Eventually, talent gets noticed, and the girl gets asked to play on a CYO or AAU basketball team. And a club volleyball team. And maybe a softball team too.
It doesn't matter. She can do it all. She's just one of the gifted ones -- and she doesn't have to think about it.
For the truly elite athlete, that road goes on through adolescence. A sport is chosen somewhere along the line, and the girl who chooses basketball works her way up the ladder. She moves to an elite summer team that travels, maybe all over the country. She gets feelers from local high schools about coming to particular schools.
And she's very, very good. She might be a tall girl, who can block shots, rebound and score because she's more athletic than the other tall girls, and just too big for the small girls. Or she could be a guard who can dribble through three defenders and then finish over the tall slow girls because of her quickness and leaping ability.
And she never has to think about it.
In college, she's still a dominant force. Oh, every once in a while, she now runs into a player who can match her physically, and some of them are three or four years older, and they make her look bad. But she quickly bounces back against the lesser lights, and it's clear she's bound for the WNBA.
And she really hasn't had to think too much.
'At the college level, you're physically more powerful,' says Ebony Hoffman, who played at USC before becoming the first round draft pick of the Indiana Fever. Hoffman, a 6-2 center, averaged 14.7 ppg and 8.1 rpg her senior year for the Women of Troy, capping a career that saw her be named first team all-Pac 10 three times.
In her first two years in Indiana, she averaged 2.9 ppg and 2.9 rpg.
And that made her think.
'At the pro level, everybody was the best player. It's not about physicality,' she says. 'At this level, the game is played above the neck.'
Hoffman, now a starter for the second-best team in the Eastern Conference, had some hard lessons to learn, starting with conditioning. She's in much better shape in her third season, but the turnaround in her career was primarily mental.
'I learned patience,' she says. 'When you're a rookie coming in, you think "I should be playing", "I should be doing this or that".' But even a strong and skilled athlete like Hoffman had some serious adjustments to make. After all, now she was playing against women 10 years older, 10 years stronger and, most important, 10 years smarter.
As Erin Buescher of the Sacramento Monarchs says, 'You have to realize "I belong here",' She too had to struggle to find a home in the league, but now, in her fifth season, she's the third leading scorer for the defending WNBA champions.
'You have to be mentally tough,' she says. 'And confidence is really important.'
And finally, 'it's more mental than physical.'
And yes, you do have to think about it, because basketball in the WNBA is not just a game for the physically gifted. It's about being smarter (the pro game demands a better understanding of not only individual assignments but team goals) and it's about being mentally tougher and not giving in when things don't go well.
The illusion that success at the highest level of the sport is determined solely by physical gifts is not one that can be sustained, and the list of college stars released by WNBA teams is littered with great athletes who couldn't think the game, or adjust to the mental pressure.
It may look like all those talented players are just running up and down the floor making plays, but their minds are going faster than they're bodies. And they're always thinking.