The Chicago Bulls are not the only champs in town. Chicago's Lady Commandos, Marshall High School's girls basketball team, have won even more games than the Bulls in the past 20 years. And with no losses so far this season, they could be on their way to a seventh Illinois state championship.
Like the Bulls, the Lady Commandos also have a star player with the initials M.J. But forward Marshalla Johnson, 15, has a schedule that would wear out even Michael Jordan. Her mom died last year. Now Marshalla lives with her grandmother. She wakes up at 4:45 a.m. every weekday to take her 3-year-old twin brothers to day care. Then she goes to practice and to classes. Next she does her homework, practices again and picks up the twins.
Marshalla isn't the only player who's had to rebound from trouble at home. Marshall High is in a rough neighborhood. Almost half its students never graduate. But the Lady Commandos' coach, Dorothy Gaters, works hard to make sure her players graduate--and go to college too. Between practices, Gaters helps her players study for college-entrance tests. "It's important to be academically talented as well as gifted in sports," she says.
Pam Wilson, the Lady Commandos' shooting guard, agrees. Pam, 16, has never met her dad, and her mom left when she was 9. She says she works hard "because the stuff I went through made me realize I didn't want to go back" to the tough life in her neighborhood. Today she has straight A's.
Kourtney Walton, 17, has her pick of colleges when she graduates. College basketball teams already want her for her amazing skills. Kourtney wants more. "My grades are decent," she says. "But I want them to be better."