First-year Kennedy girls basketball coach Tony Vis, who is new to the community, first caught wind of it at a preseason jamboree at Jefferson High School.

“It was hilarious,” he says. “We played the first game, then our players stuck around all night to watch.” They were cheering for players on the Prairie and Washington teams, sitting with them, chatting away like family.

To hear them tell it, that’s what they are — seven girls who grew up together playing basketball for the formidable Lady Lightning AAU team from third through eighth grades. Today they are all high school juniors making a significant impact — six as starters — on their respective high school teams.

Kennedy’s Paige Hendrickson, the Cougars’ second-leading scorer, explains it this way: “You play with your high school teammates every day and you become best friends. Then the seniors leave and you make new friends. But with the Lady Lightning, we played so many years together, it’s more of a sister kind of love.”

Her Lady Lightning siblings — a galaxy of premier multi-sport Metro athletes — include Kennedy teammates Jordan Holmes and Madi Meier; Washington’s Dani Franklin, Aleena Hobbs and Callie Cook; and Prairie’s Madison Dellamuth. Kennedy junior Erin Coker also played for the Lightning, but left basketball to become a starter on the softball and volleyball teams.

Another Cougar, Morgan Martin, joined the Lady Lightning as an eighth grader. This year her family moved to Cedar Rapids from Illinois and she made an impressive start for the Cougars before being sidelined for the season with an injury. Most of the girls still play together during the summer for Team Iowa.

Even as they have developed intense loyalties to their school teams, the Lady Lightning players will forever treasure their memories of a storied team that seemingly caught lightning in a bottle.

“It will be the Lady Lightning teams that I will remember forever,” says Kennedy’s Madi Meier, another high-scoring starter.

There were never any tryouts for this team, says Madi’s father, Marv Meier. Before the group came together, he was coaching Madi’s YMCA team. Dani Franklin’s mother, Deb, was coaching her daughter’s Y team.

They talked, and a handful of parents who saw potential in their athletic daughters decided to form an AAU team to help them build their skills. Meier agreed to coach the team, and Deb Franklin signed on the next season as an assistant.

Along with the Metro girls, the team included Kennedy Salow of Center Point and Kathy Sorenson of Alburnett. It was a roster and staff that remained virtually unchanged for six years.

In short order, they formed a cohesive group of girls playing at a level that far surpassed most of their competition. The Lightning played 45 to 50 games a year, making their mark at tournaments around the Midwest.

After the first couple of years, says Marv Meier, “tournament directors would always put us in the older division (grade up), because other teams would not get in the tournament if they knew we were in the tournament.”

At the two annual state AAU tournaments — one based on grade level and one on age — the Lightning notched victory after victory, winning six state championships and three runnerup trophies in nine attempts.

“I know that every other team when they played us, they were scared,” recalls Madi Meier.

From the outset, this was a special group. Even as little girls, says Marv Meier, “they had the desire. They were just aggressive kids who wanted to play and wanted to be athletes, and that’s what they did.”

Most of them were the only or oldest girls in their families — several with athletic brothers who were early playmates. And then there was the 'X' factor in a player with precocious talent.

“Madison Dellamuth — the things she could do in third and fourth grade were unbelievable,” says Marv Meier. “By the time she was in fifth grade she could do things high school kids couldn’t do, and she made all the girls better. They made a really neat bond.”

Dellamuth, who is just hitting full stride this year after suffering an ACL tear at the end of her sophomore season, started for Prairie as a freshman and was named to the All-Metro team. Most of the others became starters as sophomores.

Dani Franklin, who leads the Warriors in scoring with a 17.3 average and is second only to Cedar Valley Christian’s Shelby Hembera in the Metro, says the team’s success was built on attention to fundamentals and team chemistry.

“We had great coaches, and when you start early you focus on fundamentals, and the coaches did a great job with that,” she says. “We started at a young age, practiced all the time, stayed together for a long time, and complemented each other well on the court.”

Washington’s Callie Cook, who is playing valuable moments off the bench for the Warriors as she battles a fractured foot, also credits their parents for a high level of involvement and support. The families became close friends, and it goes without saying that part of the fun was “winning almost every single one of our games,” Cook says.

Traveling to big-city tournaments and staying in hotels was also a thrill — for the girls, at least. Hendrickson remembers that the coaches kept them out of the swimming pool the night before games to preserve their energy. “So we would watch scary movies, all huddled together on one bed, screaming,” she laughs. It’s one of her favorite memories.

When the time came for the Lady Lightning to disband as the girls headed to high school, Marv Meier says, “the tears just flowed.” But the sisterhood has remained inviolable, even though the former players now face off against each other on the court throughout the basketball season.

And that was just the point, says Meier. “My main goal was to get them to play on their high school teams and have fun and play basketball the right way.” He’s especially proud of the fact that all are multi-sport competitors.

“Not one of them is a one-sport athlete — and Jordan Holmes is still a dancer,” he says.

Madi Meier says she and her fellow Kennedy Lady Lightning alumni like playing games against their former teammates because they know them — and their skills — so well.

In a situation like this past week, when Kennedy knocked Washington out of contention for the conference division title, "It can be a little awkward,” she says. “But afterwards we sat with them and just talked about our normal lives.”

“You just move on,” says Franklin of her team’s close loss, a reversal from a mid-December Washington victory over Kennedy. “We still hang out and talk all the time.”

Their high school coaches, who don’t worry about divided loyalties even if they occasionally chafe against the demands of AAU involvement, don’t doubt the impact of their players’ early experience on the court.

“You can tell the kids who have played a number of games and had more development,” says Kennedy’s Vis. “Their skill level and understanding of the game is at a higher level.”

Prairie Coach Steve Doser concurs. “AAU has a lot of value in building a higher skill level at a younger age,” he says. “It gives kids more confidence as players and people.”

All three high school coaches emphasize that the Lady Lightning players, first and foremost, developed into great kids who contribute to their schools in many ways.

“Paige, Jordan and Madi are very, very good basketball players but even better people and neat kids to be around,” says Vis, who thinks the special relationships among Lady Lightning alumni add a motivating competitive element to the game.

“When we step on the floor, our goal is to win. It’s not that friendships are pushed aside, but we want to take care of business, and maybe it even adds a little fuel to the fire because they want to have those bragging rights.”

Few would question that the Lady Lightning girls have raised the level of play for everyone in the Metro.

“When you lose to them,” says the Warriors’ Cook, reflecting on her team’s recent loss to Kennedy, “you know you’re losing to really good players, and that isn’t so bad.”