Double Team in the Backcourt : Mirror-Image Twins Kim and Kristin Clark Play Strikingly Similar Game at Guard for USC

If you were to encounter the Clark twins, Kim and Kristin, in a hotel lobby, an airport or on the USC campus, no need to be embarrassed if you can’t tell them apart.

Neither can their father.

“If it’s beyond 20 feet, I’m in trouble,” Ron Clark acknowledges.

“So I just say: ‘Hi, Krim.’ ”

Welcome to the identical, mirror-image world of Kim and Kristin, a delight to watch on the basketball court . . . but a double nightmare to Pacific 10 Conference opponents.

Turns out the 5-foot-7 sophomore guards are kleptomaniacs. When they see a basketball, they take it. Then they dribble to the other end of the court and make a basket. And they make it look that simple because they have the kind of speed that drops everyone else into slow motion.

UCLA is a recently burned opponent. In a 2-minute 20-second burst in the second half, Kristin converted four steals into uncontested layups and squeezed in a three-point basket.

Then Kim entered the game and promptly picked UCLA’s pocket. Copycats, these two. And it has been that way since day one, their mother reports.

“That’s how they play,” Trish Clark says.

“If one does something, the other one feels she has to do it too. They even misbehaved as toddlers that way. We went through a period where we couldn’t keep potted plants in the house.

“One day--this was when they were still crawling--one went upstairs and de-potted all the plants, while the other one was downstairs, doing exactly the same thing.”

They play with a style, an attitude. Both prefer defense to offense. Both say they watched safeties and cornerbacks on the Super Bowl telecast. Theirs is a game of disruption and chaos, creating confusion in enemy lines.

When the Clarks are on a roll, there’s only one solution: Call time out.

Much of the time, they create chaos by themselves.

“It’s a good thing they’re sisters, the way they get on each other’s case so much,” teammate Jodi Parriott says, “or we’d have to break up fights all the time.”

Says Kim: “If we play an hour of one-on-one basketball, about 30 minutes of that is arguing.”

After her steals broke open the UCLA game, Kristin said her goal is to lead the Pac-10 in steals. She has 45, tied for fifth in the conference.

The Clarks are not only identical twins (Kristin is 34 minutes older), they are mirror-image identicals, which occurs in about 25% of all identical-twin births, according to the Multiple Births Foundation of Chicago.

A mirror-image identical twin means one side of his or her body is identical to the siblings’s opposite side. One is right-handed, the other left-handed.

(Kim is a natural left-hander but began writing and shooting with her right hand because Kristin did, and today is ambidextrous.)

Most recent example: The Clarks went to the USC dental school recently with twin toothaches. They each had a cavity filled--the cavities were in exactly the same location in the same tooth but on opposite sides of their jaws.

Grades? Each has a cumulative grade-point average of 2.67.

There are some differences:

--Kim wears No. 10, Kristin 32.

--In four seasons at Monta Vista High in Cupertino, Kristin scored 1,878 points, Kim 1,765.

--They have the same hairstyle, but Kim’s hair is several inches longer.

“It’s not because we’re trying to look different,” Kristin says. “Kim just likes hers longer than I do.”

--Kristin has a small birthmark on her left forearm.

--Kristin’s game face is Marine Corps issue, Kim’s is Willard Scott.

Says Trish Clark: “Just before a game starts, Kristin looks like she ate raw meat for breakfast and little children for lunch. Kim is just as competitive, she just goes about it differently.”

Then there’s the Elvis connection.

USC assistant coach John Henderson has observed that when things aren’t going well for Kristin, the right corner of her mouth curls up.

“It’s a sneer, just like Elvis,” he says.

But the most significant difference: Kim plays soccer, Kristin doesn’t.

That, plus surgery to repair a separated shoulder (basketball) and a cracked vertebra (soccer) has left Kim playing basketball catch-up to her sister.

And tough? Kim, describing her first-aid procedure the day last basketball season when her shoulder went out:

“I just went over the gym wall and rammed my shoulder against it. It went right back in.”

Kristin starts, Kim is usually Coach Fred Williams’ third player off the bench. Lately, USC has had an all-Clark backcourt at times.

Senior Erica Jackson starts at point.

As the shooting guard, Kristin is averaging 12.2 points a game for the season, but had 25, 23 and 20 recently, against Arizona, UCLA and Oregon. She also has 60 assists, second on the team to Jackson’s 80.

Kristin was five for six on three-point shots at Arizona.

Kim, after sitting out this season’s first six games because of a back injury suffered in soccer, has played in eight of the last nine games, with 17 minutes against UCLA her season high.

Kim, by a tiny margin, is the better shooter, her father said.

“Kristin has an unorthodox release, and her shot has a side spin on it,” he says. “Kim’s shooting form is better.”

It all started in Fairfax, Va., where Ron Clark, a physicist, had a hunch his twins were something special athletically.

“When they were 8, I got them into a league for 10-year-old girls and I wound up coaching their team,” he says.

“The day we practiced length-of-the-court passes, the 10-year-olds were just getting it to the other end. Kim and Kristin were bouncing them off the wall.”

Their mother says she spotted it during infancy.

“One Christmas, when they were just starting to walk, Kristin climbed halfway up the Christmas tree when we weren’t looking, and it fell over,” Trish Clark says.

“We made such a fuss over that, Kim felt she had to do something too. We left them alone for a few minutes, and when we came back in the room, Kim was hanging by one hand from the chandelier.

“She’d climbed up onto the dining room table, then onto a box.”

Trish Clark said the arrival of her twins in 1977 was a shock.

“We had no idea,” she said.

“They weighed 13 pounds together, and Kristin was two ounces heavier. My boys had been 10 and eight pounds. I only gained 22 pounds during the twins’ pregnancy . . . but I was chasing two little boys around all the time too.”

Their neighbors in Fairfax, Va., were relieved to see these two finally move to California.

Kim: “Our father built us a basketball court with lights in the backyard. We’d play one-on-one until midnight, or as long as they’d let us stay up. We broke the dining room window six times, then Dad put bars on it. We knocked down the fence once.”

When the twins were in junior high, Ron had a job transfer and his girls eventually went to Monta Vista High in Cupertino and became legends in twindom.

Virgil Pate, their high school coach, was asked to recall his favorite Clark story.

“When they were juniors, we got to the state championship game and lost a close game to Palos Verdes Peninsula,” he says.

“Kristin wound up at the postgame press conference and was asked a question. Kim comes by, sees her sister talking into the mike, and comes up on the stage.

“She said: ‘What are you doing? Look, you have nothing to say to these people. . . . You played a terrible game! Let’s just get out of here.’

“Kristin said: ‘OK, all right,’ and off they went.

“I coached those young ladies for four years, and they’re not only tremendous athletes, but I have to say they’re the two most competitive individuals I’ve ever known.”

They share each other’s joy, and once literally felt each other’s physical pain.

“When they were very small, Kristin climbed onto a plastic bike and started rolling downhill,” their mother recalls.

“She ran it under a parked car and skinned up her face and knees. I took her to the doctor, got her cleaned up, and Kim acted like she hurt more than Kristin.

“When we put them to bed that night, I remember Kim holding her face and moaning: ‘Oh, my face; oh, my face.’ ”

Says Kim: “We did feel each other’s pain when we were little, but now we feel emotional pain for each other, like for an injury.”

Kristin: “If Kim does something great, I’m as happy as she is.”

When the twins’ recruiting period began after their senior prep seasons, USC was their second choice. First: Virginia.

“We definitely wanted to stay together, and not many schools wanted to take two guards,” Kim said.

“Virginia couldn’t do it, so we decided we wanted to play for Cheryl Miller at SC. When she came to visit us, she said all the right things and everyone in the family loved her. So we went to SC and the first thing that happened was, she leaves [for a broadcasting job].

“We were heartbroken. But life goes on.”

Kim says she and her sister often have speculated about one day marrying identical twins. While they walked to Heritage Hall recently, two male identical twins walked past, so engrossed in conversation they didn’t notice the Clarks, who had stopped to stare.

“Hey, look,” one Clark said. “Hey, they’re cute,” the other said.

According to the Multiple Births Foundation of Chicago, about 150 identical twins are married to identical twins in the United States.

But while that story develops, there are happy days at USC for Kristin Ann and Kimberly Joy Clark.

And happiest of all is Ron Clark, their father.

Think about it.

Had his daughters been born with four left feet, his USC tuition bills would be $50,000 per year.