BOURBON -ÊMedia day has descended on Triton, a day that happens when your team advances to the state finals, a day that allows the coaches and players to handle the onslaught of interview requests from TV stations, radio stations and newspapers in 90 minutes or less.

It is also a day made for Triton's players. These are outgoing, laid-back, gregarious girls who do one thing as well as they play basketball: They can talk.

Media day was made for Triton's girls basketball team, and Triton's girls basketball team was made for media day. They are reporters' dreams with their ability to fill notebooks with quirky and offbeat stories.

On this day, reporters discover:

• Five of the girls on the varsity team are related;

• Coach Mark Heeter wore women's underwear at the semistate, at the request of his team ("a one-time thing only," he stresses);

• A 14-year-old freshman who has aunts in the eighth grade (yes, that's right - it goes back to the team's family tree) is the spark plug that fires the team;

• And finally, if Triton (19-7) wins Saturday's Class A state championship against No. 4 Rising Sun (24-2), Heeter will no longer exist as people once knew him.

"You see that mustache?" red-headed junior center Betsy Salyer asks. "Coach Heeter's had that since 1984. That's gonna come off."

"And we'll bleach his hair blond," blond-haired Missy Nifong, the lone senior on the team, says. Heeter has dark hair.

Nifong and Salyer are two of the related five. Also related to Nifong and Salyer are 14-year-old freshman Ashli Senff and sisters Amber Feldman and Crystal Feldman. Nifong, Salyer and Senff start; the Feldmans are reserves.

How they are related is a complicated process that causes the teen-age girls to giggle as they tell the story and reporters to weep uncontrollably as they struggle to comprehend the meaning of it all. Here are a few examples: Betsy's grandfather and Ashli's great-grandfather are the same person; Betsy's grandfather and Amber's grandfather are brothers.

The bottom line is they are related, and all five are related to some of the most talented players in Triton history: Lorea Feldman, Amy Feldman and Sharon Patterson. Lorea, the leading scorer in Triton history who played at the University of Michigan, is a second cousin to all five girls. Senff is related to former Triton star Justina Reichert as well.

Finally, Senff has eighth-grade step-aunts, sisters Carly and Cally Feldman.

Senff Brings Fire

Triton is 6-0 in the postseason and has won games by an average of 26 points. If playing the sectional, regional and semistate on its home court, where the Trojans are 14-1, is the No. 1 reason for this, No. 2 may be the 5-foot-7 Senff.

Nifong leads in scoring, Salyer in rebounding and junior Brandie Ganshorn in assists, but Senff leads in bringing a 'tude to the team.

Imagine Dick Vitale after 12 cups of coffee. Then he might approach Senff's energy level.

Triton has finished teams off early, and Heeter attributes this to Senff, who starts as a freshman.

"Our team needed somebody with fire and emotion," he says. "She brings that. She has that killer instinct. She wants to finish you off."

Senff says her teammates treated her like any other player from the start but that it took her four games "to get into the swing of things."

Senff led Triton with 22 points in the 64-38 semistate championship win over Lapel, and she is second on the team with 12.2 points per game.

"Ashli is probably the hardest-working player in practice," Salyer says. "She always dives all over the place."

Nifong agrees, joking, "We don't have that much energy."

Besides being a bundle of energy, she's also a good athlete. Senff says she "had a basketball in my hands at age 2" and that she got good by playing her dad, who showed her no mercy on the court and explained it away by telling her, "This will only make you better."

"I remember the time this year she jumped over the scorer's table at Plymouth," Salyer says. "That was awesome."

Only one thing can stop Senff: Ask her age. Being "only 14" and the youngest on the team seems to embarrass Senff, who buries her head in her arms over the question while her teammates give her the business.

If Senff is the hyperactive kid, Nifong is the doting mother of the team.

"I have more experience than they do," she says. "I keep them calm."

******

One thing every player on the team has in common is underwear. The team has one superstition: Each player's underwear looks alike.

The players only follow the lead of their coach. Heeter is as superstitious as they come.

He is the only one allowed to fill out the scorecard, which he always gets out of the medical kit. He writes the same three words -ÊAttack, Attack, Attack - on the chalkboard before each game and underlines them. He has worn the same vertically striped shirt and dark pants from sectional through semistate and will wear them at the state finals.

He had walked over to the elementary school before Triton's first-round semistate win over No. 10 Clinton Prairie; he had no need to, but because he's superstitious, he made the same trip before the championship game against Lapel, even though it was pouring at the time.

"I don't want to get into all my superstitions," Heeter says, "down to checking light switches and so on."

Preying on his superstitious nature, his players persuaded him to wear women's underwear matching theirs.

While Triton won both semistate games, Heeter says the underwear thing was a one-time deal only and that not even he is superstitious enough to do it again at the state finals.

"If it is anything that will help them win," Heeter says, "shaving the mustache or wearing the underwear, I'll help them, if it gives them any slight mental edge."

Heeter has one wish. He hopes the mustache he has worn for 16 years no longer exists on Sunday.

*Stats and a preview story on the Rising Sun/Triton matchup will appear in Friday's paper. [[In-content Ad]]