ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Any family that celebrates the holiday likely has its own Christmas routine, an order of events governing gifts, family and feasting.
So once presents are opened on Christmas morning in Point Pleasant, New Jersey, Katelynn Flaherty and her dad head to a basketball court. Even last year, when the University of Michigan's basketball schedule allowed Katelynn a brief return home, she and her dad left the wrapping paper behind so that she could shoot a few hundred jump shots, almost as many off the dribble and a bundle of free throws.
For a few years, Lynn Flaherty would explain to family why her husband and daughter were running late. Eventually no one needed the explanation.
Forget sleigh bells. The sound of a ball swishing through a net marked the season.
It was the same sound Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico heard recently as she left the practice complex at the end of a long day. In an otherwise empty gym, Flaherty worked her way through a daily routine.
There are approximately 5,000 women eligible to play Division I college basketball this season. Only two of them, All-Americans Kelsey Mitchell at Ohio State and Kelsey Plum at Washington, averaged more points per game a season ago than the 22.1 Flaherty produced for the Wolverines.
A person doesn't reach those heights without something driving her, especially when an unimposing 5-foot-7 frame sometimes leaves even those on her own campus skeptical that she actually plays on the basketball team, let alone she is its star. What her first two years in Ann Arbor showed Flaherty, now a junior, is that what drives her is the product of her own free will.
"Today, I could totally say without hesitation that it's her passion," Barnes Arico said. "I didn't know if I would always say that."
Listen to the family history, and it is apparent that Flaherty didn't really choose basketball any more than an Alaskan grizzly bear chooses to hunt salmon. No one made her play, but she was born into basketball. Her parents, Lynn and Tom, met on a basketball court. Both played the sport in college -- Lynn at the College of New Jersey and Tom at Seton Hall. Both coached various levels of youth basketball. Their daughter grew up on sidelines and in gyms.
The first time Barnes Arico heard about Flaherty was when the coach's husband told her about some third grader from a town on the shore who was supposed to be the next big thing. The die was already cast.
When Michigan tempted Barnes Arico away from St. John's after the Red Storm reached the Sweet 16 in 2012, Flaherty was one of her first recruiting priorities. She knew that Flaherty, an outstanding student, could handle Michigan. And she was convinced, having seen the small guard put up big points at the highest levels of AAU, that she could thrive on Big Ten courts.
But opposing defenders who had several inches and a couple of dozen pounds on her weren't the only challenges Flaherty faced as a freshman. An only child, she was on her own for the first time. Lynn wasn't there to take care of her when she was sick. Tom, who so carefully trod the ground between coach on the court and dad off it, wasn't there to be either. There were new demands and new challenges. Amid all that was new, it was difficult to figure out what to do with old routines. Was basketball her passion or a passion others assumed was hers?
"Sometimes I wondered was basketball something that she was continuing because it got her an education, or did she really love it?" Lynn said. "And in the beginning, when she was first there, I think she was definitely figuring that out, like 'I just want to be a normal student sometimes.' But as she's become more adjusted, you definitely know that basketball -- she's doing it for her. Of course she wants to please everybody around her, she wants to be good. But she has this inner drive."
That is what college should offer: the freedom to figure out who you are.
"I think sometimes kids get here and realize, 'I like it, but I don't love it.'" Barnes Arico said. "And there is a different level. Liking it is, you're going to practice, you're going through it, you're getting a scholarship, you're having a solid career.
"To love it takes more of an effort, a drive, a passion."
It takes not just sticking around after practice to take more shots, but wanting to do that, looking forward to that solitude, when the noise of the swish of the net replaces the noise of daily life.
"It used to be more of a struggle for me, especially coming to college and being so tired all the time," Flaherty said. "Now I look forward to it more than dread it."
So a person who plays far bigger than her frame is now the key if Michigan is to finally act its size in women's basketball. Over a span of decades, there might not be a more underachieving program in the sport. Though rarely awful, it is almost less befitting Michigan's self-image that it has almost always been irrelevant.
The Wolverines have been to the NCAA tournament just six times and won three tournament games.
That isn't an easy identity to change. And despite at least 20 wins in each of her first four seasons, Barnes Arico is still trying to change it after three consecutive WNIT trips.
"Now you're associated with the block M and one of the greatest universities, one of the greatest athletic departments, in the world," Barnes Arico said. "But women's basketball hasn't done it. So why can't we be the first to do it?
"I think the players in our program believe that, Katelynn headlining that."
It can't be a one-woman show. Flaherty was not only among the most prolific scorers in the country a season ago but also one of its most efficient. Given the volume of shots she took from the 3-point line, her overall field goal percentage (.449) was about as efficient as a post player who shoots 60 percent from the field. So it's not as if she gets her points at the expense of the offense. All the same, Michigan may well be a better team with Flaherty scoring 18 points per game than 22, if it means 6-foot-5 sophomore Hallie Thome is a force inside and senior Siera Thompson beats Flaherty to the career record for 3-pointers.
At the same time, there is no reason to make the game more complicated than it needs to be. The Wolverines will need her to shoot the ball hundreds of times this season. So Flaherty puts up hundreds of shots each day.
Alone in the gym, listening to the voice in her own head that drives her to be the best.
"I can honestly say that I found my passion," Flaherty said. "Especially just being able to get in here by myself and really enjoy it and cherish every moment knowing it's not going to last forever."