Price honors her mother, leads surprising Ole Miss

                    

	Armintie Price leads Ole Miss with 19.1 points per game. Richard C. Lewis/WireImage

By Caitlin Moscatello, Special to SI.com

Armintie Price was sitting in the last class of summer session when her phone rang. The news was devastating: Her mother, Beatrice, had died of ovarian cancer at 49. Her two-month battle was over without so much as a goodbye.

As she began to cope with her mother's death, Price contemplated taking time off from school -- and basketball -- a decision her coach and teammates would have undoubtedly understood. But Price knew her absence would hurt the Lady Rebels' prospects for this season. So, with her mother gone, and her team by her side, Price opted to stay and tough it out. The result has been her best season yet.

Left entirely out of the preseason rankings, Ole Miss has jumped out to a 16-5 start (5-1 in the SEC) and is ranked No. 22 in the nation. The Lady Rebels have wins over Vanderbilt and LSU behind Price, a 5-foot-9 senior guard who leads the team with 19.1 points a game.

"She was a leader the second she walked in here as a freshman," says Ole Miss coach Carol Ross. "People were following her even if they didn't know they were following her."

While Price continues to lead on the court, her mother's death has made her realize she needs her teammates just as much off of it. When she first arrived at Ole Miss as a freshman, Price was reserved and didn't open up to her teammates. Now, she'll occasionally cry on their shoulders.

"I sense when something's bugging her," Ross said. "When I sense that, I bring her in. I just have to stay tuned into that. I make her talk. I make her cry. She's got to deal with it."

Even before her mother's death, Price didn't have an easy road. She and four siblings were raised in Myrtle, Miss., by Beatrice, who worked at McDonald's to make ends meet. Finances were tight, and it wasn't uncommon for the lights to go out because Beatrice couldn't afford to pay the electric bill. Armintie and her brother, Freddy, would go to their aunt's house to eat when their refrigerator was empty. "You know, there'd be days when we'd just have to eat cereal. My younger brother, he used to eat all of it," Price says with a soft laugh.

Deeply religious, Beatrice would take Armintie and her siblings to the Pentecostal church in town at least once a week. Every now and then, a member of their parish would give the family $25. On such occasions, Beatrice would take the family to Wal-Mart to buy necessities. Armintie never asked for new shoes or clothes like other teenage girls. "My mom would try to spoil us when she could," Price says. "But we just didn't ask for things. We knew better."

Shoes weren't the issue when the basketball coach at Myrtle High, John Sherman, called to ask Beatrice to let Armintie play. In the Pentecostal faith, women are not permitted to wear shorts or pants. So Beatrice didn't give it much thought before saying no. It took several unsuccessful attempts by Sherman before Beatrice agreed to let Price play under one condition: He find a way for Armintie to play in a uniform that would fall in line with her religious beliefs. All it took to put Price on the roster was a few stitches from the home economics teacher, who sewed a piece of fabric over the front of Price basketball shorts creating a "skort."

Price went on to lead her high school team to three state titles in that skort.