When Guyana’s national basketball team would wrap up one of its Caribbean Women’s Championship games in November, some of its veteran players would decompress by strapping on recovery boots, lounging and scrolling on their phones.

But the Ramlall sisters — Amisha, Arshia and Ashna — had another challenge to tackle.

“I actually have to go do my Spanish [homework],” Amisha recalled, hooking a thumb over her shoulder as she recounted the teenagers’ double life of playing international basketball while juggling classes at Rosemount High School.

Junior twins Amisha and Arshia and sophomore Ashna are not only guards for a Class 4A state title contender but also for a South American national team on the rise and, one day, college programs of their own.

For the trio, basketball is just as much about pouring back into where they came from as it is creating opportunities for their futures.

Sibling smack talk

Though the athletic Ramlall siblings tried their share of other sports growing up — like soccer, softball and track — the three sisters and their older brother, Anish, felt especially drawn to basketball.

They trained with local skills coach Reid Ouse and developed into especially strong shooters, fine-tuning their form thanks to being “really competitive, really persistent with our workouts,” Amisha, a 5-foot-11 shooting guard, said. “The biggest thing for us was being consistent.”

Anish, now a junior guard on the men’s basketball team at St. Cloud State, wouldn’t go easy on his younger sisters in games of 2-on-2, typically paired up with 5-7 Arshia to balance out the quartet’s heights. But the sisters didn’t want him to go easy. They don’t afford one another that mercy.

The trio don’t play on the same club teams for Minnesota Fury, but when asked whether they get competitive during Rosemount’s practices, their voices overlap. “That’s the first person I’m going after.” “You are not scoring. Lockdown.” “I’m getting a bucket out of you. No way.”

But make no mistake, the three are close — roaming the Mall of America together on Black Friday, sharing some classes, sharing clothes, sharing a studious approach to school. They bicker, sometimes, like all siblings do.

“We have very good days,” Ashna said, “and very bad days.”

It’s easy, Amisha and Arshia acknowledged, to forget that Ashna, standing at 5-10, is a year younger at age 16.

“I was always kind of grouped together [with them],” Ashna said. “I always push myself.”

International experience

Before they moved to the United States to pursue higher education, their parents, Sunil and Dhanmati, met as teens growing up in Guyana, a country of just under a million people on South America’s northern coast.

Guyana’s settlement and trading history led to large portions of its diverse population having Indian, African, Chinese or European ancestry. Cricket reigns in popularity over basketball, and as the only South American nation with English as its official language, Guyana is often grouped with Caribbean nations to the north.

Nick Storm, the co-director of the Minnesota Fury, floated the idea that the Ramlalls might have a shot at representing their parents’ home country. They sent game film to the federation and scored an invite to a trial scrimmage in Guyana in March.

A good showing at the tryout earned them a spot on the national team, once they received their dual citizenship. Anish, too, has represented Guyana on the men’s side.

At the five-team Caribbean Women’s Championships, hosted in Guyana’s capital of Georgetown, Guyana placed second behind the U.S. Virgin Islands and qualified for FIBA’s Central American championships next summer, one step toward potential Olympic qualification.

The Ramlall sisters said the crowd packed into Cliff Anderson Sports Hall reacted with excitement with each drained three-pointer as Guayana won three of its four games. That crowd included nearly a dozen extended family members living in Guyana who had yet to see Amisha, Arshia and Ashna play basketball in person.

Their eight-day trip was eye-opening, said Amisha, “getting to see family who we never get to see, getting to see where my parents were from … trying to picture myself in their childhood.”

In Guyana’s opening win over the Bahamas, Amisha, Arshia and Ashna combined for 58 of their team’s 102 points, with Amisha hitting six threes as part of her 33-point haul. She earned a spot on the All-Tournament team after averaging 19.3 points per game.

They were among the youngest players in the entire tournament, lacing up alongside teammates and opponents in their 20s and 30s, some of whom compete professionally in Europe.

“Getting that knowledge from the older players really helped us,” Arshia said.

“They’re stronger, faster, jump higher,” Amisha said, “but we definitely held our own.”

But the trip’s highlight wasn’t the basketball or even Guyana’s sweet mangoes and Jagua fruit they gush over. It was getting to share their basketball experience with kids at a local children’s shelter. The children the team visited attended one of Guyana’s games as well.

“They were just so excited to be there, so young,” Ashna said.

“Women’s sports is not very big in Guyana as a whole, and women’s sports as a whole is on the rise, especially women’s basketball,” Amisha said. The country’s president even posted his support online for the team. “Getting to show anything is possible there is a huge thing.”

Back with the Irish

The transition back in Rosemount’s basketball season was a whirlwind. The sisters flew home with an eight-hour layover in Miami — packed with more homework, since with school the next day, “we have to, have to, do it now,“ Ashna said.

Two days later, they were playing in their first game with the Irish, a 91-75 win over Champlin Park on Nov. 20 to open the season.

Now Rosemount is 5-0 through Sunday and considered a veritable contender in Class 4A, having been on the cusp of a first title with its second runner-up finish in 2021 after going nearly two decades without reaching the state tournament.

The sisters had to miss Rosemount’s annual Meet The Lady Irish Night and most of the team’s preseason to play for Guyana, but it’s tough to tell. Amisha is averaging 24.2 points per game, Ashna 13.6 and Arshia 4.8.

At last year’s Meet The Lady Irish kickoff event, Amisha took the microphone, faced the crowd of Rosemount community members and announced her commitment to the Gophers as the first member of Dawn Plitzuweit’s 2027 recruiting class.

“I always knew I wanted to stay home,” Amisha said, praising the growth of the women’s basketball program and Minnesota’s academic opportunities. Both she and Arshia are interested in pursuing medicine. “Once I got the offer, it was just kind of a matter of when I wanted to do it.”

Announcing her commitment in front of Rosemount’s youth teams, coaches and her teammates was “my way of giving back to all the hard work they put into me,” Amisha said.

Ashna has offers from schools like Creighton, Arizona State and Wisconsin, while Arshia has been visiting programs including Minnesota Duluth, Bemidji State and St. Olaf.

But they’re not wishing away their time playing together for Rosemount. Last year’s section championship game loss to Eastview still stings, and “knowing we only have two years left playing here at Rosemount, we don’t want to waste any opportunity we have,” Amisha said.

“We have a lot of great, talented players this year, athletic players,” she said. “We’re really big on defense, with Coach [Chris] Orr especially. That’s one thing he always preaches. ... We’ve just got to keep doing the little things because we know our sky’s the limit for us.”