Rizzotti Family Grew Up Around Hoop

NEW FAIRFIELD, Conn. - Before the house was fully furnished, the most important work to be done was outside. The summer of 1989 had arrived, the Fourth of July was approaching, and the Rizzotti family was having a barbecue.

Their back yard, an important reason they chose this house not far north of Danbury, Conn., felt as if it stretched all the way to the sunset beyond the hills in the distance. There was more than enough room for any number of games in any number of sports. But at the end of this family's driveway, a house is not a home unless it has a hoop.

Four hundred fifty pounds of concrete later, in time for the Fourth, the pole Tom Rizzotti installed next to the garage supported a backboard that would chart the growth of his four children. From futile layups toward a distant rim to confident drives through traffic, progress was marked in the form of challenges, responses and competition, with their father in the middle of the games.

"I play a little dirty," Tom Rizzotti confessed as he sat recently at the kitchen table.

"They all play dirty," said Candice, the youngest, who was 8 when the concrete was first poured and is now a ninth-grader on the varsity basketball team at New Fairfield High. It's the same school where her sister's retired No. 22 jersey and memories of two state championships are displayed at the entrance to the gym.

There were also baseball games in the back, with one consistent theme. "I was always calling Jennifer out on the close plays," Tom Rizzotti said.

Inspiration and frustration

The father, who coached his children in youth-league games, recognized where Jennifer could go, a vision that combined inspiration and frustration. Carol Rizzotti, who now sits patiently and wrings her hands as she watches her children's games, focused on emotions and their impact. She remembered that when Jennifer was in sixth grade, she declared that she would save the family money by earning a scholarship to college.

Jennifer Rizzotti made good on her pledge, and before this senior season at the University of Connecticut, her competitiveness had become both a trademark and an example to the next generation of players. But her mother remembered when the intensity was a cause for concern, in the aftermath of a Junior Olympics multisport competition when Jennifer was 13.

The year before, in the 11- and 12-year-old age group, she had won a gold medal. This time, in the 13-14 group, she won the bronze. Later, Carol Rizzotti heard her daughter crying in the bathroom.

"She said: `I can't believe I won the bronze. Last year I won the gold,' " her mother remembered. "I said: `Jennifer, you're younger than everybody out there. Most of them are older than you and bigger than you. You got the bronze, and it's your first time trying. That's something to be proud of. You can't do this to yourself. Because if you keep doing this to yourself, you're going to burn out.' "

Expectation and concern

That has always been the tightrope Jennifer has walked, between expectation and concern. Tom, 23, and Jennifer, 21, the older of the four children, were handled more strictly than Gregory, now 19, and Candice, 14.

Years ago, when Jennifer threw a snowball that landed against Gregory's head, after her father had told her not to, father and daughter did not speak for several weeks until Jennifer decided to write a letter of apology. Even now, when family issues become too emotional to discuss, they are resolved with notes and letters, sometimes tucked under a bedroom door to be opened in the morning.

The Rizzotti home reflects the four years in Japan, spent there as part of Tom's job with IBM, from the homemade wooden compartments near the entrance where shoes are stacked, to the carefully carved furniture discovered on trips throughout Asia.

Carol unpacked an art project Jennifer completed in eighth or ninth grade and showed it to a visitor. It is a framed mold of Jennifer's face, her eyes gently closed. Some of the students chose to paint a clown's face, but Jennifer chose a starker image, half her face in black, the other in white, with tears coming down her cheeks.

The living room has one small framed picture of Jennifer during a basketball game. There is one other hint of basketball - the large calendar in the kitchen, beneath the clock and to the right of a telephone, with names and opponents and starting times of games.

Often, a scheduling conflict has meant that one parent would make the 88-mile drive to join a sellout at Gampel Pavilion, while the other would sit in less-crowded bleachers at an equally significant high-school or youth-league game.

In Jennifer's bedroom, where plaques from high school and college are arranged neatly on the walls, a framed picture of an unidentified young girl with pigtails beneath a baseball hat includes the words "Every Success Story Starts With a Kid Who Hated to Lose."

Goodbye night

Next to the bed, a small egg-shaped doll, called a Daruma, rests on a shelf. At first, a Daruma has two blank, white eyes until a wish is made and one of the eyes is filled in with black paint. Only when the wish comes true is the other eye painted black and the doll is made whole again. The doll in Jennifer Rizzotti's bedroom has two dark eyes.

The entry for Monday on the kitchen calendar - 730 JEN VILLANOVA H - held no indication of the emotion the evening inspired. It was senior night at Gampel Pavilion. The Big East tournament and first- and second-round National Collegiate Athletic Association games would follow at Gampel, but Monday was the night for formal goodbyes.

"After the next five games," Carol Rizzotti said recently, "there are faces, some of them I can put a name to and some of them I can't, and we'll never see them again."

But that Monday at Gampel, all the Rizzottis were there, Jennifer's brothers and sister sitting across from the Connecticut bench, her parents waiting to escort her to midcourt. At first, Jennifer sat with the other seniors, Kim Better and Jamelle Elliott. When the two others had been introduced, she sat alone.

Chris Dailey, the associate head coach, leaned over. "I thought you weren't going to cry," she said.

"I can't help it," Rizzotti answered.

"And then I thought I had no one to hug," Rizzotti remembered. "Kim got to hug me and Jamelle. Jamelle got to hug me."

A time for tears

The point guard turned to the coach.

"Will you hug me?" Rizzotti asked.

"Tell me when," Dailey said.

They embraced, and then Jennifer was between her parents, her left hand tucked inside her father's elbow, walking slowly to midcourt, where her coach, Geno Auriemma, struggled to hold himself together. For four minutes the applause came down, while over the public-address system, the voice of Natalie Merchant filled in the soundtrack.

". . . These are the days you might fill with laughter until you break/These days you might feel a shaft of light make its way across your face/And when you do you'll know how it was meant to be/See the signs and know their meaning . . ."

Rizzotti's lips were pressed together. Her eyebrows were arched, her eyes shiny. She saw the rare sight of tears on her father's cheeks. She ran from the center circle toward her brothers and sister, leaning over the courtside table as she hugged each one. Gregory tugged the bill of his cap as far down as he could, in a nearly successful effort to conceal his tears. He later remembered thinking, "It's my sister out there. It's me."

Their mother's highly anticipated tears had somehow been minimized for the occasion, until the night was over, and Jennifer had exited with a bouquet of flowers and a box of pizza. And once the family's return trip to New Fairfield was complete, Carol Rizzotti, safe at home, could finally cry for a long, long time.