Brooke Burns still has fond memories of the first time she defeated her brother in a game of one-on-one basketball, but it appears she learned more from the times she lost.
“When we finished playing, I knew what I did wrong and would always go work on those things throughout the week and be ready for the next time we played,” Burns said Wednesday. “Just being competitive improved my game a lot.”
The 5-foot-10 freshman from Gadsden City, Ala., is one of five true freshmen on the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball roster and hopes to make an impact for the Mocs in her first season with the program. She’s off to a good start – she averaged nine points while making seven of her nine 3-point attempts during a five-day, three-game trip to Canada in August.
But it was in her driveway playing games against her brother Zack and father Stewart that her skill really began to develop. Her training regimen grew – she has an eight-minute video on YouTube of one of her workouts that includes weight training, dribbling drills and shooting – and she got better, to the point she was beating her brother by the time she was “14 or 15.”
“I was really excited (when I first beat him),” she said, “but I’m also pretty sure he humbled me soon after that.”