Summer, a 17-year-old senior, wore jersey No. 14. She held a basketball on her hip and looked downcourt. Though one of her juvenile offenses involved fighting, the white scar over her right eye was a result of an unintentional head butt from an opposing player a month earlier, in early January. Summer had wobbled to the bench, bleeding, and passed out into her coach’s arms. An ambulance carried her to the hospital down the street. Carroll Academy lost that game, 62-4.

Summer watched Sacred Heart’s warm-up shots carom off the rim. For once, she saw no imposingly tall or overtly talented girls.

“We can win this game, if we try hard,” Summer said with the breezy lilt of a songbird.

‘Oh, No. Carroll Academy.’

Summer’s bedroom — the one at her grandmother’s house in the hills outside of town, with the bed she usually shares with her son and sometimes with her mother — has wood paneling and a bare light bulb attached to a ceiling fan. The room is stranded between childhood and adulthood.

There are pictures of Summer as a little girl, a sweet grin under freckled cheeks. She used to do ballet, play soccer and softball, and participate in beauty pageants. There is an “It’s a Boy!” banner on the wall and a Pack ’n Play playpen in the corner.

It was a Friday night, and 8-month-old DaMarion was sprawled on the unmade bed. The house smelled of cigarette smoke. The curtains were mostly drawn, and there was a mattress in the dining room.

“Before I got pregnant, I wanted to join the Air Force,” Summer said. “After I do that, that would help me go to college.”

It was probably a long shot before she became pregnant. Summer’s parents separated when she was in fourth grade. Her mother no longer works. Her father has six children with four women, and a stepdaughter with his live-in girlfriend.

Summer is familiar with soup kitchens and eviction notices. A couple of years ago, with her father and a brother, she lived in the loft of a barn with no heat, electricity or water, she said. They took showers in the owner’s nearby house. They moved into a sister’s trailer for a while. Eventually, they moved to a trailer in nearby McKenzie. Summer sometimes spent nights with cousins in what some call the projects, a den of poverty.

“I never blame anyone else for the choices I make,” Summer said. “But I do think if I was in a better environment, I’d be a better person.”

Drinking turned to drug use — marijuana at 14, and lots of experimenting with everything from cocaine to hydrocodone, Summer said. She has crushed and snorted Xanax and Adderall. She can list street prices of various drugs and explain where to find them.

Last spring, she got into fights on consecutive days, the second one at school. That got her into the juvenile court system. She was placed on probation and under house arrest.

She was already pregnant, by a longtime boyfriend, a former Carroll Academy student who is now 21. His only job since high school was a short stint at the drive-in restaurant Sonic.

The baby arrived last summer, two months early and weighing 3 pounds 8 ounces. While the baby was in the neonatal care unit, Summer could be found out drinking with friends, smoking pot and occasionally snorting Xanax, she admitted.

She missed five of the first days of school last fall, just as DaMarion came home. Summer and her father, leaving for work as a welder every morning before dawn, were told that one more absence would land her in trouble as a truant. After a long weekend of parties, while her mother watched the baby, Summer woke up on a Monday afternoon to see the bus dropping friends off after school.

“I thought, ‘Oh, no,’ ” Summer said. “ ‘Carroll Academy.’ ”

Deep into the basketball season, Summer had been at Carroll Academy for six months. There were a few hiccups, including two failed drug tests for marijuana, but her grades and behavior at school were good. She was seen as a bit of a leader, especially on the basketball team. To other girls, she had an alluring mix of street credibility and sisterly sweetness.

“Bad decisions, good intentions,” Summer said. “That’s my saying.”

Summer packed a bag for the weekend: clothes for her, diapers and clothes for DaMarion. She buckled the baby into a car seat and arrived at her father’s house in McKenzie, where he had just returned from work.

Like most parents of teenagers at Carroll Academy, Summer’s father has conflicted feelings about the school. He appreciates that it keeps Summer occupied and creates structure and discipline. He does not like some of the demands on his time, like the requirement that he pick up Summer after basketball practices and games. For people struggling to keep jobs and houses, everything from the time constraints to the gas money can be a burden.

Yet because the students are juveniles, the parents are part of the court orders, too. And school administrators frequently use the threat of jail to get the parents to adhere to their commands. Sometimes it is more than a threat.

But if Summer had stayed in public school?

“She probably would end up in jail, to be honest,” her father said. “I hate to say it.”

Small Breakthroughs

Like Summer, Tonya Lutz, the coach, thought that Carroll Academy might be able to beat Sacred Heart. But a full-court press flustered the Lady Jaguars.

Destiny, the point guard, could not dribble through the traps. Her teammates, including a seventh grader and four others who would not score a point all season, did not have the intuition or experience to get open or otherwise attract the attention of defenders.

Destiny’s arms flailed wildly with each stolen ball. Her cheeks filled with exasperation, and her eyes scanned the bench for answers. Carroll Academy trailed, 10-0, after one quarter and by 29-8 at halftime.

Patrick Steele, Carroll Academy’s security director, followed the girls into the locker room. He warned Destiny about her attitude.

Lutz closed the door. It did not stop the sound of Sacred Heart’s coach screaming at his players in the next room.

“You all are playing down to the competition!” he yelled.

The competition, Carroll Academy, heard every insult. A couple of the girls, including Summer, had tears in their eyes.

Lutz simmered, then boiled.

“You want to get out there with that coach?” she hollered. “You’re ready to cry! You’re ready to cry!”

The coaches took turns shouting at their teams, a song-and-answer routine through thin walls. When one paused, the other answered, as if part of an opera.

Lutz, who played point guard on a state championship team in high school, showed Destiny how to step through a defensive trap. She asked a girl to stand up as a prop, then aggressively stepped around her, knocking her into the laps of teammates. She pushed aside another with her backside to demonstrate rebounding technique.

“Use your rear end,” she said. “God gave you one. Use it.”

Lutz finally dismissed the players. As the team quietly headed back out to the floor, she stopped.

“Real coaches do that,” Lutz said of the opposing coach, screaming at his team despite a 21-point halftime lead. “I like that.”

Carroll Academy was on its way to losing, 54-15. But early in the third quarter, when the ball went out of bounds under the basket, Lutz ordered an inbounds play that the team had practiced. She reminded Summer to set the screen.

“Yes, ma’am,” Summer said.

Summer set the screen. Destiny broke open and received the pass. Her shot swished.

Lutz smiled. Sometimes, it clicks.