Lamar’s Sarah Pasha (23) goes up for a shot against West Lauderdale during their game earlier this season.

Josh Sherer estimated that Sarah Pasha took a page and a half worth of notes during the Lamar girls basketball team’s Tuesday film session.

The Lady Raiders were preparing for Wednesday’s game against Jackson Academy in the MAIS Overall tournament, and Pasha, who is known by her senior classmates as an intense studier and note-taker, carried that reputation over to film study. Afterward, she was in the gym going against the Lamar starters as they readied for a tough game against JA.

Playing basketball isn’t in Pasha’s future. She entered her senior year at Lamar with a grade-point average above 4, and she also scored a 34 on the ACT. While she isn’t sure yet where she will attend college, Pasha plans to major in biomedical engineering and hopefully get into medical school after undergrad. Pasha’s time on the court is sporadic, as the Lady Raiders’ bench typically only play in blowouts. With limited playing time and an academically inclined future, why stick around for four years?

She loves basketball, she loves her teammates, and sometimes, you have to branch out beyond the classroom in order to learn.

“I love learning, but not just book learning,” Pasha explained. “You learn so much from basketball that has nothing to do with (the technical aspects of) basketball. I think the lessons you learn from it are equal to what you learn on the academic side.”

Pasha has no basketball background beyond high school, as she had never played before joining the Lady Raiders when she was a freshman. After convincing classmate and best friend Katie Shaffer to join a local theater group, Shaffer returned the favor by asking Pasha to join Lamar’s basketball team.

“She was always trying to get me to play because I was tall,” Pasha said with a chuckle.

Since several of her friends in her class were playing, joining the team wasn’t too uncomfortable for Pasha. The difference in experience, though, was stark: Her classmates had been starting since they were seventh-graders, so they were much more developed as basketball players by the time they were ninth graders.

“In my first practice, one of the seniors told me to come set a screen, and I was like, ‘What is that?’” Pasha recalled.

When Sherer took over as the school’s head basketball coach during Pasha’s junior year, he made a point to stress the sport’s basic fundamentals, which she said helped tremendously. That, combined with her natural intensity, allowed Pasha blossomed into her role as someone who would challenge the starters in practice in order to prepare them for games.

“Knowing her playing time is limited, she lives for and loves the fact that she’s going to help her team by playing hard in practice and giving the girls good looks and working with them,” Sherer said. “To me, that’s critical.”

It’s also impressed him as a coach, as Pasha always has the same good attitude about her role, Sherer added.

“I think it shows high character and good leadership, where she’s understanding the needs of those around her and doing what she can to meet them,” Sherer said.

Shaffer said Pasha always brings the same intensity at practice, and Pasha isn’t afraid to get in her teammates’ faces and challenge them physically, even if it makes them upset.

“Sometimes some people think it’s time to rest, and if you’re not a starter, then the way to contribute is to play certain roles in practice, so when she’s guarding us hard or blocking shots, you can tell that we get mad,” Shaffer said.

But Pasha isn’t doing that to simply annoy her teammates, Sherer explained.

“She’s going to try to irritate them, because she knows that’s what’s going to happen to them during games,” Sherer said.

Said Pasha, “I know I make them mad, because I’m just a serious person. I owe it to them to give them what they might get during a game.”

Preparing the Lady Raiders for game-night taunts isn’t the only thing Pasha does. Sometimes, she tries to keep the team light-hearted.

“Even when we’re getting mad, she’ll try to encourage us,” Shaffer said. “She’s the best encourager on the team. She also made us all nicknames, and she always runs to get us water during time outs.”

Normally, a task like fetching her teammates water is something that would be designated to a freshman, but Pasha said she’s willing to do whatever it takes to contribute.

“I’m kind of the mom of the friend group,” Pasha said. “I want to get water or cheer them on when I’m not on the court. I want to do something when I’m not playing, because I’m not being useful if I’m not doing something.”

Sherer described Pasha as a servant leader and said she almost has a mindset of, “If I don’t do it, who will?”

“I was filling up (the water coolers) before a ball game the other day, and she came down there and started filling them up with me,” Sherer said. “She just sees a need, and she doesn’t have to be asked — she just does it. How much do we need more people like that in society?”

Little acts like that show that Pasha is sometimes misunderstood, Shaffer said. 

“She comes off really intense and sometimes cold because she’s so serious about academics and basketball, but she’s also one of the most kind people I’ve ever met,” Shaffer said. “I could talk about her all day for what she’s done for me and the team.”

Pasha was the representative of Distinguished Young Women of West Lauderdale in the organization’s statewide competition this past weekend, where she was named a Second Alternate and was the winner of a $1,500 scholarship from the Distinguished Young Women of Mississippi’s scholarship foundation and $150 from Meridian Coca-Cola. Scoring a 34 on the ACT in December 2017 also helped make Pasha eligible for scholarships in the $12,000-$13,000 range.

“I was pretty excited, because I had a 32 before, and it’s hard to bump your score up more than a point,” Pasha said.

Having already been accepted into Tulane, Pasha is waiting to see where else she gets accepted before deciding on a college. She is the daughter of Michelle and Dr. Azhar Pasha.