Bakhtiari Fighting for Playing Time at Tam

When High girls basketball coach needs his team to foul late in a close game, he knows where on his bench to turn.

To one of his smallest players.

And then just hope she doesn’t hurt anyone.

Yasmine Bakhtiari, a 5-foot-2 reserve freshman guard on the Red-tailed Hawks’ roster is, just so happens to be a black belt in karate in her spare time.

“When I was younger, I fouled out a lot,” Bakhtiari said of her days in the CYO league, which started as a third-grader at Mt. Carmel Church. “It was hard to control myself.”

Now in her seventh year of basketball, Bakhtiari admits she’s still an aggressive player. But she uses it in a positive way.

“It’s helped my defense,” she said of applying her karate skills to basketball. “I don’t foul as much now.”

She doesn’t play much, either. That’s due in part to being a freshman on a highly successful team. It’s also due to karate.

Bakhtiari took time away from Tam's basketball team earlier this season to compete in a karate tournament. She did so with Evans’ blessing.

It wasn’t just any old tournament. Bakhtiari was competing for a national championship in Sacramento, having already won a regional title in Reno.

“She’s an amazing athlete,” observed her mother, Leigh, who also has a son, Bijan,  who plays sports at Redwood. “She has an entire room full of trophies. We’ve had to move them out to the garage because they were taking over.”

Unfortunately, Yasmine did not add to her collection in Sacramento. She suffered an elbow injury in her first bout and had to be rushed to the hospital.

So much for the national title. And so much for basketball - for several weeks.

But now she’s back in action – in both sports. In fact, her instructors at Taylor’s House of Karate in San Rafael came to watch Bakhtiari play Saturday night against Novato.

The coexistence of the two sports can be awkward at times, especially when she has practice for both in the same day, but Bakhtiari seems determined to continue doing double duty.

“Karate is like a second family to me,” she said of the sport she took up at the age of 4. “They’ve been very supportive of every sport I wanted to try, even if it took time away from karate.”

That list has included softball and soccer as well. But now Bakhtiari is focusing on just two – one in which she’s still pursuing that elusive national championship, and the other where she once dreamed of playing for Stanford but now has lowered the bar a bit.

“I’d love to be a starter on the varsity team,” she said. “Being a freshman on varsity, it’s hard to get playing time. But being on the team still means a lot. You have to be there for your teammates. This season has taught me how to be a team player.”

Bakhtiari plans to play AAU basketball in San Francisco this spring in hopes of continuing a transition from post player to point guard.

“I was one of the tallest players growing up. Then everyone started passing me up,” she noted. “I’m not good at ballhandling, but I’m getting better. Sometimes that has brought me down. It has really tested my love for the sport. If I didn’t love it as much as I do, I would have quit.”

She assures she doesn’t plan on quitting either sport anytime soon.

“Both mean so much to me. I don’t know what kind of person I would be without them,” she said. “Playing sports give me responsibilities, commitments. It’s helped make me who I am.”