Cherokees wonder twins power hoop team

CORPUS CHRISTI -- The only thing more problematic for opponents than keeping Tuloso-Midway sophomore basketball players Keeley and Korey Coburn off the boards is telling them apart to keep their defensive assignments.

Cherokees girls basketball coach Hector Serna has a tough enough time calling the 16-year-old identical twins by their proper names when they're not in uniform and he even has one of them, Keeley, in the history class that he teaches.

"I'd play it safe when I'd see them in the hallway and say, 'Hey Coburns, how's it going,' because I didn't want to guess and call them by the wrong name," Serna said of when he first saw the twins at school.

Serna shouldn't feel bad, the Coburn sisters have been making life difficult for others to tell them apart since they started playing basketball competitively.

While they've never switched uniforms while on the court, they have fooled opponents by concealing their identities in another way, which frustrated those assigned to guard them.

"When we were playing Pee Wee League ball, the players had to wear wristbands to identify themselves," Keeley said. "Well, we would hide the wristbands behind our back, so that two people would guard one of us and the other one would go to the basket. We're tricky like that."

T-M sophomore guard Tori Najvar, who has known the "Twin Towers" since Kindergarten, said the secret to telling them apart visually is that Keeley the older sister by three minutes -- has a mole underneath her chin and she usually wears her hair in a bun, while Korey wears her hair in a ponytail.

Serna said there's a much easier way to differentiate between the two while on the court just watch them shoot.

Korey, a starting forward, shoots the ball with her left hand, while Keeley, a post and part-time starter, shoots it with her right.

Of course, the jersey numbers don't hurt in identifying them, either.

While the Coburn's kid Serna that they're going to switch jerseys sometime just to trick him, Serna said he has known them long enough now to where he would pass that test.

"If they did that, I would be able to tell them apart now," Serna confidently said with a smile.

Korey isn't convinced that Serna has the twins' identities pegged, however.