Sisters Fishing For Hoops Title Of Any Variety

Court 15 in your Hoopfest program: “Female adult, miscellaneous ages.”

Oh. The Fran Drescher division.

Our introduction to Court 15 was this conversation, initiated by a 20-something player to the winners of the consolation final.

“I hear you’re all over 40,” she said.

“Not me,” chirped the only person playing Hoopfest in ankle-length black lycra. “I’m 35.”

“Well, you look great.”

“It’s Oil of Olay.”

“I’ve got to start using that.”

Our farewell to Court 15 was the second championship game - double-elimination, remember - being voluntarily forfeited by the losers of the first championship game, who apparently felt they’d stumbled into Tyson-Holyfield III. This concession was to the immense relief of the court monitor, who not only felt play had grown too rough but had a water bottle windmilled at his head by a testosterfool from the sidewalk who felt play wasn’t rough enough.

Yes, Court 15 had a little of everything.

And a lot of the Greene sisters of Lapwai, Idaho, and the waters of the Columbia.

That would be Ethel, Barbara, Kerma and Scherri in chronological order from 46 down to 37 and in their fourth Hoopfest, finishing third for the second year running.

Not that a 17,854-player party is the biggest basketball deal in their lives.

They have a tournament of their own.

You see, the Greene sisters used to be their own starting five, following the trail of Indian tournaments across the Northwest. But in 1991, the second oldest - Mary - died from a heart attack, just two years after the death of a brother, Mike.

And for a time after that, the Greenes didn’t play much ball.

“There was a lot of family stuff going on,” recalled Scherri, whose married name is Sotomish. “Finally, we decided we needed to do something again. So this brought us all together.”

It started with Hoopfest and culminated with the Greene Memorial Basketball Tournament - an over-30-only invitational for both men and women, a tribute to their deceased siblings.

Why just over-30s?

“Because we want a chance to win,” said Kerma. “And we’ve never won yet. We give first and second-place jackets away and we’ve never even got a jacket.”

Sheesh. Haven’t they ever heard of home cooking?

“We feed all the players both days,” said Scherri.

Uh, no, what we meant was … never mind.

“We keep it over-30 because it’s a memorial,” said Scherri. “The over-30s remember our brother and sister when they played. They played with them.”

Or fished with them.

Every spring, Jesse Greene - who now goes by his given name of Ip-Soos-Nute - and Loretta Half-moon yanked their kids out of school in Lapwai and moved them to Rufus, Ore., where they pulled salmon out of the Columbia River upstream and down of John Day Dam. Then they’d start the next school year in Oregon until the end of fishing, and move back to Lapwai.

This is why their Hoopfest team is the River Rats. They’re Nez Perce, one of the four treaty tribes with rights to fish the Columbia. Scherri lives in Rufus - where the family tournament is played - and works as an outreach coordinator with the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Council. Kerma and Barb work for the tribe in Lapwai, while Ethel completes work on a masters degree at EWU.

They’ve followed the salmon and played ball since they were kids.

Now they find themselves in the only division in Hoopfest in which players not only have to score, defend and rebound, but also scold their children to sit down, be still and you-don’t-know-where-that’s-been.

“Barb and Kerma don’t have any kids,” said Scherri. “They just holler at ours.”

Sometimes they holler at each other, too - as on Saturday, when Scherri blew a game after play fell behind schedule and then caught up. That diverted the River Rats into the losers’ bracket, though Scherri was forgiven when her outside shot returned for the next game.

“She went to the mall,” Kerma charged. “Tell the truth.”

And they’ve been known to chide younger opponents - young enough to be their kids, in some cases - for calling fouls too freely.

“When we started here, girls used to cry foul, foul, foul,” said Kerma, whose plain-spoken diplomacy is always delivered with a glowing smile. “But we’re just used to playing that rough. It’s gotten a lot better.”

Well, no one’s going to convince Court 15’s runners-up.

But it’ll remain entertaining as long as the Greene sisters keep showing up.

“Oh, always,” said Kerma. “As long as we can make Ethel last. And if that comes out in the paper, Scherri said it.”

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review