COLUMBUS, Ohio — There’s a lightning bolt tattooed behind Ohio State point guard Sammy Prahalis’ left ear lobe, a heart behind the right.
Her left wrist is inked with flames that become visible as she grabs a right-handed rebound and pivots left, the open court serving as a canvas for the most creative player in the women’s game.
She narrows her eyebrows and pushes the ball at full speed, hesitating only near the top of the opposite 3-point arc before proceeding. She disarms one defender with a pass fake to the corner, takes two bounding steps — first right, then left — and finishes her rim-to-rim run with a wraparound delivery to forward Ashley Adams for an easy layup.
The crowd alights in approval. It is one of four assists for the Long Island product on Senior Night at Value City Arena. Two thousand fans hold sticks with images of her smile; 11 students wear white T-shirts that spell out THANK YOU #21. She scores 42 points — a school record — exits to a standing ovation and leaves Ohio State coach Jim Foster, a Vietnam veteran, with glassy eyes and a quivering lower lip.
“Thank you for putting up with my crazy self,” she says.
Prahalis, a vexing, volatile contrarian, fancies herself a modern-day Pistol Pete Maravich, emptying a bottomless bag of tricks to lead the conference in points per game (20.1), assists (6.3) and minutes played (37.6). As she readies for the NCAA tournament, she slaps the ball past defenders, slips no-look passes to teammates and slaloms down the lane. A high-wire act in low-top sneakers, she suspends her shooting hand after made baskets and lifts her right index finger — tattooed with “Shh…” — following electric plays.
“I don’t know that there’s anyone like her out there,” says Dave Richardson, the team’s strength coach. “You’re talking about a 5-foot-6, 120-pound white girl who will literally change her stride to step on someone’s hand who is lying on the floor.”
Her antics don’t amuse her opponents. While a senior at Commack High on Long Island in 2008, opposing fans at Walt Whitman threw Skittles at Prahalis, who pranced across the court. In Iowa this year, irate Hawkeye supporters booed every time she touched the ball. When she came out of the tunnel at Penn State on Feb. 20 a fan held up a photograph of her crying after a 10-turnover performance in the 2010 NCAA tournament and requested her signature. She has been obscenely heckled.
“Twenty percent of the world didn’t like Mother Teresa, either,” Foster says.
Prahalis is tempered by Foster, a 63-year-old head coach who tended bar during his first two years in the profession, and Debbie Black, a wild-eyed assistant who was dubbed “The Tasmanian Devil” during a professional stint Down Under. Together they tightened the reins on the precocious Prahalis, convincing her to exchange flavor for efficiency. In turn, they stunned the status quo. Prahalis has a 2:1 assist-to-turnover ratio.
“There are days you want to strangle her and there are days you want to hug her,” says Black, who played under Foster at St. Joseph’s. “I get her and I love her.”
Her evolution has been highly visible. She is a natural blonde who dyed her long locks, typically tied into a ponytail that stretches down to her waist, jet black during her freshman year of high school and painted her nails black from then on.
“It adds a little mystery,” she says.
Her motivation, never lacking, is needled into her skin. It is a tattoo scripted in Latin by the crook of her right arm. It reads:
Oderint, dum metuant.
The translation is trash talk.
Let them hate, so long as they fear.
***
Warning signs abound. Atop a shelf inside Prahalis’ childhood bedroom on the second floor of the family’s home midway down a dead end street in Dix Hills, L.I., a wooden board emblazoned with white lettering lies against the lavender wall.
Nobody gets in
to see the wizard
Not nobody,
not no how!
Her magic first manifested itself behind a facemask. At 6, she asked her father, John, head of the local Police Athletic League, if she could play football. At 11, she wore eye black and scampered ahead of all chasers for five touchdowns in one game. She finished the season with 21, then doubled down on defense. From her linebacker assignment she broke through blocks to claim marquee status in the Monster 52 scheme.
“She was our monster,” John Prahalis says.
As tailback, she took the ball on a toss and exploded through defenders, but she discovered her match in an opening near the goal line at South Shore. Prahalis absorbed the handoff and sped toward the end zone. The opposing linebacker closed quickly. She dropped her shoulder; he dropped his. He got lower and leveled her.
“I’m glad she got up,” says her father, who played football in college at Villanova. “Two trains collided.”
She did not play the next year.
“I got more girly,” she says.
Her elusiveness carried over to basketball. By seventh grade she started on the Commack High varsity, but tutorials extended to the North Babylon Town Hall’s annex. Jerry Powell, a basketball junkie with a growing skills academy, welcomed her inside the wood-panelled walls and drilled her on ball handling, asking her to dribble through her legs while simultaneously catching another basketball with her free hand.
“She was raw meat,” he says. “I added seasoning.”
Powell played matchmaker, too. He recommended her to Apache Paschall, head of the Exodus AAU program based out of a Lower East Side gym.
They toured playgrounds, visiting Rucker in Harlem and the caged-in court at West Fourth and Sixth Avenue for runs. She accepted all challenges, squaring off against men who underestimated her and older women who left their children in strollers on the sidelines to go against Prahalis.
“There’s no better feeling than when you show no fear,” says Nancy Lieberman, a legend who played Rucker as “Lady Magic.”
“They respect her for that.”
No matter the stage, electricity coursed through her exchanges with Paschall. In one game, Prahalis, being pressured by guards, yelled, “Apache, do something!”
He insisted she protect herself. Tough love defined their time together. When team members messed around past midnight at a hotel, he had them run wind sprints around the outside at 2 a.m. while he sat in a chair. When the girls failed to perform well, he had them stand in the parking lot with their hands over their heads.
“I wanted to kill him,” Prahalis says.
Her coach at Commack, Dennis Conroy, offered a calmer influence. He allowed her liberties, maintaining that, “You don’t make Picasso a house painter.” Conroy let her wear headphones during warmups.
Before a game against rival Northport she appeared in a shirt that read: “Hi Haters.” The next time they played it said, “I LOVE NORTHPORT.”
Conroy’s mailbox was flooded with complaints, but recruiting letters came in greater quantity, including from Foster. Known for his work with forwards and centers, Foster insisted that he would fashion his offense around Prahalis and implement a running style. Rival recruiters questioned such a promise to Prahalis, but he persisted, even though his attempts to reach Prahalis by phone proved futile. She rarely answered and he grew familiar with her ringtone, which played Alicia Keys.
“I almost began to enjoy it,” he says.
She preferred to lock herself in a gym or her bedroom. There, three walls are papered with photos of NBA players. Next to a mirror is the 2005 schedule for the AND1 Mixtape Tour. She insists street ball was but a phase.
“I ain’t no circus,” she says. “I want to win.”
Sleep comes beneath a makeshift crucifix taped to the wall. She lays her head on a pillow embroidered with the beginning of a confession.
Dear Santa,
I can explain…
***
On April 10, 2011, a message appeared on Prahalis’ Facebook page.
The author began the note with an introduction. Her name was Hannah, and she was 14 years old.
“I just wanted to let you know how you helped me get through the hardest time of my life ...” Hannah and her father bonded over the brassy brand of basketball practiced by Prahalis. The first time they saw her play, Hannah memorized a move, ran to the driveway and reenacted the sequence. The sessions ended once the cancer in her father's esophagus metastasized.
A clot developed in his brain; he died on Thanksgiving 2009.
“… I became a depressed, angry mess. The only thing that could make me even remotely happy was playing basketball and watching you play. You kind of kept me sane and prevented me from hurting myself ”
Prahalis brightened Hannah’s darkness with an in-person visit after a game, encouraging her to reach out if necessary, but Prahalis also fought her own demons. Following a loss to Minnesota during which she had more turnovers (five) than assists (four) on Jan. 15, 2009, she left the arena without a coat as snow fell. She walked across campus to her dorm, eschewing calls from her parents who had attended the game.
“Steam came from her ears,” her father says.
Tears flowed as Prahalis encountered true loss on Jan. 3. She was driving in her car when she received a phone call from Exodus teammate and future Buckeye Lisa Blair. Blair was crying hysterically.
Paschall, who was being treated for skin cancer, had suffered a fatal heart attack. Prahalis flew home for the funeral.
“I can hear his voice now yelling at us,” she says. “I miss him.”
She memorialized him on her socks, but it was her style that grew after returning to the team. Her game magnetized the Midwest. During an autograph session, one middle-aged man, there with his wife, announced himself as her biggest fan. He had driven 176 miles from Indianapolis to be there. A mother of an Ohio girl approached her father.
“All my daughter does is write papers in school about Sammy,” she said.
There is schoolwork left to do. Foster has graduated every player he’s coached in his 34-year career, but Prahalis is 10 classes short of a degree in criminal justice.
“You just hope the bird can fly,” Black says.
***
Once a loner, Prahalis is now a trendsetter. Sarah Wynn, an Ohio State junior, never played basketball but grew interested after watching Prahalis. She now paints her nails black, but decided getting one of the same tattoos would be too much. On Senior Night, Wynn led the chants for Prahalis as they serenaded the prancing assassin.
“We love you, we love you, we love you, and where you go we’ll follow, we'll follow cause we support Sammy, Sammy, Sammy.”
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