The Penn-Princeton women’s basketball game started at 4 p.m. at the Palestra. They arrived an hour early to watch Princeton warm up—perhaps the only time they would see Jackie in action. Ingrid’s sister Nicole was hurt, so she was sitting on the bench in street clothes, and Jackie had missed a few weeks with a broken finger, so she was still working her way into shape.
Nicole had given Ingrid two Princeton practice jerseys, reversible black-and-orange mesh cutoffs that the two Penn friends eagerly put on, Penn’s blue and red be damned. That afternoon, their loyalty clearly lay with the Tigers.
Jim, Madison, and Ingrid found Jackie’s parents, Susie and Kobus Reyneke, and the group sat in the bleachers behind the Princeton bench, the three adults in one row, Maddy and Ingrid perched just behind them.
Jackie tried to stay focused on the game, but she thrilled at having Maddy in the stands. She was so proud to call her a friend. They had spent so much time in high school talking about this moment, and now here they were supporting each other at college. Even when her eyes should have been on the court, Jackie kept sneaking peeks over her shoulder at her friends and family.
The Reynekes hadn’t seen Madison since she’d started college, so during the game they leaned back to make conversation. Madison seemed distracted to them, inside her own head, often staring forward absentmindedly or looking off to the side. She moved around a lot, too, seemed unable to stay seated. Occasionally, when Princeton made a great play, Susie Reyneke would lean back to Maddy and excitedly ask, “Did you see that?” And Madison, having drifted somewhere else, would snap her attention back to the court, saying, “Oh, oh, I wasn’t watching—what happened?”
They knew, through Jackie, that Madison was struggling. But many of their daughter’s friends were having trouble with the transition to college, exacerbated because most were playing sports and overwhelmed with the time commitment. The truth was, none of the parents had any idea what to say or do—for their own kids, let alone for someone else’s.
Of course, the time commitment was just one part of why the transition was so difficult. So, too, was starting again at the bottom of the food chain—and not just any food chain, but a new, more competitive one. Madison, Jackie, Nicole, and Ingrid were going from being the best player on a team, often one of the best teams in the area—sometimes even the state or the country—to being only one among a collection of equally talented athletes. The dramatic shift in status was triggering a crisis of self, since much of a young athlete’s ego is fueled by on-field success. Dropped into a situation where positive feedback, that fuel for the ego, was much more difficult to earn, meant that they had to fall back on their still developing sense of self. This was one variable Maddy was dealing with.
“How are things?” Kobus Reyneke asked Maddy during the game.
“Everything is good,” she said.
“And how are things going with track?”
“Not that well,” she said. “It’s tough.”
“Well, just hang in there,” Kobus said. “Things will get better.”
Madison paused, then said: “We’ll see.”
That afternoon, the Tigers dominated Penn. With about eight minutes left in the game, the coach signaled for Jackie to go in. As she ran to the scorer’s table, she glanced again into the stands—Madison was smiling and clapping. Jackie scored the first two baskets of her college career, and the moment seemed perfect because Madison was there to see it, and because Jackie had told her teammates so much about her high school friend. Now they would all get to meet her.
After the game, Jackie quickly showered, then came back out to the court to see everyone. First semester had been challenging for Jackie, too. She was trying to find her place on the team and in the classroom, but this day felt like a promising start to second semester.
“You were amazing!” Madison said, wrapping her friend in a hug.
“I’m so excited you were here,” said Jackie. Then she found her parents and hugged them both.
Madison handed her iPhone to the Reynekes and asked if they could take a picture of the three friends in their Princeton gear, with the court in the background. Jackie stood in the middle, hair wet and pulled back, with Madison on her left and Ingrid on her right.
A few minutes later, Madison uploaded the image to Instagram:
(Madison Holleran Instagram)
Jackie introduced her teammates to Madison, and they all lingered in the stands talking as thousands of fans poured into the Palestra for the men’s game, which was also Penn vs. Princeton. The field house, famous for its arched rafters and high windows, is one of the most celebrated college courts in the country, even if it is also a relic compared to the modern arenas in which most Division I teams played. A few of the Princeton women’s players were staying to watch the men’s game, but Jackie had decided to go back on the team bus.
“Come on,” Madison said. “You should stay!”
“I can’t, I’m sorry,” Jackie said. She would have stayed to spend more time with Maddy, but the two friends had already made plans to see each other: Madison was coming to visit Princeton in just two weeks.
So they hugged and Jackie left to catch the bus. On the drive back to Princeton, Jackie’s teammates kept saying how beautiful Maddy was, how striking. Some of them had grown up in the area and knew about Madison because during her high school years her picture seemed to appear daily in the sports section of the Bergen Record—first for soccer, then for track. Somehow she always managed to look graceful, her silky dark hair pulled back, often with a red-and-white ribbon, the official colors of Northern Highlands High School.
Jim had to get back to Allendale. Maddy and Ingrid were staying for the men’s game, and they invited him to stay and watch with them, but he wanted to get home in time for dinner. Even so, he was reluctant to leave his daughter. He looked at her, noticed again the shifts he couldn’t stop seeing: how distracted she seemed to be, the way she wasn’t staying focused on anything for long, how her energy was just—off.
She’s not happy, he thought. That’s not a happy kid. But she was with Ingrid, and he knew she adored her friend. And he couldn’t stay forever. He couldn’t pitch a tent outside her dorm room. She was in college now. Plus, he reminded himself, Stacy and Mackenzie, his wife and youngest daughter, were coming to visit Madison in just a few days. She had a meeting scheduled with the Penn track coach to talk about her future, and they were driving down for moral support.
Jim believed she would be okay until then.
He hugged her, and he thought he noticed that she held on to him for just a split second longer than usual, giving him an extra squeeze before letting go.
“Love you, Daddio,” she said.