If all had gone as planned, Bridget and Maggie Kloak would be playing basketball for Trinity and there would be a nice, fuzzy, warm story about the twin sisters.
But plans often go awry. So what we have are 17-year-old twins who live in the same house but play basketball for different high schools–and fierce rivals.
Maggie Kloak is a 6-foot senior at Fenwick. Bridget, who was born a minute later, is a 5-10 senior at Trinity, just across the border from Oak Park in River Forest.
“Everyone thinks it’s odd,” Maggie Kloak said.
Odd, it may be. But this isn’t the first time twins have separated and competed for rival girls basketball teams. In the mid-1990s, Kathleen Houtsma decided to attend St. Ignatius, twin sister Megan went to Mother McAuley and they wound up guarding each other on court.
As Bridget tells it, the Kloaks were going to be one happy family at Trinity. That’s where their mother, who was Rosemary Hendricks when she attended the school in the early 1970s, was a basketball star. She still owns the school’s single-game scoring record of 47 points.
“She wanted to go to Trinity,” Bridget said of Maggie. “We both did.”
But brother Dan, who played basketball at Fenwick and was a senior at the time, had other ideas. He suggested to Maggie that she visit the school. The result? “She liked it,” Bridget said.
There was no rivalry freshman year. Maggie wound up being brought up to Fenwick’s varsity and joining the Friars for a run to the Class AA championship game–a loss to unbeaten Naperville Central and Candace Parker. Bridget didn’t even try out for Trinity’s team.
“I was a cheerleader,” she said.
With the urging of her father, Richard (a Brother Rice alum), Bridget went out for basketball as a sophomore and joined the varsity at the end of the season.
They never faced each other until February’s Class AA sectional final, won by Fenwick 69-61.
“We had to guard each other,” Bridget said. “It was tense.”
Bridget said it was “kind of disappointing” to lose but remembers what happened when the girls lined up after the game to offer the ubiquitous “good game” to each other.
“We kind of smiled and laughed at each other,” Bridget said.
Fenwick and Trinity are not scheduled to play during the regular season, so the only time they might face each other this season would be in the state playoffs.
While their uniforms may not be alike and Maggie has that 2-inch height advantage, the twins share plenty–including clothes, the music of Dashboard Confessional and Ben Folds, sarcasm (according to Maggie) and even torn ACLs.
And they share a bond.
“We’re best friends,” Bridget said.
That warm and fuzzy enough?
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asutton@tribune.com
