Born & Bred: Sibling Rivalry

Note: This article originally appeared in Born & Bred, the exclusive magazine for members of The Rams Club.

As Lauren Ingram finished her senior year of high school in Dallas, Texas, she wasn't expecting to find coaches from the University of North Carolina in her living room.

This was not especially a surprise. Lauren was an elite prep volleyball player, and knew the routine of recruiting visits. She also knew her brother, Harrison, had played two years at Stanford and was in the transfer portal, making him one of the most highly sought-after college basketball transfers in the spring of 2023. Dozens of schools had contacted him following the announcement that he would transfer from Stanford, and the family had scheduled in-home visits with a very limited group of suitors.

One of those was Carolina, where Hubert Davis and his coaching staff had quickly prioritized Ingram as soon as he made known his transfer intentions. They had playing time available. They had a prior relationship with Ingram from his recruitment during high school.

There was one unusual quirk in the recruiting process: Lauren Ingram was committed to Duke to play volleyball and would be a freshman in the fall of 2023, the same semester her older brother would enroll at his new home.

"When I said hello to them during the visit, I made a joke about how it might be a little awkward," she says with a laugh.

A few days later, Harrison made it official by announcing his commitment to the Tar Heels. The Ingrams would indeed be a split family.

It's a very unusual situation, but it's not completely unprecedented. John Henson was a three-year standout for the basketball Tar Heels from 2009-2012. During his junior year, his sister, Amber, enrolled at Duke, where she played basketball in 88 games over four years for the Blue Devils.

In hindsight, it shouldn't have been much of a surprise that members of the Ingram family would heavily weigh academics when choosing a college destination. As Tyrous and Vera Ingram raised their three children in Dallas, they had a very simple guideline for making important family decisions:

"We placed a premium on academics," Tyrous says. "We could never be sure where athletics would take the kids or where they might end up, so we wanted to make sure they had a good foundation. Once they had that foundation, they could take it wherever they needed to take it."

Their oldest son, Will, played basketball at Middlebury College, one of the nation's elite liberal arts colleges, from 2017-21. It made sense, then, that Harrison would commit to Stanford out of high school, and that Lauren would select Duke.

After a very successful two years with the Cardinal — Ingram was the first Stanford player in over 20 years to win Pac-12 Freshman of the Year — Harrison's decision to pursue basketball elsewhere was a jarring one. Schools that pursued him included Kansas and Baylor. Both are recent national champions with a stellar basketball pedigree, but the academic world doesn't see many transfers from Stanford to either of those institutions.

"This was the first time in our lives in our family dynamic that we made a decision that wasn't led with academics," Tyrous says. "It was uncomfortable. It helped that Carolina is an outstanding school. But we made the decision that we wanted to support Harrison in his professional endeavors, so Carolina having a great basketball program was just as important as it being a great academic school."

And soon, their youngest son was a Tar Heel, meaning he moved to Chapel Hill in late June. One month later, Lauren moved to Durham.

"The former players coming back and the family atmosphere is the number one thing to me," Ingram said. "I got here three weeks behind the next-to-last person, so the current team already knew each other. But when I got here, I felt like I knew people right away. There were former players playing pickup games with us at 12 a.m. I got here and I was in the gym the next day playing pickup with Harrison Barnes and Cole Anthony. Having all those guys come back is something I hadn't experienced before."

Following children with divergent athletic paths was nothing new to the Ingram family. The hectic schedules of travel sports meant it wasn't unusual for Vera to journey with Lauren to a volleyball tournament while Tyrous took Harrison to a basketball event in a different town or even a different state. The parents had been prepared to operate out of their Dallas home base and shuttle between the coasts, using the copious flights available from the giant Dallas airport to see as many basketball games as possible in Palo Alto and an equal number of volleyball games in Durham.

Now, though, one flight to RDU would allow them to see both Lauren and Harrison. It wasn't a part of Harrison's transfer decision, but it was a very nice benefit.

"We were prepared that we were going to travel from coast to coast," Tyrous says. "And we could've done it. But this has been absolutely great to get on a plane for two hours, go east, and see both kids."

Even greater: both kids have been happy in their new homes. Lauren, a 6-foot-1 outside hitter, got her first two career kills in a Sept. 13 match at North Carolina Central. It was one of the very few matches her parents weren't able to attend.

But in the stands was a boisterous Duke volleyball fan named Harrison Ingram, proudly taking video on his phone and celebrating the only way he knows how — loudly.

"You could hear the excitement in his voice for his sister," Tyrous says. "The excitement he exhibited says it all as far as the support they give each other. And once basketball season started, Lauren has been to a good amount of Harrison's games as well."

Those games have seen Harrison find the exact fit for which he was searching. He'd been recruited by the Tar Heels out of high school, instead making the decision to follow the academics to Stanford. In Chapel Hill, he's become an immediate starter and one of the emotional heartbeats of this year's team.

His skill level and statistical contributions were easily predictable based on his success at Stanford. Less foreseeable was the degree of competitiveness he brought with him. Ingram is the type of player who not only will demonstrate his defender is "too small" after scoring on him in a game against another team; he's been known to do it in practice against teammates, too.

"He is," Lauren says, "very sassy. He's very competitive. But at the end of the day, he's always going to be there for the people he cares about."

While growing up in Dallas, Lauren had a front row seat to that sassiness. Her room was directly next to the room that housed the family's Xbox. And while she didn't play often, she regularly was treated to the video game battles — and the shouts that accompanied them — between Harrison and Will. "Based on what I heard," she says, "it almost came to blows a couple of times."

Now, though, the brothers talk on the phone nearly every day. The Ingrams are an extremely close family; Harrison says he also talks to his dad every day, and says he would talk to his mother and sister with the same frequency but adds, with a grin, "They don't always answer their phones."

His newfound proximity to Lauren has enabled the duo to grab dinner at least once per week, where he can offer advice on the new challenges she's facing as a Division I athlete from the perspective of someone who was in the same position just two years ago.

Their relationship and unique place in the Carolina-Duke rivalry was largely unknown throughout the first semester of this academic year, but both are aware that will change in the spring semester when the Tar Heels and Blue Devils meet at least twice on the basketball court.

For Harrison, it's pretty simple: he gets to play in the games, removed from the circus environment that often surrounds the games on campus and in the stands. In the Smith Center, it will be easy — Harrison can get tickets for everyone. It's Lauren who has to consider conundrums such as where she'll sit at Cameron Indoor Stadium when Carolina visits.

Fortunately, team protocols solved the problem for her: Duke volleyball will be in spring practice, so camping out for tickets isn't permitted by the coaching staff. And Harrison receives just two tickets, so his parents will attend.

"I've thought a lot about how I'm going to watch that game," she says. "A lot of my friends know my brother plays at Carolina, but I'm not sure about the Duke community as a whole. I don't really take the rivalry that seriously. I will probably go to the watch parties around campus. Maybe I will just wear white.

"Or, who knows, maybe I will show up to a watch party in a Carolina jersey."

Players Mentioned

Harrison Ingram

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