Hannah Lising didn’t hesitate and was there for her sister.
Jerseys were grabbed and nudges traded from the opening minutes of a rough, physical City Section Division I semifinal playoff game on Feb. 17 between Sun Valley Poly and LA Hamilton. And as the fourth quarter wound down to an eventual Poly win, the simmer came to a head when Parrots point guard Heart Lising and a Yankees player dived for a loose ball at the same time. When both got up on a foul call, the Hamilton player Heart’s black ponytail flipped up.
So Heart threw the ball right into her back. She was hit by a technical. And as a crowd of Hamilton players gathered, twin sister Hannah – also a Parrots guard – walked over, positioned herself in front of her sister and held up her hands.
It was a blatant act of protection, two twins more deeply connected than the sweater on their backs, than even the shared DNA buried in their cells.
“That protection came out,” Poly coach Tremeka Batiste chuckled a week later. “And no one would go to her sister.”
There was some pushing and Hannah put an elbow straight in her face and stumbled away. She didn’t cry. They had grown up playing on a concrete field in the Philippines, rough running around with boys. Unfazed.
But when Hannah stood up, a stick of gum flew out of the crowd and hit her shoulder. Heart saw it, and it upset her even more, she made a show by pointing to the gag on the field and waving her hands at the crowd.
She received a second technical and was thus ejected. It meant bad news for next week’s Division I final: Poly would be without one of the sisters, their two best players. And it meant something even worse for Hannah.
The twins came to America two years ago to adjust to an unfamiliar country in the midst of COVID-19. But they always had each other. Always had a friend, a companion.
Now Hannah Lising was alone for the first time.
Twins Heart and Hannah Lising pose for a photo at Sun Valley Poly High.
(Luca Evans/Los Angeles Times)
They learned the game on that unpainted concrete field in their village in the Philippines, and went out every afternoon after school with their cousins.
The twins wore no shoes when they played. Sometimes their feet were cut into pieces.
“We just had to get used to it,” Hannah said with a smile.
Those were the days. Their mother gave birth to them in the house where they grew up, and the twins grew up going from house to house in the middle of a five-block-wide, lower-class county, where they knew everyone and everyone was related.
They woke up at 5 a.m. and took a ride from a motorized tricycle cab — “tráysikél” in first-language Tagalog — to a Catholic primary school about 15 minutes from their home. There was a hospital two miles away. A McDonald’s nearby.
Two years ago, when they were 15, their father – a US citizen – successfully petitioned for his side of the family to live in the United States, an exciting move for more opportunities.
But the longer they’re here, the more Heart and Hannah find themselves missing their old village. They miss Christmas in their county, where every house sparkles with decorations. They especially miss their mom, who they still call to update after almost every game.
Their father’s family has been trying to get her to the United States for two years. Paperwork is still pending.
“They have bad days and think about her a lot,” says cousin Sofia Gregorio, a college student and volleyball player at Poly. “It kind of takes a toll on how they go to their school, and sometimes I have conversations with them about how things are going to come together.”
Hannah and Heart enrolled at Poly during the height of the pandemic, unfamiliar with online education or Zoom. They were often shy, both Gregorio and Batiste recalled speaking English as a second language while trying to better understand the grammar.
But they had their dad’s family and Gregorio, who they quickly bonded with playing ‘NBA 2K’ on the Xbox. And above all, they had each other.
“I can teach things, and then I can teach her,” Hannah said. “You already have a best friend.”
“I grew up with her,” Heart added, “and everything is really, ‘I’m with her.’ ”
Sometimes they are each other’s worst enemy.
Hannah is more outgoing. Heart more introverted. They have different personalities and are volatile when combined.
“They’re bickering,” Batiste said. “They’re like an old married couple where they snap at each other and a moment later they slap each other on the back laughing.”
But such is life when you are attached to the hip. Basketball was not their primary sport – just a hobby as their real sport in the Philippines was badminton where the two were partners good enough to play on the country’s junior national team.
Sun Valley Poly guard Hannah Lising (right) blocks a shot by Maya Sano of LACES in City DI girls final. Poly won in OT. Lising finished with 35 points.
(Steve Galluzzo / Before The Times)
However, it was clear that they were natural athletes. They could jump. They can burn. And they could shoot.
“They were a different race,” says Poly Boys basketball coach Alex Pladevega, who helped train the twins when they first arrived.
The first game they played in their freshman year, Batiste recalled, she knocked out one of them — and the other kept scanning the sideline every time she ran up and down the field. The coach no longer knew what was what. This was a common problem.
“She wasn’t focused on the game,” Batiste recalls. “It was like she kept looking for her twin brother.”
They both averaged over 15 points per game last season to lead Poly to a 15-5 record, and have continued to develop their basketball IQ as juniors. Heart is now the team’s de facto point guard and the combination propelled Poly through the City Division I playoffs.
“Sometimes I don’t trust them,” Heart said of her teammates, “but you have to.”
And then she was suspended.
Poly guard Hannah Lising dribbles the timeline against LACES in the City Section Division 1 title game on Saturday.
(Steve Galluzzo / Before The Times)
In one game this season, Gregorio recalled, Heart was in big trouble. After each whistle, Gregorio said, Hannah raised her hand to the referee and tried to claim that every subsequent foul was hers.
For years, the two were each other’s mainstay. But now, Batiste said, there’s no looking at the sidelines when one is playing and the other isn’t.
“If I get hurt, you don’t care,” Hannah said in an interview with Heart in January. “You just play the game, and I’ll play my game.”
Hannah finished with 35 points on Saturday before being fouled with 1:34 left, Poly held on to win the City Division I title and played her own game without her twin beside her. The Parrots will host San Juan Capistrano St. Margaret’s on Tuesday in a Southern California Regional Division IV first-round pick.
“That was something else,” Batiste said. “That’s maturity… if this had happened last year or the year before, it probably would have been a different story.”
Now they hope to play in college and study to become doctors or dentists, or maybe one of each.
And the family hopes the twins’ mother will be in the US by the end of the year, Gregorio said. In the meantime, they keep sending her videos after the games.
“Their whole family,” Batiste said, “is traveling with them.”
