Like Parents, Ayrault Twins 'Born to Play'
By
Tom Markowski
Special for Second Half
November 30, 2017
GROSSE POINTE WOODS – Kim Ayrault and her husband Andy were careful not to overly encourage their children to play sports, specifically basketball, the sport they played so well for so long.
But if their children did decide to play, they would teach them to play the right way and be there every step of the way.
Julia and Joe Ayrault, juniors at Grosse Pointe North, are the first set of twins born to Kim and Andy. Annabel and Adam are the second. Born nearly four years apart, all four play basketball and the younger pair play multiple sports.
The Ayraults are a family whose lives often revolve around practices and games, and driving to and from said events. It can be simultaneously rewarding and tiresome, and they wouldn’t have it any other way.
Kim recalls one of her first memories of Julia, a 4-year-old bouncing up and down the court.
“She went to the basket and scored,” Kim said. “Then she came back down with her ponytails flying and waving her hands up in the air, and I said to myself, no, no, no. I went up to her and said, you can’t do that. You can’t celebrate like that. She learned. She never did that again.
“She was competitive at that age. She was born ready to play.”
Julia Ayrault started bouncing a basketball just about the time she learned to walk. When her parents introduced her to the sport, she dove in head first and hasn’t looked back.
She tried soccer. That didn’t last. As a second sport she preferred baseball, but basketball was always first.
Julia and Joe, 16, both play varsity basketball and anticipate having more than just a good season. Their parents were also fine basketball players in the Pointes, Kim at North, Andy at Grosse Pointe South. The Ayraults’ other set of twins also play basketball, at Grosse Pointe Shores Our Lady Star of the Sea. Annabel and Adam are in the seventh grade and, yes, they’re good players, too. Annabel plays volleyball as well and Adam plays baseball. He was a member of the Grosse Pointe Shores/Woods Little League team that reach the World Series in Williamsport, Pa., this past summer.
After graduating from high school, the Ayraults began dating while playing basketball at Wayne State University. Andy was a junior, Kim (Reiter) a sophomore. Both had fine careers, both played four years and Andy went on to have a brief career professionally in Europe. The two are tall: Andy is 6-foot-7 and Kim is 6-foot, and, not surprisingly, their children are tall. Julia is 6-2, Joe 6-5.
It’s too early to tell, but Julia just might be the best. A three-year starter for longtime coach Gary Bennett, she has committed to Michigan State and is one of the state’s top players in the class of 2019. Bennett coached Kim in high school, and he first saw Julia play when she was in elementary school.
Andy has coached Julia, on and off but mostly on, since she started playing. Currently Andy is Bennett’s assistant coach. Andy also coached Julia at Star of the Sea and began coaching his two eldest children when they were in elementary school.
“From third to sixth grades I had her playing on the boys AAU team,” Andy said. “I used to put them on the same team because she was so good. In the seventh grade we switched out of AAU to the CYO (Catholic Youth Organization). Going on a weekend and playing four AAU games in one day wasn’t doing her any good. Playing two CYO games and practicing three days a week was better.
“Joe should have a breakout season. Julia had a breakout summer. She played more on the perimeter. She’s athletic enough to cover the post and take the ball to the rim.”
Andy has never stopped working with Julia, even if he wasn’t officially her coach. She developed a love for the game at an early age and Andy continued to teach, lending support as Julia’s game continued to improve.
“She blows our mind all the time,” Kim said. “We’ll say to each other later, did she really do that? When I watch, I see it from the stands and it’s a different look than what Andy sees. I’ll yell something at her during the game. Andy doesn’t like me doing that. I still do it.”
In addition to her playing basketball with the boys for three years, the athletically gifted Julia also played outfield and was a pitcher on a little league baseball team with her brother for two years. Also teaming up with Julia on that little league team was Evelyn Zacharias, one of Julia’s best friends and now a member of the North varsity basketball team as well.
One of Julia’s first memories of playing sports is a positive one.
“I remember when I was at Star of the Sea, we went a long way (in the playoffs),” she said. “It started to be a lot of fun. A lot of those girls who were on that team are at North with me. Evelyn and others. We have the memories.”
Kim and Andy have memories, too, and there are many more to come.
Right now, their lives are often discombobulated trying to give the four equal time. It’s a great goal in theory, but much more difficult to accomplish in reality.
A typical day will find Kim driving home after work as an elementary school teacher to pick up Julia from practice and get Adam to his game at Star of the Sea on time. One particular evening the MSU women’s team is playing the University of Detroit at Calihan Hall and Kim and Julia are going. Home by 10 p.m., there’s time for a snack before the good nights are said.
“People, many of our friends, tease us that we make them do this,” Kim said. “We’ve never done that.”
Kim keeps a schedule of all the comings and goings on a board hanging in the back of the house. She does it alone. She doesn’t trust anyone else to keep track.
Andy is in between jobs so his free time, if you can call it that, consists of completing Kim’s honey-do list.
“We were laughing the other day,” Kim said. “How did we do this before when (Andy) was working? I’m just trying to be patient.”
At the very least, 20 years of marriage will teach you that.
In addition to his work with Julia, Andy coaches Adam’s team at Star of the Sea, and he’s usually the one taking Julia and Joe on trips, whether it be sports-related or the occasional trip to check out a college campus.
Julia said with every member of the family involved in sports in one capacity or another, it helps keep them all together, at the dinner table, riding in a car or wherever.
“(Sports) is a big topic all of the time,” she said. “We have fun with it. We mess with each other.
“My dad has taught me a lot about the game. The biggest thing is to put others before yourself. My biggest thing is to get my teammates involved. Even if they’re not going to play in college, it should be a good experience for them. I try to make sure everyone has their role. I don’t want it to be about me.”
Tom Markowski is a columnist and directs website coverage for the State Champs! Sports Network. He previously covered primarily high school sports for the The Detroit News from 1984-2014, focusing on the Detroit area and contributing to statewide coverage of football and basketball. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) The Ayrault family, from left: Annabel, Adam, Andy, Kim, Julia and Joe; inset: Julia and Joe suiting up for Grosse Pointe North. (Middle) Julia and Joe celebrate a birthday together in 2012. (Below) Julia and her dad/assistant coach Andy anchor the right side of the team photo after last season’s District title win. (Photos courtesy of the Ayrault family.)
Performance: Mancelona's Eileene Naniseni
January 22, 2017
Eileene Naniseni
Mancelona senior – Basketball
The 6-foot-3 center has had a monumental impact on the Ironmen girls basketball program over the last four seasons, and recently reached an individual milestone as part of that team-elevating effort. Naniseni scored her 1,000th point (and 32 in the game) during her team’s 54-40 win over Fife Lake Forest Area on Jan. 11 to earn the Michigan Army National Guard “Performance of the Week.”
Mancelona had lost 41 straight games before Naniseni took the court for the varsity for the first time and helped the Ironmen to a streak-breaking win in the 2013-14 season opener. Her team is 6-6 this winter, but Mancelona won only four games both last season and in 2014-15 and led during the fourth quarter of four of this winter’s losses. Naniseni is averaging 21.5 points, 13.9 rebounds and 5.6 blocked shots per game making 51 percent of her shots from the floor – she has five triple-doubles over the last four seasons including two this winter. She’s approaching the MHSAA record book list in rebounds with 878 over her career, and her 332 career blocked shots already rank 12th all-time.
Naniseni – whose first name is pronounced “I-lee-nay” in nods to her maternal great-grandmother Eileene and her father’s Tongan roots – became the third in school history and first since 1996 to reach 1,000 points. She made the all-Ski Vally Conference first team last season after making the second team both of her first two seasons, and she also has earned all-league honors in volleyball and will compete again this spring in track & field running the 400 and participating in discus and high jump. She’s also built a 3.98 grade-point average in earning a basketball scholarship to Lake Superior State University, serving as a basketball team captain for three seasons in addition to providing leadership as well as part of National Honors Society, student council, the school’s peer leaders group and SAFE (Substance Abuse Free Environment).
Coach Ben Tarbutton said: “Eileene has been a great leader and captain for this basketball program. E is one of those players that every coach wishes everyone could be like on a team. Not because of her scoring or rebounding ability, but her determination in building this program up from multiple one or two-win seasons. This is why she has earned the leadership and captain role of the team over the last three years. This year has been one of the most fun years to coach. What is different about this year is we are beating teams that we have not beat in 10 years, and four of our six losses we were leading at one point in the fourth quarter. The only way this is possible is because of the senior group of Eileene Naniseni, Caitlin Ancel, and Jill Smigielski. … Without these three and the leadership of E, our season would not be where it is today. E is a leader in both academics and athletics. She is an individual that exemplifies what a student, athlete, and leader should look like for younger students to follow.
Performance Point: “We don’t normally get a lot of spectators for our games,” Naniseni said. “But the first thing I remember was more people in the stands, more in the student section than I’d seen the past three or four years playing. All my family and friends were there to watch me; that was awesome. And my teammates were so unselfish with the ball – I think I had to get 31 points (to get to 1,000), and whenever they’d get the ball they were thinking ‘E’. I think because it was so close, we wanted to push and get it that night.”
Transformer: “When I first came into (Mancelona) freshman year – I moved to this school in eighth grade (from Central Lake) – I wasn’t aware of how the varsity had been doing, and I didn’t even understand how much that (streak) was until we won our first game. Now that we look back on it, these last couple of years we haven’t been super successful, but I notice right now, I know I’m making an impact. I see it at the younger ages. We do these camps every year … and when I started out there would be two eighth graders or five seventh graders, but this past year the seventh and eighth grade teams have 38 together, and the JV has 12 (players). I want people to get more excited about girls basketball. I want Mancelona to keep growing and progressing. My sophomore year we had six or seven on the varsity team, so it was hard; this year we have nine girls, so that’s the most interest I’ve ever seen and it makes me excited.”
More to accomplish: “We wanted to win more games than in the past, and we’ve already achieved that. We recently beat Onaway and Joburg (Johannesburg-Lewiston), which we hadn’t beaten in 12-15 years. We want to beat them again and beat teams that we’ve been underdogs to for years and that no one expects us to beat. I can tell (from opponents) when we’re warming up that because they’re playing Mancelona, they think it’s going to be an easy win. But I want them to be surprised … because they always underestimate us.”
Born to lead: “When I was a freshman, I had a really good art teacher who really was into leadership stuff, and the athletic director then let me go to a lot of leadership programs. Those definitely helped shape my leadership qualities and opened my eyes to what a leader should be, and I took a lot of notes. I try to be trustworthy and always try to work hard too – the captain of the team is expected to work hard – and if someone has questions they need to ask or if they need to confide in you, you can listen, but be strong too; you can’t be a pushover. When I was younger, I guess my confidence level, I didn’t realize how much that played a role in being a leader. … I want to build confidence in my teammates to show them that they are good players.”
Dr. Naniseni: “I would like to be a pediatric oncologist, or really anything in pediatrics because I love children. I think I’ll go into biology when I get up to Lake State; I’ve thought about being a teacher, but my family always has been medical-related, and the medical field fascinates me. I like how if (people) are hurting, you can give them something and make them better. That blows my mind sometimes.”
- Geoff Kimmerly, Second Half editor
Every week during the 2016-17 school year, Second Half and the Michigan National Guard will recognize a “Performance of the Week" from among the MHSAA's 750 member high schools.
The Michigan Army National Guard provides trained and ready forces in support of the National Military Strategy, and responds as needed to state, local, and regional emergencies to ensure peace, order, and public safety. The Guard adds value to our communities through continuous interaction. National Guard soldiers are part of the local community. Guardsmen typically train one weekend per month and two weeks in the summer. This training maintains readiness when needed, be it either to defend our nation's freedom or protect lives and property of Michigan citizens during a local natural disaster.
Previous 2016-17 honorees:
Jan. 12: Rory Anderson, Calumet hockey – Read
Dec. 15: Demetri Martin, Big Rapids basketball – Read
Dec. 1: Rodney Hall, Detroit Cass Tech football – Read
Nov. 24: Ally Cummings, Novi volleyball – Read
Nov. 17: Chloe Idoni, Fenton volleyball – Read
Nov. 10: Adelyn Ackley, Hart cross country – Read
Nov. 3: Casey Kirkbride, Mattawan soccer – Read
Oct. 27: Colton Yesney, Negaunee cross country – Read
Oct. 20: Varun Shanker, Midland Dow tennis – Read
Oct. 13: Anne Forsyth, Ann Arbor Pioneer cross country – Read
Oct. 6: Shuaib Aljabaly, Coldwater cross country – Read
Sept. 29: Taylor Seaman, Brighton swimming & diving – Read
Sept. 22: Maggie Farrell, Battle Creek Lakeview cross country – Read
Sept. 15: Franki Strefling, Buchanan volleyball – Read
Sept. 8: Noah Jacobs, Corunna cross country – Read
PHOTOS: (Top) Eileene Naniseni, dribbling, works to get past a defender. (Middle) Naniseni, middle, holds up with teammates a banner celebrating her 1,000th point after reaching the milestone Jan. 11 against Fife Lake Forest Area. (Photos by Joanie Moore/JoanieMoore.com.)