By Marc Raimondi and Joseph Staszewki
Shooting drills. Dribbling workouts. HORSE. All of those are fine for Omar and Sierra Calhoun.
One on one? Not so much.
“We played against each other when we were younger, but it always ended up being a fight,” Omar said. “We had to stop. My dad wouldn’t let us play. She would think I’m cheating or something like that. She would call a foul and it would end up being a conflict.”
Such is life at their Park Slope, Brooklyn, home, where being the best you can be was instilled at an early age.
Omar and Sierra Calhoun, basketball stars on their respective teams at Christ the King, are perhaps the top brother-sister basketball duo in the United States. The UConn-bound Omar, a senior, has led the Royals boys’ team to two straight Catholic High School Athletic Association Class AA intersectional titles and Sierra, one of the top sophomores in the country, is set to take a leading role this year for the girls.
Their uncanny success starts from the beginning. Omar Sr., the patriarch of the clan, played Division I basketball at St. Francis College and mother Samara competed for girls’ hoops powerhouse Murry Bergtraum HS.
Basketball, though, was just one of the many lessons.
“Growing up, nothing was ever handed to us,” Sierra said.
Off the court, they excel academically and they’re both first-class citizens. Omar Sr. and Samara, a teacher, are omnipresent at games — not to meddle, but to support. They have always stressed education first for their children.
“They’re great basketball players and great people,” CK boys’ Coach Joe Arbitello said of the siblings. “They’re way too humble, way too nice, way too unassuming to be superstars. Whatever [Omar Sr. and Samara] did, I asked them to tell me, so I can raise my kids.”
Omar Jr., a 6-foot-4 scoring machine, paved the way at Christ the King for the family, starring as a 10th-grader on a championship team. Sierra was hooked on the Middle Village school from that point.
“I just saw everyone coming to the game, packed house every time they stepped on the court,” she said. “I wanted to [have] that, too.”
Sierra, an athletic, 6-foot guard, came up from the junior varsity in December and had a stellar freshman season, hitting the team’s two biggest shots of the year, late three-pointers to lead Christ the King to the CHSAA Class AA state final.
Omar Jr. said he’s proud of his younger sister, calling her mature for her age. He’s always at her games and vice versa. CK girls’ Coach Bob Mackey marvels at the bond the two share.
“They’re close,” Omar Sr. said. “They talk to each other all the time, but not just about basketball. They talk about everything together.”
After all, they’re cut from the same cloth.
“We were brought up to be humble and hungry,” Omar Jr. said. “We carry ourselves as normal kids in the hallways trying to keep up our academics and grades. When we get on the court, that’s when the beast comes out of us. We’re both ferocious, as vocal as we can be on the court, trying to win.”
Evidently that also carries over into when they try to play each other.
“We can’t play anymore,” Sierra admitted. “It gets too competitive. He has to play me hard, not like when we were younger. He wasn’t way better than me, but he was older so he had more experience. Now I’m strong, he’s strong. We foul hard. If somebody gets fouled hard, it’s going to be a problem.”
