Devin, who is beginning to make his mark as a Flyer — he had eight points in six minutes against Winthrop — came here with impressive credentials from Michigan’s Kalamazoo Central High, where he was a student leader, had a 3.86 GPA and led the basketball team to the state title.
Miya, a high school sophomore with Down syndrome, is a loyal little sister, a big-time inspiration and a shining star herself both as a social butterfly and a make-your-eyes-roll raconteur.
She’s already become a favorite of a few of the Flyers players, none more so than the team’s star, Chris Wright, who looks for her after every game.
“She’ll hide her face from me at first and then she’ll give me a big hug and start telling me some kind of story,” he laughed. “She’s got the funnest stories. The first time I met her she told me about her brother getting chased by a big ol’ dog that jumped right through the glass after him.
“She’s just a real good kid and boy, does she have some stories.”
That was evident the other day when she sat with her parents, Kelvin and Amy Oliver — themselves once college basketball players at Western Michigan University — and talked of the lessons she learned from her brother and then put to use in her own Special Olympics career.
“My brother showed me how to shoot ... cross-over dribble ... block shots,” she said as she pretended to shoot. “When I come down the court, I’ll fake a little bit and then go up and pop over them. Another time I take the ball, go through the legs and go up for a lay-up.”
Amy chuckled and put on the verbal brakes: “I don’t know about all that fancy stuff, but she has the lingo down ... and she does have a nice cross-over.”
Kelvin nodded: “A lot of people talk about Down syndrome children and what they can’t do because of low muscle tone, but she doesn’t have that.
“She’s strong as an ox,” said Amy.
“A fox?” Miya asked.
Amy shook her head: “I said ox. ... It’s strong as an ox ... smart as a fox.”
Miya smiled: “I’m a fox.”
Born to play
When Devin was born, some folks joked how they wanted to be his agent. He almost certainly had inherited his folks athleticism and, if his feet were any indicator, he’d have their size, too.
“He had a pair of Air Jordans — size two — when he was born and he fit right into them,” Amy said. “When he first started walking it was at (Kelvin’s) mom’s house. He was trying to put the Nerf ball in the basket.”
Three years later Miya was born and within a few months she had open-heart surgery. And as their daughter’s needs became more obvious, Amy said it was her husband who became “the driving force” in the way they would deal with it.
Kelvin explained: “There were five children in my family. Each of us was different. So the only thing I thought was that regardless of what genetics might say, your children are going to be different anyway.
“As far as what Miya was capable of and what Devin was capable of, I didn’t weight it. What each is able to do — that’s fine. But one thing we didn’t do was coddle Miya.”
And that led to an indelible moment that neither Kelvin nor Devin has forgotten.
“When Devin was 7 years old, that’s the first time I talked to him about his sister having some differences,” Kelvin said. “He immediately started crying and hit me. He said there was nothing wrong with his little sister. It’s the only time I ever talked to him about it.”
After the Flyers game the other night, Devin nodded when asked if remembered that conversation: “Yes. I was like, ‘That’s not so!’ I didn’t notice anything different.
“As I got older, I started to understand and I guess the biggest effect on me was that I learned to respect people and not judge them at first glance. I wouldn’t want people doing that to Miya because when you do, you assume things that can be wrong.
“If you look beneath the surface with her, if you talk to her and get to know her, you find out how fun she is. And she’s always gonna be 100 percent real. She won’t beat around the bush. But she won’t try to hurt you either. She just has a pure heart... She’s really quite a girl.”
He echoed that thought last year, his mom said, when an AAU magazine did an interview:
“They asked who his hero was in life and he said, ‘My sister.’ ”
She’s got game
Miya plays on a soccer team that her mom coaches. She plays Texas Hold ’Em with dad. She’s an accomplished horseback rider and she recently won a dance contest at school by doing the “Teach Me How To Dougie” popularized by California hip hoppers Cali Swag District.
When it comes to basketball she’s the youngest player, biggest scorer and most popular player on an adult special needs team.
And it was her hoops prowess that made her an instant celebrity at a pep rally last year at Kalamazoo Central.
“They picked one kid from each class for a shoot off,” said Kelvin. “When I came up to the school to get her, I was bombarded by everybody: ‘Did you hear about Miya?’ They were in a frenzy.
“She’d taken three shots from between the free-throw line and the three point arc and hit two of them.”
Amy laughed: “People were like, ‘She’s got a nicer shot than Devin.’ ”
Miya’s best performance though came at a poetry reading in front of a large crowd at Kalamazoo College.
Although Kelvin didn’t think he’d be able to make it — a Kalamazoo public safety officer, he works as both a policeman and a firemen — he did show up just in time and Miya noticed.
“I was really nervous because my mom and dad and brother were there,” Miya said.
And yet when she went on stage, she gave a command performance.
“She gets on the mic and first off she does something she didn’t rehearse,” Kelvin said. “She goes, ‘Hello, my name is Miya Oliver and I want to say I love my dad who came here to listen to me today.’”
She then acknowledged her mom and her brother before reciting her own piece about Devin and the basketball team.
“I felt like I did when Devin won the state championship,” Kelvin said. “That was her state championship right there.”’
“Yeah,” Miya said with a grin. “I won a ribbon.”
Part of the team
After the Winthrop game ended the other night, the Olivers, along with Amy’s parents and a few others, headed to the Donoher Center, where they waited in the hallway outside the Flyers’ dressing room with the families and friends of the other players.
When head coach Brian Gregory worked his way through the crowd, he spotted Miya, came over and gave her a hug. Some of the players — Josh Parker, Luke Fabrizius, Brandon Spearman and Devin’s roommate, Ralph Hill — acknowledged her, as did assistant coach Cornell Mann.
And, of course, there was the regular reunion with Wright.
“Chris treats her like his littler sister,” Amy said. “They throw things back and forth at each other, it’s really nice.”
When Devin — always one of the last out of the dressing room — finally appeared, he led the family back to the arena court so a photographer could take a photo.
A basketball was brought along for a prop, but suddenly the portrait had to wait as a 1-on-1 competition broke out between brother and sister,
Miya didn’t just play tight defense on her brother, she gave him some smothering, ox-like muscle, all but mugging him.
When it was her turn with the ball, she missed a couple of shots and Devin called her over. Bowing down until his forehead rested on hers, he whispered some encouragement ... and then a warning:
“We’re not leaving this court until you make one.”
Looking up at the brother she adores, she nodded, took the ball back out front, did a cross-over dribble, drove, shot and scored.
And with that, brother and sister turned to each other, did a leaping chest bump and broke into joyous laughter.
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