GLENVIEW — By all accounts, the Glenbrook South girls basketball team is a close-knit group, but three of the players have an especially close bond.
“How many players get to be on the same team with their sibling?” Titans coach Steve Weissenstein asked. “Let alone with two siblings.”
The Weinman sisters — Carly, Catie and Carie — get to do just that.
“It’s a really good experience,” said Carie Weinman, a freshman and the youngest of the three. “We’ve never gotten to play on a team all together.”
That lack of formal basketball experience together hasn’t stopped the sisters from developing on-court chemistry together through park district leagues and pick-up games.
“We know where to pass to get each other open,” Carie Weinman said.
Even more important are their close personal relationships; there’s very little sibling squabbling between the three. “We really don’t fight, because we have such a close relationship,” said Carly Weinman, a senior.
“We all like the same things — we’ve played the same sports, have the same interests, like the same music and do the same things.”
That closeness has been key as Carie Weinman is the only one of the sisters in the starting lineup. She acts as one of the key playmakers for the Titans. After hitting a pair of 3s in the third quarter at home against New Trier on Friday, her play drew chants of, “She’s our freshman,” from the Glenbrook South student section.
“[Her sisters] are totally cool with it [Carie starting],” Weissenstein said. “They always root for each other — they just want whoever is on the floor to do well. They’re really the nicest kids you could ever have to coach.”
But if Carie Weinman is making a mistake, Carly Weinman and Catie Weinman, a junior, can connect with her in a way that other teammates might not be able to.
“They tell me how it is always. They don’t sugarcoat anything,” Carie Weinman said. “But they don’t treat me like a freshman; I’m not treated differently than anyone else.”
This first and only chance to play on a team with her sisters has been especially meaningful to Carly Weinman now that she’s begun the finial semester of her high school career.
“It’s more time that I get to spend with them before college,” said Carly Weinman, who plans to attend Illinois State in the fall. “[In choosing ISU] a major role was that I can just hop on a train really easily, and they can too, and we can see each other for the weekend.”
Jakub Rudnik 