Angie's second shot

By Trent Makela / Leader Staff

It has been said that basketball is a child's game. The tight snap of Angie Redstar's jumper argues the need for proper aging. The round face of the 29-year-old mother of two still shines with excitement as she talks about being the oldest player for the Salish Kootenai College Lady Bison.

"Every day I tell those girls they should be running all around me. I'm 10 years older than they are," Angie said. "I tell them that as I run by."

Angie's ability to still play the game competitively often takes a back seat to questions about why she is playing. Her team does not receive scholarships or belong to an organized conference. Daily practices were held at local high schools, sometimes 30 miles away, before her school opened their own gymnasium this season. Playing seems an unnecessary migraine for a single parent.

Angie already has her hands full at home. Daughter Jordan, nine, is a chatterbox who carries herself with a familiar confidence as she glides through the family's student-housing apartment on her Heelys. She wears a tattered grey sweatshirt from a tribal basketball tournament that ended far before her life began. "She's the happy-go-lucky one of all of us," Angie sighs.

Her son Tremayne, seven, is as barrel-chested as his shyness will allow. He hides big smiles and pouty cheeks behind a thick tangle of black hair he refuses to either cut or braid. "He's my momma's boy," she jabs, earning a scowl. Angie's life began on Washington's Colville Indian Reservation. She lived with her mother and four siblings outside of a town of barely 200 residents called Nespelem. One of her earliest memories is her brother nailing the bent carcass of a bicycle rim to the tin wall of the family's trailer. Gutted of it's spokes by sheer force, the first basketball rim on Charlie Williams Road stood eyeball-high and jagged.

"I was just five or six and if I wanted to come outside and play, my brother would make me shoot with form from right in front of the rim," Angie said, still sounding exhausted from the repetition. "I'd do it over and over again all day. If I said 'Brother, I don't want to shoot from here anymore' then he'd send me back inside. That's how I started to play basketball."

Eight houses sat along the road's two-mile length. The gravel strip carried more social baggage than bus-rides for the "Charlie Williams kids." On "the other side of town from everything," they learned to stick together.

Angie's best friend Morgan and future-husband Erik lived on the road, and shared the dirt court. Afternoons outside were followed by cherry-picking with her mother.

"I didn't know that was a job," Angie said. "Then, I'd wake myself up for school because she was at her other job. I look at her as a single mother with five kids and I don't know she did it."

Angie struggled in high school, but kept her grades up so she could play ball.

"I hated school back then," she said. "I only did what I had to. My homework needed to be done early so I could go on trips, so I'd do it real fast."

She had also begun to briefly experiment with drugs and alcohol.

"Right after that my sister was killed by a drunk driver," Angie said. "It put a toll on my life, I guess. I said to hell with drinking and I haven't touched it since."

Despite her struggles, Angie gained attention from colleges. Hoping to get an offer, she worked to pay for several basketball camps. When she was named the MVP of one camp, she was offered a full scholarship to Columbia Basin Junior College on the spot.

"We didn't have to pay for anything there. We were even given a stipend for shoes," Angie said. "I got a 4.0 my very first year of college."

Near the end of her first season, Angie found out she was pregnant with Jordan. Her boyfriend, Erik, was still a high school senior. The coaches told her she could come back to school.

"I didn't finish my quarter. I didn't finish another assignment. I just went home," Angie said. "I was just another statistic. I didn't have a future. I was just pregnant."

The couple married shortly after. Erik couldn't find work. Eventually, he left to join the military.

Two years later, Tremayne was born on a base in Walton Beach, Fla. Erik was assigned to Iraq and Angie struggled through a third pregnancy.

"I was alone with two kids on a military base and I didn't know anybody. There were all these new rules you had to follow there," she said. "Eight months into it his heart stopped. I think it was the stress."

Angie struggled with the loss and a councilor advised the couple to stay close when they moved to Washington.

"I just wanted to be with my mom," she said. "In our ways I couldn't leave the house for a month. People would see me and start having heartache for me and it brings even more to me."

After a month, Angie finally left to watch Erik play basketball at the community center. She shot around with him and began to travel to his tournaments. Soon she joined a traveling team herself.

"After losing something so close, you can drown in sorrows or pick yourself up," she said. "I guess I needed basketball. I felt strong enough to do whatever."

The couple ignored the councilor, spending most of their time apart. They started having serious problems and Angie filed for divorce.

Experiencing rejection for the first time on Charlie Williams Road, she began talking with her brother's ex-wife in Pablo.

"She sent me an application and told me it would do me good," Angie said. "I filled mine out, but it took my best friend Morgan about a month. We didn't want to make $11 an hour for the rest of our lives, so we sent them in together."

Two days after Angie's divorce was finalized, Morgan and her boyfriend were in a drunk-driving accident that killed them both. The following day her acceptance letter arrived from SKC.

After Morgan's funeral, Angie and her kids left for Pablo.

"I remember when I first came down Polson Hill and saw the lake. Coming from where I come from and seeing those mountains still snow-capped … I was still going through the gruesome stage of the heartache," she said. "It was beautiful."

Angie excelled in school (at least a 3.2 GPA every quarter), joined the basketball team and saw her efforts intersect at the 2007 AIHEC competitions in Rapid City S. D. She spent a week winning the business bowl competition with her classmates, before staying a second week to win the basketball championship. She was the team's second-leading scorer.

"That really gave me confidence to see Erik's friends and shake their hands," Redstar said. "I couldn't have made it alone three years ago. I hope I can be a role model for these girls on the team and inspire them. Don't let this old lady school you up on the court, though."