Ex-Butler basketball standouts Avery and Makenna Maier shared a court one last time — as college rivals
Math has been the common link between daughters and mother in the Maier household. Basketball with their dad.
Avery and Makenna Maier, former Butler girls basketball standouts who played for their father, Mark, for four years each, got the chance to share the court one more time Saturday, Jan. 10, at Westminster College, where Makenna’s St. Vincent Bearcats visited Avery’s Titans.
“I think it’s kind of a full-circle moment, in a way,” Makenna said in the days leading up to the game.
Makenna is a senior with the 8-4 Bearcats, a starting forward for the second year in a row hoping to lead St. Vincent to the Presidents’ Athletic Conference tournament. Avery is a freshman wing for the 4-8 Titans fighting for playing time.
The Maier clan descended on Westminster College’s campus — parents, aunts, uncles and Butler former teammates — hoping to see the two play their first and only game against each other.
The Maiers got their wish.
Makenna scored 12 points and grabbed six rebounds in a 73-39 win over Westminster, and Avery played a career-high 10 minutes and had three rebounds. The siblings even faced each other head-to-head a few times, and Avery committed a shooting foul on her older sister and "Avery claimed good defense," Mark texted after the game (Makenna made both free throws).
“(I hope) Makenna has 25 points and Westminster wins,” Avery said earlier in the week when asked what the perfect scenario would be in her mind.
“I think in terms of conference play and the PAC, it’s just another game to that aspect. But knowing that one of the other people closest to me is on the other team has a little more meaning,” Makenna said. “We shared the court hundreds of times, me, her and my dad.”
Makenna was three grades ahead of Avery growing up. Avery tagged along to AAU and varsity games as much as possible, and Makenna served as a de facto assistant coach on Avery’s AAU team that Mark coached for a summer and surprised her younger sister on Avery’s senior night last year. The two played one year together at Butler, but like this season, Avery was a freshman fighting for playing time — she also battled injury much of the year.
The sisters have been playing basketball since about the second grade.
While they could get competitive at times guarding each other in practice growing up, the family was not divided in the weeks leading up to the game and Avery and Makenna didn’t talk trash.
The only conflict was which family members would wear Bearcats green and yellow and which would wear Titans blue.
The family crossed their fingers in the days leading up to the game that they’d both get to share the court together for at least a possession or two. But the basketball lifers didn’t want special treatment from the coaching staffs.
“Obviously, selfishly, we’d like both to play against each other and match up,” Marks said of what he hoped to see. “A good, competitive game.”
While the sisters share basketball with their dad, they got math brains from their mom, Jill.
Makenna is studying data science and plans to be a secondary education math teacher after graduation, and Avery is also majoring in math.
Mark joked they long ago passed him in math when he’d try to help with their homework as kids.
But Saturday gave them all one more time to be in a gym together in a competitive environment.
Years of chasing each other around from one AAU practice to another, from WPIAL section games to playoff games, and breaking up scuffles when Avery would guard Makenna just a little too hard in a meaningless open gym practice culminated in Saturday’s head-to-head.
“It’s a joy watching them play and watching them succeed,” Mark said. “And even if they play and don’t succeed, it’s just watching them grow up and play the game they loved, and here it is 15 years later ... it’s crazy how fast it goes.”
