South Royalton
“Actually, looking back on to baby pictures, Sarah and I had basketballs in our hand when we were little kids,” Sophie Howe said following the Wildcats’ practice on Monday afternoon.
“Before we could even talk, we had basketballs you could dribble around the house and throw around at each other, throw around with my dad. … My dad’s always loved the game, so I think it’s just carried on with us.”
Pete Howe played basketball at South Royalton School — WRVS’s predecessor — and graduated in 1981 with 1,219 career points. He went on to coach at SoRo, where one of his players was his son, Nicholas Howe, who graduated in 2017 with 1,361 career points.
Sarah now leads the Wildcats (6-5) in scoring with 10.3 points per game, and Sophie is second with 9.2. Their chemistry together is undeniable.
“Something we’re known for, ‘It’s a twin thing,’ I guess with Sarah and I,” Sophie Howe said. “We play on the court together extremely well, we read each other well, we always know where we are on the court without having to tell each other, so it’s just kind of something that we’ve always been used to.”
Sophie said the two sisters can be hard on each other at times in the name of getting better, but she downplayed the notion of a sibling rivalry.
“I guess you could say sometimes there’s a little bit of, ‘Sophie you need to do this; Sarah you need to do that,’ ” she said. “But other than that, we just kind of go with it.”
WRVS coach Tim Perreault likes what he’s seen out of the dynamic duo.
“They’re both individuals, of course,” Perreault said. “But they’ve both got the passion for sports; very driven. They’ve been playing since they were little kids, and they play AAU together; they go to the summer league games together. Their dad’s name is up there, Pete Howe, (among the) 1,000-point scorers, their brother’s name is (up there), so it’s ingrained in them to play basketball. And they just go, go, go.
“I told Sarah, ‘I don’t want to put this pressure on you, but you’re kind of like our quiet leader.’ … We don’t have captains, but as she goes we kind go, and if she’s getting fired up and having a good game, it kind of makes us all get up and (get) going.”
Added Sophie Howe: “(Sarah’s) really invested in the game. She loves the game. She’s always watching basketball, always watching videos, always has a basketball in her hand when she’s not playing.”
Both Howe girls play on an area AAU hoops team coached by their father. Sarah also plays AAU for Lone Wolf Athletics, which is based in Colchester, Vt.
Perreault is back on the varsity sidelines after completing a 10-year stint at Whitcomb in 2007. He continued to coach basketball after stepping down from the Hornets job.
“I got done because at the time I was a full-time (phys ed) teacher, I was the athletic director, I taught driver ed after school and I was a varsity coach,” he said. “My son was going into third grade and they needed an elementary coach, so I was like, ‘Well, good time for me to put more time into my family.’ ”
Perreault coached his son for several years, and later his daughter, before he was chosen for the inaugural Wildcats job.
When the team came together for its first practice in the fall, the veteran bench boss distributed small mirrors along with instructions.
“ ‘The first time that you have any kind of an inclination of a problem, first thing you’re going to do is look in that mirror,’ ” he said to the Wildcats. “ ‘Who can take care of this? …’
“Kids sometimes, they bring the mirror out and set it out here during practice or they bring it to the bench with them on game days and they just kind of remember it. And we kind of talk about an ‘I-check:’ What can I do to take care of the situation and not let it get blown up? I told them, ‘You’re the first one in line, then you’ve got an issue, then you come to me.’ ”
The Wildcats, who have scored 440 points so far this season while allowing 435, are currently sixth in the VPA Division III standings. They host undefeated D-IV leader Blue Mountain (9-0) tonight in a game postponed by Tuesday’s snow.