When they were both in fifth grade, Madison Windley convinced Breanna Hill to try basketball for the first time.

Hill, who had just moved back to Grace after a year in Arizona, wasn’t sure she would like the sport at first, but after a year, she decided she wanted to keep playing.

“I did not want to, because I thought basketball was stupid, but after playing that whole fifth grade year, I was like, well, this is actually not bad, this is fun,” Hill said. “But it didn’t really hit me that I loved the sport until probably junior high.”

The two friends have been teammates ever since and, after helping the Grace girls to a third-place finish at the 1A DI state tournament in February, Hill and Windley signed to continue their careers in college within days of each other this week.

They’ll remain connected at the next level, with both competing for Northwest Athletic Conference schools. Hill signed to Big Bend Community College on Friday, with Windley inking her letter of intent to Treasure Valley Community College on Wednesday.

“It was pretty surreal, just because it’s been my dream since I was a kid,” Hill said. “Once I got that done, I just felt relieved, because I’d been so stressed over the whole college process. I just felt good to know where I’m going.”

Ironically, Hill is following in the footsteps of Windley’s older sister, Mackenzie, who went from Grace to Big Bend, playing for two years there before assistant coaching for two more.

Windley, despite the family connection, will play for one of Big Bend’s rivals.

“I did get an offer from Big Bend, but I just liked Treasure Valley more and I had better feelings about there,” Windley said. “(Mackenzie) has actually been my biggest supporter through this whole process, telling me to trust the whole process and ... to just be patient and go where my heart tells me.”

The duo was a key part of Grace’s state-trophy-winning team this year.

“Breanna was the point guard. She had a lot of responsibility getting us into our offense, into the flow of things, and we relied on her quite a bit,” Grace coach Kyle Christensen said. “Madison brought a lot of leadership to the team. ... She kind of struggled early in the season, but came on late and had a really solid postseason for us.”

Windley had a particularly tough path to college. In May 2019, she dislocated her knee while playing with her club team at a tournament in Lehi, Utah.

The injury also broke off pieces of bone and separated some cartilage around the affected area. With a crucial summer tournament schedule and senior year coming up and her college plans still not finalized, the injury threatened to tank Windley’s path to the next level.

“They told me it was probably going to be like an eight-to-10-month recovery,” Windley said. “I was freaking out because I was like, I have to play my senior year of basketball.”

With hard work and luck, Windley managed to compress that estimated recovery time, and was back on the court early in Grace’s season.

The experience gave a direction for her post-basketball career — she now wants to be a physical therapist — and a mature outlook on overcoming obstacles.

“Probably the one thing that I’ll remember the most is the mental toughness, because the mental part of anything you do is huge,” Windley said. “Being able to get over all of your mental trials is probably the hardest thing in any sport. Being able to do that, it makes you a better player, not just because your talent, it’s your mental game that will make the biggest difference.”

Hill’s recruitment wasn’t as fraught, but the point guard very nearly ended up somewhere other than Big Bend.

Even as late as March, the school wasn’t high on her list. But shortly before the coronavirus pandemic ended all in-person recruiting, Hill and her mother decided to take one last, spur-of-the-moment trip to see schools.

“Big Bend was the last stop on that trip, and just the second I stepped in that gym, I knew that was where I was supposed to go,” Hill said. “So that was super cool for me, even though it was not in my plan at all. I’m glad that I’m going to be going there.”

If the coronavirus pandemic subsides in time, the two Grace teammates turned NWAC rivals will face off on the court next season, continuing the story that started when they were in fifth grade.

“The seniors, we just had a special bond,” Windley said “We’ve played together since we were little, so it was really cool to just finally put our last year together and play the best we could and play every game like it was our last.”