said, “and nothing was going to stop me from getting there.” Working hard, she added, “was normal for our family.”

“We were brought up to know that if you work hard at something, you can be the best,” Brett said. “So it wasn’t really like, ‘Are we going to succeed?’ It was like, ‘When?’”

They played with other kids, too, but often it was just the two of them. Early on, Kristi had the advantage because she was older. They were evenly matched for about a year when she was in middle school and he was in grade school. But by the time Brett reached middle school, he began to take charge.

And by then, Kristi said with a smile, “I didn’t want to play him any more. No more one-on-one. By then it was just H-O-R-S-E.”

They see each other less now that Kristi is away at college. And it will be even worse next year when Brett heads to Eugene, Ore.

But in this era of cell phones and text messages, they still stay close.

“We’re really supportive of each other,” Brett said. “She’ll text before one of my fall-league games and say, ‘I love you.’ It’s not like we have a routine, but we just try to stay in touch.”

Family getaways are another chance to reconnect. Every spring break the Kingmas — the family includes twins Dan and Kelli, who are 14, and Brooke, who is 13 — go somewhere warm, usually Palm Desert, Calif. And in August they travel to Lake Chelan for vacation time with other members of the extended family.

And no matter the destination, the family totes along a bag of basketballs.

“We still play wherever we go,” Brett said.

Because of his own background in basketball, Gregg Kingma can appreciate the achievements of his two older children. The hours of dedicated practice that allowed them to become the players they are.

“It makes me really proud that they’ve worked so hard to get to where they’re at,” he said. “And that they’ve both managed to balance being really good basketball players … with being great kids.

“I’m just really proud of them for who they are as people. They’re not just good basketball players. That’s what they do and that’s how they’re getting to college. But Gail and I are just so proud of how they’ve grown up. We just feel really blessed that they turned out that way.”

Rich Myhre writes for the Herald.