Under the lights inside the practice gym at the University of Wisconsin, the Paige family was together again, playing the sport they all knew and loved.

Times like these were hard to come by, and they would become even more rare as time would pass. It was the summer of 2012. Morgan — now a graduate assistant with the ISU women’s basketball team — was prepping for her junior year at Wisconsin and Marcus was beginning his career as a Tar Heel while Ellis and Sherryl, former collegiate basketball players themselves, still lived in Marion, Iowa, where Morgan and Marcus had grown up.

It started with separate workouts and ended with a family game, as it usually did. They took a family photo after the game — everyone donning the Wisconsin cardinal and white…except Marcus, of course, who boasted his Carolina blue.

Morgan took it all in. Each of the three individuals who posed with her in that photograph played a vital role in shaping her into the player and person she had become, and they were all together in the same place once again — enjoying their shared love of the game that shaped them all.

This was just how it was for Morgan Paige and her family, how it always was.

*** 

Inside of the YMCA gym just minutes down the road from the Paige household, Morgan and Marcus battled.

Sweat dripped from their young foreheads as they both burned with motivation — for Morgan, to continue to assert her dominance as the older sibling and for Marcus, to finally prove himself. Since Morgan, at that point, still had a size advantage, she still had the upper hand, and she knew how to use it against her little brother.

Morgan would push Marcus’s buttons to the point where he could no longer bottle up his frustration — releasing his anger by kicking a ball or fouling his sister for no apparent reason.

“I was always the feisty, angry one,” Marcus said. “So I would make it no fun by being mean, you know, like pushing and shoving. But I mean, that’s kind of what makes it fun.”

To the outside observer, it was a “friendly” game of half-court one-on-one between two middle-school siblings, but to Morgan and Marcus, it might as well have been the Final Four.

“It would just get to the point where we’d have to stop,” Morgan said. “That’s the part I can really remember is just getting so physical that we had to be done. We’d have to call it, and then we wouldn’t talk to each other until dinner. It was so serious to us at that time.”

Despite their rivalry on the court, the Paige siblings had a bond. With Sherryl Paige coaching for the majority of their childhoods, the two quickly became buddies on the sidelines — dribbling the ball around as Mom coached.

Being only 15 months apart, they were almost inseparable from the beginning. Whether it was playing catch in the backyard or assuming the identities of Donatello and Michelangelo and fighting crime as ninja turtles, Morgan and Marcus shaped one another’s lives from an early age.

As they grew older and their individual basketball careers began to take off, eventually in separate directions, the bond only grew.

During the December of his freshman season at North Carolina — just a month into his Division-I basketball career —Marcus called his older sister, in need of advice and encouragement. He was struggling with his confidence after being thrown into a point guard position to replace Kendall Marshall, who had left North Carolina for the NBA after his sophomore season.

“[Marcus] is the type that doesn’t complain about anything,” Morgan said. “If he’s going through a rough time, you probably won’t know about it, but he called me [during his freshman season]. He just didn’t know why his shot wasn’t falling. He didn’t understand how to get guys to listen to him when he was that young and in that kind of leadership role. He just had no idea how to concept college basketball.”

So, recognizing his struggles, Marcus came to his sister. Although this was a problem that any member of the Paige family could address, he chose Morgan, who he had grown up alongside. He respected and trusted her opinion, knowing that she had been in his shoes just a couple of years before.

“I was in a transition period, and [Morgan] had already been through that situation,” Marcus said. “She just tried to keep my confidence up, tell me that everything was going to be fine and, you know, just being a good big sister like she was. That actually helped me relax and realize that I could just play basketball.”

Being the older sibling, especially after she graduated from Wisconsin, Morgan became a consistent mentor in Marcus’s life. She was there when hype began surrounding Marcus and the Tar Heels before Marcus’s junior season, and she was there after they fell to Duke — both times.

She was also there to keep him grounded. Amid all of the NBA hype with Marcus receiving praise from various sports outlets, Marcus was still her little brother. He was still the kid who wouldn’t eat his broccoli at dinner, the kid who still didn’t know how to do laundry and the kid who had just learned how to iron his clothes a month before. Above all, he was still her brother — the Michelangelo to her Donatello.

“We still talk all the time,” Morgan said. “It’s just really nice to be so close to my sibling. He’s the only one I got.”

***

It was Ellis Paige who usually broke up the fighting between Morgan and Marcus during one-on-one games at the Y.

Given his laid-back, mellow-mannered personality, Ellis was usually able to cool things down fairly quickly when needed. At one point, the physicality between the two siblings reached such a high level that Ellis, along with Sherryl, had to place a temporary ban on one-on-one games.

Despite the break, however, Ellis used the opportunity to develop other skills in his children, as he always did.

“When we did [break up the one-on-one games], it kind of led to a great opportunity for all of us to be involved,” Ellis said. “What we’d do is — since me and Ma we’re still kind of old school and we could still shoot the outside shot — it became a game of three-point shooting or full court, who could beat the other person in the backyard. For a long time, Ellis Paige was the best shooter until the kids became sophomores and juniors and then I had to retire.”

Ellis played basketball for Mount Mercy University in Cedar Rapids, Iowa during his college days — where he was inducted into the Mount Mercy Hall of Fame in 1997 and also where he met Sherryl in the mid-1980s. Like Sherryl, Ellis also had a background in coaching and was the primary teacher of skill work in the Paige family.

During Morgan’s high school days at Marion in particular, since Sherryl Paige was the head women’s basketball coach at Marion, Ellis would take Morgan to the gym after practice for skill work. Although she worked hard in those practices, Morgan always enjoyed those more light-mannered practices with her dad to balance out the intensity and focus of her mom.

“He’s the more chill [member] of our family, probably the most chill in regards to personality,” Morgan said. “He’s not as intense; he’s more laid-back. He rolls with the flow and easily adapts, but that’s because my mom is intense. They can’t both be intense; otherwise, we’d be having some problems.”

Ellis also played a significant role in Morgan getting the graduate assistant position at Iowa State — using the connections he’d developed through Marcus’s recruiting process to promote Morgan to the women’s basketball team. Because of the good relationship Ellis had created with Iowa State having gone through the recruiting process “the right way,” Morgan became Iowa State’s newest graduate assistant.

Outside of basketball, Ellis was the fun-loving dad that meshed perfectly with Morgan’s personality. The two discussed — and continue to discuss — the latest T.V. shows, movies and whatever else came to mind.

“My dad and I are very very close,” Morgan said. “He’s the funny one. We watch movies together all the time. He’s great. He makes me laugh more in a day than anybody.”

***

Morgan and Sherryl Paige locked eyes across the Marion High School gymnasium — player and coach, daughter and mother.

As they communicated to each other nonverbally amidst the varsity practice, Morgan had a decision to make. Either Sherryl Paige was her mother or her coach. In the gym, Sherryl was coach. At home after practice, Sherryl was Mom once again.

As long as that distinction remained, there was peace and harmony on both sides of the relationship, however, when Morgan decided to merge those two worlds during practice, she had to deal with the consequences.

“We only butted heads about one time, and it was during my freshman year,” Morgan said. “She was talking about some type of offense, and I asked a question when I probably shouldn’t have asked a question. She ran me for the rest of practice. In my head, I was thinking from a flat basketball standpoint rather than, ‘oh, that’s my mom,’ but that’s what it came across as to other people. So I had to find out that line was there.”

Outside of that one instance, however, Morgan and her mother clicked on and off the basketball court. According to Morgan, Sherryl had a way of coaching her where they both knew what each other were thinking all the time.

They had a mutual respect for one another. Morgan respected her mother’s intensity and passion for the sport of basketball and actively chose to play for her mother even though other options presented themselves. Sherryl respected Morgan earning a spot on her team and that she honored the coach-player relationship during their time in practice.

“It was easy,” Sherryl said. “I’ve heard people say, ‘I’d never want to coach my daughter,’ [but] it was one of the highlights of my coaching career was coaching Morgan.”

Due to their strong relationship on the court — growing up and through high school — the bond between Morgan and her mom was even stronger off of it. When Morgan left home for the first time to play for Wisconsin, she continued to call Sherryl each day either to pick her brain about college basketball or just discuss life.

The constant communication continued when Morgan traveled overseas to play professional basketball in Romania, although the nine-hour time difference made things difficult at times. When even just two or three days would pass without Morgan talking to her mom, Morgan would begin to get antsy.

“She’s my best friend,” Morgan said. “We talk every day. She’s somebody I can talk and ask questions to whether it’s coaching advice now or just basketball in general like the grind of the season. Anything you can think of, I can talk to her about it because she’s been through it to an extent. She’s the first person I go to whenever I have questions or concerns. She gets me through a lot of things.”

Since Sherryl was such a strong figure in Morgan’s life, Morgan strived to pursue a similar path to her mother. When Morgan returned home after her four months in Romania, she began substitute teaching at the local high schools, and, according to Ellis, “she was outstanding at it” — just like her mother.

“She’s the biggest role model that I have,” Morgan said. “She’s a testament to me, I think. I hope that I can be like her as I age. Already, people tell me I’m like my mother, which is a great sign.”

***

This past July, the Paige family returned to the family court — complete with the UNC logo on the right side of the court and the UW-Madison symbol on the left — for another game of family basketball.

Morgan doesn’t remember winning any of those games on that summer day, but for her, it didn’t matter. She was surrounded by the people she loved, the people who lived life alongside her, the people who were different from her, yet who still completely shaped her.

And there the family played on that half-court slab in Marion, Iowa, bonded together by the sport they all knew and loved.

That’s just how it is for Morgan Paige and her family, how it always will be.