It was her sophomore year, and she has a habit of biting on her jersey when she gets nervous. Her nerves were tingling late in a game, and one inauspicious bite later left her jersey stuck to her braces in the team huddle during a time out. She's not such a superstar that her teammates didn't feel comfortable in giving her a hard time as they, "were pointing and laughing at me."

She has since solved the problem, not by changing her nervous habit but by tossing out the braces.

The braces weren't the only thing to go in the past few years as she decided she wanted nothing to do with the piano she'd played for seven years either.

"It was boring to me," she said, and notes that she now plays the guitar in addition to her singing.

And she's thinking about adding one more useful skill before moving to Cedar City to begin college life.

"I'm going to try to pick up cooking," she claimed, joking that she was afraid that if she didn't learn how to cook, she might starve.

One thing she isn't afraid of is keeping busy. Sears loves to be on the move all the time, and she loves to observe and learn about human behavior, noting that psychology and sociology intrigue her in addition to her sports interests.

"I want to learn about why people are the way they are," said Sears when explaining why she wanted to go into the psychological field with plans of becoming a high school counselor and a basketball coach.

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E-mail: jolsen@desnews.com