The future: Yasmin Fuller
Yasmin Fuller's life is full of basketball — six or seven days a week — and the 11-year-old can't imagine not being able to have a ball in her hands.
"It wouldn't be fair, because girls should have as many activities as boys," she said, "and I love playing."
Fuller represents the future of girls basketball. She has never heard of Title IX, but she could be someone who comes to mind when the 40th anniversary of the legislation is celebrated in 2012, which would be the summer before her junior year in college.
She already stands about 5 feet 3 and wears a woman's 9-1/2 shoe, signs she could sprout to 5-9 or 5-10. She dribbles behind her back and between her legs and shoots three-pointers with amazing consistency. She's the only fourth-grader on a sixth-grade girls team that recently won a league championship.
"For her age, she's far ahead," said her coach, Buck Buchanan, who is the teen specialist at the Rotary Boys and Girls Club in Seattle.
Fuller also plays on boys teams and credits going one-on-one against her 6-2 brother, Justin Cook, for making her better. Cook, who will be a sophomore at O'Dea next fall, never takes it easy on her.
"He makes it difficult," she said.
Fuller, who started playing when she was 3, is a regular at Seattle Storm games and said Cynthia Cooper and Sue Bird are her favorite players. She has some deep basketball ties in the community. Her godmother is Joyce Walker. Joyce and Yasmin's mother, Melany, are good friends.
Yasmin already can dream about the pro-basketball life that Kate Starbird and Sue Bird are living. And if she gets the opportunity to follow in their footsteps, she makes one promise.
"I'll play my heart out," she said.
One way or another, basketball will remain a big part of her life.
"I have a dream," Yasmin said of playing pro basketball, "but if I don't make it, I'll start a career and be a coach."
Thanks to those before her who paved the way.