Kamela Gissendanner has always been fearless.

As a child, Gissendanner would beg to sit atop her father's shoulders and then hurl a mini-ball into the basket, with her legs wrapped tightly around his neck.

"She would not want to come off," Ed Rideout, Gissendanner's father, said.

Rideout's neck would shoot up with pain because Gissendanner would stay up there so long; his tippy-toes stretched his 6-foot-3 frame upwards, closer to the hoop, so his daughter could get a better shot.

"That would probably be the only way I could score," Gissendanner said.

She doesn't have that problem anymore. As a sophomore shooting guard for the Penn State women's basketball team, putting up 15.1 points per game, Gissendanner has scored her share of points on the hardwood.

Her journey has taken her from stardom at Clairton High School, enrollment 267 students, to the all-star tournaments where schools down Tobacco Road were beating down her door for her services. She then returned to Pennsylvania, humbled, after playing 61 minutes in her freshman season at North Carolina State.

But no matter the distance or distress, her parents -- Rideout and Kamela Townes -- would be there to support her. Though Gissendanner never shared a name or a home with Rideout, her childhood could be considered quite normal.

When Gissendanner was born, she was given both her mother's first name and maiden name. Townes' current last name is from a later marriage, which brought three more children. The children all have the first initial "K" in honor of Townes' father K.T. -- brother Kane and sisters Kameron and Kamara.

Family is of the utmost importance to Gissendanner, who never refers to any of her siblings as halves of any kind.

"I never consider them step or anything," Gissendanner said. "They are a part of everything I have ever done, and I've always been a part of whatever they've been doing."

The separation between Rideout and Gissendanner has never widened. He loved his baby since before she was born.

"I love my daughter, period," Rideout said. "Her passion for basketball brought more to that love, and I just kept feedin' it."

When Rideout would drive up in his car to take Gissendanner for a trip, he would always ask her, "What is today?" The small girl in the passenger seat would then shout, "Kammy's day!"

Those earliest shots eventually manifested into dribble drives at McKinley Park outside of Pittsburgh. Clairton consists of little more than a bare landscape of a grocery store and a few shops. But Gissendanner's mother was adamant about making all of her children were occupied.

"I pour into them church, things around the house," Townes said. "It's great whenever you see good results."

With her father, Gissendanner formed a passion for basketball that included pick-up games against guys as an 11-year-old. Gissendanner also found an irreplaceable bond with her father.

"I always knew when I was with him that I would be guaranteed to eat and I would be guaranteed to go play basketball," Gissendanner said.

She never had to fear that dad would leave her side -- well, only once.

***

It was like "The Road Less Traveled," by Robert Frost, which Rideout has recorded onto the voicemail of his cell phone:

And that has made all the difference

After moving to Rome, Ga., to start a career as a businessman, Rideout came back to Pittsburgh to visit his 3-year-old daughter. The next few moments gave him a life-altering choice, a fork in the road.

As he prepared to leave, to move on with life, Gissendanner figured out her dad was leaving to go south once again, and she burst into tears.

"She said, 'Don't go back to Atlanta, daddy,' " Rideout said. "Then I couldn't go, I had to console her."

He never returned to Georgia until 15 years later, where he now works as a professor of mass communications at Paine College in Augusta. Rideout committed the next chunk of his life to journalism in Pittsburgh, and, more importantly, accompanying Gissendanner all the way through high school.

His job became being a father, and basketball was the routine. They would play together at least once a week, all the way until Rideout lost his first game of one-on-one to Gissendanner. Rideout, though, is no slouch on the court -- he starred at South Hills High School and won a collegiate championship at Point Park College.

Basketball lies in within the genes of Gissendanner's family. Her cousin Daryl Gissendanner played in college at Pittsburgh. But after watching Gissendanner challenge young men in the park, Rideout knew the physical aspect of his daughter's game had arrived and put her through a rite of passage at the immature age of 13.

"I wanted to see if she was ready to play high school ball," Rideout said. "I knew she was physically gifted, but I didn't know if she was mentally ready."

Every time Gissendanner drove, he pushed her around. Not to physically harm her, but to push her to the breaking point. When Gissendanner snapped, she slammed the ball on the ground in frustration. She said, "Dad, you cheatin.' "

Rideout hit back, saying that he wouldn't attend her next AAU tournament, because he "didn't want to see quitters." An angry Gissendanner attacked the basket left and right and, after handling her father in the game, she refused to talk to him.

"I then told her, 'Hey, it was just a test. I believe you're good enough,' " Rideout said.

She proved it to him again and again throughout those years, 2,703 times for a Clairton High School scoring record. In 2003, Gissendanner was the Associated Press Small School Player of the Year.

Gissendanner's innate talent had her competing all over the country in high school all-star tournaments, including the Deep South Classic. Duke, North Carolina and N.C. State were constantly bombarding Gissendanner for her services. She would go alone on many of her visits, because Townes was busy raising the other children, and later picked N.C. State.

"It was given to me over and over and over and eventually I just started liking them," Gissendanner said.

But quickly the honeymoon was over at N.C. State. The coaching staff tried to transform the 6-foot-1 Gissendanner into a forward/center. Decreased success led to less playing time, which tested her psyche and brought wandering thoughts of home. During her freshman year, she only averaged 5.8 minutes per game. At the same time, Gissendanner averaged about one call home per day.

"She was devastated by it," Rideout said. "She's a classy lady, so she won't say anything negative, but she was devastated, man."

Suddenly, Gissendanner's future was uncertain, but she knew she would head closer to home. Most of all, Gissendanner wanted to take the recruiting process slowly and more deliberately than she had the first time.

"To her it was like, 'Last time my mother wasn't involved. I need my mother to drive to be where I'm going,' " Townes said.

It came down to Pittsburgh and Penn State and, with the influence of Pittsburgh-native Lady Lions Jess Strom and Tanisha Wright, the decision was made. After more prayer and phone calls, Rideout heard six of the finest words that would ever come to his ears: "Hey dad, I'm a Nittany Lion," Gissendanner said.

Rideout calls that the second proudest moment of his life involving his daughter. He lived just three hours south of Gissendanner, and she had just told him that she was transferring less than 700 miles away to State College.

But as an alumnus of Penn State -- he earned his bachelor's degree at University Park in 1987 -- he bleeds blue and white.

No matter the distance, the love for his school and, more importantly, his longing to see his daughter happy had combined perfectly.

"I wanted her to go to PSU from the start," Rideout said. "But the experience was a blessing."

Townes agrees that this was the right choice.

Gissendanner got there, she just took the road less traveled -- and it made all the difference in the world.

***

When Rideout heard the final statistics for his daughter in the Texas Tech game, he thought his hearing was failing him.

After teaching a class, Rideout's mother, who taped the game on ESPN2 for him to watch later, called to tell him the good news. Gissendanner had registered 34 points in 49 minutes of play.

"I thought I didn't hear her right," Rideout said.

That was a game where Gissendanner had to carry the Lady Lions on her back. It became a war between the sophomore who Texas Tech women's basketball coach Marsha Sharp only knew as "25" and preseason All-American guard Erin Grant.

Grant hit a running jump shot to take the game into overtime at 46-46. Then Grant hit another dagger, this time a 3-pointer, to send the game into a second overtime. Yet Gissendanner kept her cool and, with 1:23 left in the second overtime, made her shot count, as Gissendanner gave Penn State the lead for good with a lay-up that made it 71-69. Portland was sure to credit parenting for the performance.

"I've used the phrase, her mother did a great job with her," Penn State women's basketball coach Rene Portland said. "You can look at some people and see their body language change. She'll go up to Annie and say, 'Keep talking to me.' "

As the co-captain of a young Lady Lions squad, Gissendanner has to learn while also communicating that work ethic to the other players. But she loves to talk. Gissendanner's career goal is to become a speech teacher, and Townes loves to tell the story of how her daughter decided on her career choice.

When it comes to her brother and sisters, Gissendanner was never afraid to confront one of them with an issue. Gissendanner said that if her brother ever hit one of her sisters, she wouldn't tell her mother, but rather hit him back. Townes calls the method "hit it and quit it," not always referring to actual punching.

One day, Gissendanner's sister Kamara read a street sign, and Gissendanner noticed a lisp in her younger sister's voice.

"She said, ' 'Mara, you have a speech problem,' " Townes said.

Gissendanner then went into explaining that how Kamara should always have her tounge in back of her two front teeth when she went through a rendition of "Sally sells sea shells by the sea shore." At the time, Gissendanner was undecided about her career path.

"I was like, 'Kam, that's what you should be doing," Townes said. "She watches for those kinds of things."

When it comes to basketball, Gissendanner is especially meticulous about her jump shot. After years of pounding stress on her shins working with her father to create a jump shot that Portland often refers to as pretty and beautiful, Gissendanner suffered a stress fracture that had her sitting out for three months during last year's redshirt season. Like everything else, she battled through it.

"She's a no quit type of individual," Townes said.

The game vs. the Red Raiders was a testament to her work ethic. After Gissendanner left N.C. State, she felt almost rejected by the lack of playing time that she received. But Rideout has always told her that "success is the sweetest form of revenge."

After defeating Texas Tech, Gissendanner tried to remember another time she had controlled a game so much.

"High school," she said.

Rideout has missed most of this success story this year. He has only been able to attend the St. Francis game this season, a blowout where Gissendanner saw less action in garbage time. Townes, on the other hand, who has had to split going to high school games for her daughter Kameron, also missed the Texas Tech game.

But once Rideout got a hold of the Texas Tech tape and Townes ran back home to watch on the television, they saw Gissendanner battling back and forth with Grant. It immediately reminded them of another matchup that he had seen in years past.

On March 2, 2001, the Clairton Lady Bears faced Charel Allen and Monessen High School at the A.J. Palumbo Center for the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League (WPIAL) Championship. Rideout witnessed what was his proudest moment as a father.

Allen, who now plays for Notre Dame, was a freshman phenom at the time, while Gissendanner was just a skinny sophomore. The battles between Gissendanner and Allen are legendary in the Pittsburgh area. In 2003, Portland saw the two competing on the recruiting trail.

"I've never seen two kids control a game so much in my life," Portland said.

It was basically the same story in 2001, except more profound in Rideout's eyes. Playing before a college arena -- Palumbo houses over 6,200 people, almost 10 times the enrollment at Clairton -- Gissendanner was so charged up for that game that she had to pop an aspirin for a headache that began to bother her.

"She was just so anxious to express herself on the court," Rideout said.

Eventually, after calming herself, Rideout watched from the stands as Gissendanner exploded for 34 points, 21 rebounds and a 64-50 victory for the Lady Bears. As Rideout watched the performance, he recalled the years he had spent with his daughter.

He reflected on the times when she was just a little child, hanging onto his neck. Then he remembered the fearlessness, the absolute tenacity, which she had shown against boys in the park. He began to cry as Gissendanner did when she was three and almost lost her dad.

"It was an unbelievable show," Rideout said. "I just broke down."

And most of all, it was theirs to hold onto. The distance keeps them apart, for now, but they always have those memories. That is until the next time they lace up their sneaks and play a little one-on-one.

"That's just something that we always have done together and we still do to this day," Gissendanner said.