Sanjana Ramesh, a sign of hope for Indian-born players, is making women's hoops history

In Bangalore, India, a barefoot 12-year-old girl spent an hour cleaning dirt and grime off a basketball court. The air was musty from the mud and cow manure surrounding it — that's how Sanjana Ramesh remembers 2014. She practiced with an orange ball that hardly resembled a real basketball, perfecting her dribble-drive and famous crossover that had boys her age falling to the ground, holding their ankles.

Her feet were riddled with blisters and her knees bloody from fearlessly diving after basketballs on the hard concrete — but she didn't care. That court, and her determination, helped her become what she is today: the crown jewel of Indian women's basketball. Fast forward to 2021, Sanjana is over 9,000 miles away in Flagstaff, Arizona. She is a 6-foot-tall, gangly 19-year-old sophomore at North Arizona University and a member of the women's basketball team. Sanjana is a scholarship player who doesn't even do her own laundry anymore. She has an affinity for Cane's chicken and craves the "Caniac Combo" whenever she can get her hands on it. She's come a long way since she was a barefoot girl playing basketball on a dirty court.