FAIRMONT — “What is it like to play high school basketball with your sister?”

Niah Smith chuckled, saying as much with that half-second response as words could have.

The idea of a sisterhood has been a building block in the Fairmont girls basketball program during the five seasons that Marcus Thompson has been the team’s head coach, helping bring the program from winless the season before Thompson’s arrival to back-to-back Southeastern Athletic Conference regular season championships and, last week, the program’s first conference tournament championship since 2006.

But for the current Golden Tornadoes team, that idea of sisterhood takes on a more literal meaning, with twin guards Niah and Miah Smith, alongside sisters Myasia and Taniya Simms in the post, helping lead the team’s success.

“With us two on the court, we just have that mindset of playing together and just trying to handle the ball and score and make sure other people score, and just make sure we win,” said Niah Smith, who averages 10.5 points, 6.0 assists and 4.2 steals per game.

The natural closeness of siblings helps establish an overall atmosphere of camaraderie among the Golden Tornadoes team, which entered Tuesday’s first-round state playoff game at 23-3 this season.

“When we get in those heated conversations and those heated battles, blood sisters are going to protect each other. But at the same time, they do a good job demonstrating why there needs to be a part of sisterhood, which takes a little bit off my plate because they do a good job mirroring it in front of the girls,” Thompson said. “There’s a lot of hate-love, arguing, butting heads — but growing up with a brother, that’s normal. It’s a gift and a curse to a certain extent, but the gift is much better than the curse.

“I do know that sisterhood matters — and brotherhood matters. … I know the closer you are as a team, the more chemistry you’re going to have.”

The two pairs of sisters make up the Golden Tornadoes’ top four scorers, also accounting for three of the team’s top four players in rebounding and assists and its top three in steals. And much of that production builds off itself, with a steal by one of the quartet often leading to an assist by another on a made basket by another.

“It helps a lot knowing that we’ve got two players on our team that have got a good connection, and then we’ve got some more people with a good connection, means good basketball,” said Taniya Simms, who leads the Golden Tornadoes with 15.8 points, 11.9 rebounds and 2.3 blocks per game. “We started from the bottom and now we’re at the top. So I can say that’s a good reward.”

Sibling relationships can be built on feeding off one another — whether that means building up each other’s energy on the court, like the Smiths tend to do, or competing with one another, like the Simmses.

“Miah and Niah, if one scores and the other one doesn’t score, they legit treat it like ‘we scored,’” Thompson said. “There’s games where — Niah, she’s one of the most unselfish people in the world, she can not score at all, but her sister scores and she’s happy. With Myasia and Taniya, it’s more of a competition with each other. You see all those different dynamics in a sister, or for me a brother. I’m excited for my brother, but at the same time it’s competition, whereas with (the Smiths) it’s all excitement for each other and with (the Simmses) it’s all competition. Oh, you got this many rebounds, I can do it too.”

The Smiths are identical twins, and have played basketball together — and done pretty much everything else together, too — all their lives.

“We’ve just got to fit together,” said Miah Smith, who averages 9.5 points, 4.9 rebounds, 3.8 assists and 6.5 steals per game. “When we’re not communicating and on the same page, we have to talk about and just come together as one.”

With identical DNA, it makes sense that their on-court styles mirror each other. Some games this season, the pair have been within one or two of each other in every stat category.

“(We have) a lot (of chemistry), especially with each other,” Miah Smith said. “And knowing each other’s weaknesses and strengths.”

“I think it’s because the way she plays and the way I play, I motivate her and she motivates me, and we come together and play,” Niah Smith said.

In addition to their on-court production, the Smiths’ energy has been a driving force behind the Golden Tornadoes’ success this season.

“The thing that ties so closely together on the court is the energy they play with; it’s unmatched,” Thompson said. “If you could get every girl to play with that kind of energy, and come and practice and play with that kind of energy every (day) — just watch them practice, they don’t know how to turn the energy level down. I always tell people, when you play that hard, good things are going to happen … whether it’s in points or assists or steals.”

The Simmses have the more competitive relational approach. Myasia, a senior averaging 5.4 points and 6.8 rebounds per game, is a year older than Taniya, a junior, with both playing the forward position for the Golden Tornadoes.

“It can be rough sometimes; when we both have attitudes, it don’t go good. But when we’re both on the same page, it goes good,” Taniya Simms said. “Me and her, one was always better than the other, so we always battled each other to see which one was going to get better. So we’ve got that kind of battle between each other.”

The Simmses haven’t played together quite as much as the Smiths — Myasia would age out of a team at the rec or middle school level before Taniya would catch up the following year — but the pair still played together often.

“We can get into it sometimes, but we’ll bounce back. I enjoy playing with her,” said Myasia Simms. “It was fun (growing up playing together), but sometimes we’ll get mad at each other and we’ll stop, but then we’ll (start again).”

The Smiths are open to playing together at the college level, should the opportunity present itself after they graduate from Fairmont in 2025. Taniya Simms will be playing without Myasia next year, with the older sister set to graduate this spring.

“We’ll be missing a post player, so I don’t know how that’s going to go,” Taniya Simms said. “And then me and her, we don’t know how that’s going to go either, because that’s going to be tough.”

The natural camaraderie of each sibling set rubs off on the rest of the Golden Tornadoes team, which everyone within describes as a tight-knit group.

“We’ve got a whole team, we don’t just have one or two players, we’ve got a whole team … so it’s not like one person’s better than the other on this team, or one person outdoes the other, it’s everybody as a whole. If we wasn’t like this as a whole, we would be nowhere right now. Our record probably would be so bad, I don’t know, but we’re a team; we’re not like other teams, we’ve got a whole squad with us.”

And with the team having the success it has enjoyed this season, including its first Robeson County Shootout championship since 2006, it’s been that much more rewarding for the players to share the experience with family — both literally and figuratively.

“It’s a big reward,” Niah Smith said. “We worked together, worked hard in the gym together, and we just kind of made it happen.”