Thetford
Having graduated from Thetford Academy, both face college futures, heading in opposite directions. They’ve known each other for a long time, a relationship that’s become closer the past three years out of necessity.
It’s what makes today so important for both of them. Covey and Klarich will represent TA one last time this afternoon in the Twin State Basketball Games at Hanover High School, suiting up in Vermont colors. Summer and high school basketball made them teammates, last winter made them state champions, but filling a need made them sisters.
And sisters hate being apart.
“We have talked about it; it’s a really hard topic because we’re so used to seeing each other,” said Klarich, a former Oxbow High student-athlete who moved into Covey’s East Corinth home in 2015 — and, later, transferred to Thetford — after losing her father, Justin, to cancer. “It’s more for me than her, because she’s been such a rock in my life. She’s easy to go to when you’re having a bad day.
“I’m sad because I’m not sure where I’ll be going on vacations or when I’m going up at my mom’s or where we’re going to be. I hope to stay in touch; I really want to stay in touch and hang out. I hope that happens.”
Covey and Klarich first met through basketball, primarily the Thetford-based River Valley AAU program. Klarich started early and Covey joined after hitting middle school, paired on a team in which Klarich played point guard and Covey shooting guard. Success frequently followed. So did friendship.
“I didn’t start basketball until seventh grade; someone told me about it and I was like, ‘Sounds cool, why not?’ ” Covey recalled this week. “I joined it, and she was one of the first to come talk to me. We’ve been good friends and played every year since.”
The girls frequently roomed together on the long-distance road trips that are endemic to AAU hoops. Klarich became an occasional visitor to the Covey abode, sometimes accepting the offer of Keisha Covey, Regan’s stepmom, to stay overnight.
Although different people with distinctly different personalities, the girls clicked.
“There was summer basketball and a lot of hanging out in AAU season,” Keisha Covey said. “It’s not a short season, but it’s a pretty jam-packed season. We start in March with Karp’s Klassic (in Lebanon), and it goes all the way through the first weekend of May, and every single weekend. We spend lots of time together.”
At first, it gave Klarich a respite from a difficult situation at home.
Justin Klarich, an accountant in Bradford, Vt., received his first colon cancer diagnosis in his late 30s. By his daughter’s telling, doctors found it late and gave him a year to live. Still, he fought it aggressively, bravely and well. Her parents having divorced when she was little, her mother having moved to the Burlington region, Dahlia took on the responsibilities of care for her father and upkeep for their home.
She was in her early teens at the time.
“I had two other brothers in the house and my dad … but also my dad was not mobile; he had a three-foot blood clot in his leg, and he couldn’t walk,” Klarich said. “I was in charge of doing breakfast, lunch and dinner for everybody. I cleaned the house, I did all of the laundry, I went grocery shopping. I was giving him shots. I had to. I was 13 to 15 years old.
“I think it was how he raised me. I think he raised me different from my brothers. They recognized that, too. He was always pushing me to my limits. … He was making sure I knew what I was capable of. He wanted me to grow up fast, to be emancipated when I turned 16. He wanted me to learn responsibility.”
Justin Klarich died from cancer complications on Nov. 3, 2014. He was 41.
Although she maintains a relationship with her mother, Dahlia didn’t want to leave the Bradford area, where she had friends along with a spot on the Oxbow High varsity girls basketball team as a freshman and sophomore. As well-meaning as people would be in asking, however, Klarich found questions about how she was doing only reminded her of what she’d lost. Living with another Bradford family didn’t go well.
The Coveys, meanwhile, reminded her of what could be. Regan’s older sister, Shenia, had finished high school and moved out. A room was available if Dahlia ever needed it.
“Whenever she was having a rough time with the family she was staying with, she would text me or would be like, ‘Hey, oh my God, I’m stressing out,’ ” said Regan Covey, 17, who admitted to lobbying her friend to move in. “I’d remark about the offer to live with us was still standing.
“Her famous line was: ‘Everybody offered that at first, but no one kept doing it for months later.’ But we did.”
Establishing the Covey house as her home entailed much more than a move for Klarich. Keisha Covey had to go through the legal process of becoming Dahlia’s guardian.
“If a kid stays, they have to be registered,” said Keisha, who also is the legal guardian for a 14-year-old niece, Namya Benjamin. “Even at Oxbow, she had no address per se and had to have a parent or guardian. She had to go somewhere and be somewhere. I’ve talked with her mom, and we’ve discussed what’s best for Dahlia and what will make her happy and where she feels she will succeed.
“Switching and going to a school where they don’t know about her dad, there were days she couldn’t be here and she needed time. Thetford people knew her and her situation because Thetford and Oxbow are so close. … They all knew the situation and wouldn’t have to ask uninformed questions of where her dad was.”
Guardianship also became essential when Dahlia made the choice to transfer as the 2015-16 school year approached.
“The plan was, as far as I knew, she would continue at Oxbow, since it was her choice school,” Keisha said. “Then junior year, literally the day before school started, she said, ‘I want to go to Thetford.’ … She’d done really well academically and with basketball. It just seemed to be the right fit. She has a lot of friends who live in the area, and she gets to see her Oxbow friends and still be close with them.”
A good relationship with Regan that started with basketball blossomed as the girls became accustomed to living under the same roof. Regan’s energetic, giving nature helped.
“We do refer to each other as sisters,” said Klarich, 18. “I honestly have no idea if that’s part of the legal system, but we refer to each other as sisters. It’s how she introduces me to new friends. It’s really cute; they’re super confused, and I love it.
“She is super energetic, so loving, so cuddly, and anyone who knows her knows she’s ready to help anybody in five seconds. She’s such a great person to talk to and so easy to talk to. Me, on the other hand, I’m very quiet; I keep to myself. I bottle a lot of it up. I try to help other people and be there for them, but I’m not as good as she is.”
The transfer also created a reunion with Eric Ward, TA’s longtime girls basketball coach. Ward had first coached the girls at River Valley AAU when they were seventh-graders and had resumed coaching Regan Covey through her first three TA seasons.
“They’re like sisters in the sense that they have similar interests but they are their own people, which is nice on the basketball floor,” said Ward, who will be coaching both in today’s Twin State contest against New Hampshire. “These are two people who are different, that have become good teammates. They became really close as a family, in terms of all that happened with Dahlia and her situation.”
The Thetford Academy girls basketball team held a cancer awareness game on Feb. 10 at Vaughan Gymnasium. Before the Panthers took on Lyndon Institute, Klarich picked up the public-address microphone and attempted to tell those in attendance about her personal experience with the disease.
Even 2½ years removed from her father’s death, the talk proved difficult. Klarich paused to gather herself. Covey came over and put her arm around her teammate — her sister — in support.
“Dahlia is pretty strong; she doesn’t show a lot of emotion outwardly,” said Ward, who at age 15 lost his own 46-year-old father to a fatal heart attack. “When she read that thing about cancer and her father, she broke down. It was like a moment where I thought I should go next to be that support, but Regan went over as a sister would, to comfort her sister. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when she was speaking.”
Ward believes the night also gave Klarich a release that palpably affected the Panthers’ basketball fortunes. The Thetford point guard hit for double digits five times in the final month of the season, including a season-high 21 points against Lamoille on Feb. 24 and 16 twice, the latter in a defeat of her former Oxbow team in the Vermont Division III quarterfinals on March 11. Thetford won the D-III state championship a week later, erasing a 15-point deficit in the final six minutes for a 53-52 defeat of Windsor.
“That felt so, so good,” Dahlia Klarich said. “That’s a memory we will never, ever forget.”
The relationship is bound to change now that college beckons. Regan is headed to Norwich University, where she will join the corps of cadets (“I love structure; it’s good for me”) and play basketball with another former Thetford standout, Shyann Josler. Klarich is heading in the other direction geographically, to Southern New Hampshire University, possibly to follow her late father into accounting. If there’s a sport in her future, it’ll have to be as a walk-on.
The girls have discussed what the future holds. They’re uncertain how to react.
“It’s hard, mostly because I’m so used to her,” Regan said. “It’s easy to talk to her and be around. She’s such an easy-going, lovable person. I’m not lying: I don’t know anybody that doesn’t like her. Some people say, ‘I don’t know her, but she seems like a sweetheart.’ I don’t think she has a bad bone in her body.”
The relationship will remain. Not because two basketball teammates need it to.
Two sisters do.
Greg Fennell can be reached at gfennell@vnews.com or 603-727-3226.