Jordyn and Brooke Reynolds are sisters, playing basketball together on the CMCC team. They previously played on the Edward Little baskertball team.

AUBURN — Opponents of the Central Maine Community College women’s basketball team might think they’re suffering from double vision this season, or maybe they’re stuck in one of those fun-house mirror rooms.

In reality, it will just be the task of going against sisters Brooke and Jordyn Reynolds.

Jordyn, a 2017 Edward Little High School graduate, joins her older sister (a 2015 EL grad) on this year’s Mustangs team, giving the squad two talented players from the same gene pool.

“At first I was like, ‘I don’t know,’ because this is my school,” Brooke said. “Not my school, but I was here first, and at first I was like, ‘I don’t know if I want her to come here.’ But now that she’s here I love it. We get along. Everything on the basketball court we’re players, we’re not sisters out there, so I can yell at her. She can’t get mad at me because I’m not her sister, I’m her teammate. But it’s good. It’s been great so far.”

Like her older sister did, Jordyn looked at other schools and other levels of college basketball competition, but the combination of playing for her AAU coach — CM head coach Andrew Morong — the academic program she was looking for, and getting to play with her sister, was enough to keep her in town.

“When I saw my sister and how she chose to come to CM — and she doesn’t do decisions lightly — and I came here, and I believed her when she said it’s a great place to come here, and she was right, and I love my decision,” Jordyn said.

Now the siblings get to experience something that Morong said is “unique” in college athletics.

“I mean, how many siblings get to play together in college?” Morong said. “I think that’s just so unique, and such a unique experience that I hope they truly embrace because they are very competitive with one another. That has its ups and downs for us — and for them — but I think the more and more they play together this year they’re going to realize what kind of special moment they have right in front of them, and I think they’ll grasp it.”

The experience for the sisters so far hasn’t been all smiles, but for good reason.

“We just want to win. We hate to lose. And that makes us very competitive,” Brooke said. “Me and Jordyn probably have one of the worst faces. Like when we do something wrong you can just see it on our face. But it’s because we just hate to mess up, we hate to let people down, and we’re very competitive.

“We probably get it from our mom, because she’s wicked competitive.”

“In practice she’s one of the toughest opponents I ever have to go against,” Jordyn said. “She’s not making my life hard or complicated — well, she is — but she’s making me better for the game. And when we’re in practice, and she’s beating me and she’s better than me, she’s only making me better for opponents. So I appreciate it, and in games I think it will really help us.”

The sisters both put up impressive resumes on their own last year. Brooke was a USCAA All-American and the USCAA Division II National Tournament MVP after helping lead the the Mustangs to a national championship. She averaged 14.7 points, 8.4 rebounds and 4.5 steals per game.

Jordyn was the Sun Journal Girls’ Basketball All-Region Player of the Year, the KVAC Player of the Year and a Miss Maine Basketball semifinalist after averaging 14.2 points and 11 rebounds per game. She also blocked 64 shots and picked up 51 steals.

Morong said he’s not sure how often 5-foot-9 Brooke and 6-foot-1 Jordyn will be on the floor together, but when they do step on the court together for the first time in three years, the sisters think their chemistry will be even better than it was during their two high school seasons together.

“Even in high school, Jordyn would know when I was cutting, and I would know — when she had a girl posted up — right where to throw it,” Brooke said.

Since then each sister has been a part of team success without the other. Jordyn was on an EL team that advanced to the state championship game her junior season. And a pep talk (“I yelled at her,” Brooke said) at halftime helped Jordyn play one of her best games in the regional final.

Brooke said she was “kind of jealous” to see her sister make it to a high school state title game. But she one-upped her younger sister last year in winning a college national title. Jordyn said watching Brooke have that experience helped make the decision to attend CM a bit easier.

The sisters said “it would be great” to make it to a USCAA title game together, “but we’re not looking that far ahead right now.”

For now. they’re just looking to enjoy playing together — something neither ever thought they would get to do again.

And they’re looking forward to taking their competitiveness out on someone other than each other.

wkramlich@sunjournal.com

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