Regina Metz is her own person and her own kind of basketball player, but she doesn’t mind talking about the people she's inevitably judged against.

“I love talking about my family, because they’re a really important part of who I am,” Metz said. “… They’re all my best friends. I could talk about them all day long. They’re amazing people and role models.”

Metz is the seventh member of her 11-sibling family to play high school basketball and the sixth to come through Pinecrest Academy. Some of her earliest memories of watching basketball are of seeing her older brother, Michael, hit a half-court shot at the buzzer to beat Holy Spirit Prep in 2007, and of getting out of school early and road tripping to the far-off destinations where the Paladins played away games before joining the GHSA.

Regina is now the eldest Metz at Pinecrest, looking to help the Paladins expand on their most successful season in school history and move on from the departure of Margaret Metz, Regina’s older sister and one of the most successful athletes in school history.

Regina had a close-up view to Margaret’s on-court accomplishments – 24.3 points per game her senior year, the school scoring record for boys and girls, the tight defense and surprising rebounding ability – but was influenced just as much by how Margaret would push through distractions and injuries without turning them into excuses.

“She had a sprained ankle for pretty much her junior and senior year, no one would ever know,” Regina said. “But I go home and see her getting the ice bucket and putting her foot in it for 15 minutes, almost crying because she hates the cold so much. (It was) just stuff like that that no one ever knew because she would never say, and if I said it, she'd kill me.”

One of the most important things that Regina can do on the court, then, is to remember that she’s not her sister. Regina is a few inches taller, so she can be even more of a rebounding force than Margaret was. She’s already a formidable scorer, having eclipsed the 1,000-point mark for her career and earning all-county honors last season by averaging 18.6 points per game.

Decision-making is one of the main areas that Regina is working on this season, as she’s now handling the point guard role that Margaret played, bringing the ball up the court and distributing it to start the team’s offense.

So as much as Regina loves to talk about her siblings, she tries not to think about them too much when she’s playing.

“(I try) just to not think about how am I different or how am I the same, but more just to play how I would actually play,” Regina said. “I guess I haven't thought about that, because when I do think about it, my game goes south.”