Basketball fans headed to Quitman can be reassured by the sight of the lady seated just inside the court in the southwest corner of Ballard Gymnasium.

Spectators may notice how, before the tip-off, the referees make a pass by to say hello to her. A few folks from the home stands drop by as well. It is not uncommon for visiting fans to come over and say hello.

Renee Sessions will be seated there in her wheelchair, armed with a basketball score keeping book and a sharp pencil. Sessions has been keeping score books of her son and grandchildren for the past 32 years. 

“It all started with my son Kenzie when he began playing Little Dribblers,” she paused then added, “that must have been in 1992. I just used whatever scrap of paper I could find and started recording what happened…not just for my son, but for his whole team.”

She could still name the team. “There was River and Luke and Red – that was actually Gilbert but everyone called him Red,” she began.

That initial effort to record what transpired at all those ballgames grew to become a routine and then a passion. As Kenzie reached junior high school, the individual scraps of paper or pages of copybook gave way to a stat sheet which was given to her by one of the Quitman coaches. 

“I made copies of that sheet and used them for years,” she explained, “I still have that original sheet I was given.” 

Those stat sheets worked for son Kenzie and grandson Trey. Now, while keeping statistics for her granddaughter Allie and the Lady Bulldogs, she uses an official basketball score keeping book.  

Scoring a basketball game is not an easy task. It takes great concentration and powers of observation. Opening one of her recent score books revealed that Sessions is far from a hobbyist at score keeping. The score sheet was a work of art.

And, although her score keeping is purely a personal endeavor for her extended family, there have been occasions when she had to voice an objection to an on-court error or two. “I try to keep the referees and scorekeepers straight,” she offered with a grin.

Clearly, she enjoys the task.

What many people may not be aware of is that Sessions was quite an athlete herself. At the time she was in school, Quitman offered volleyball and track. She also played summer softball.

Her preferred sport was track and field, specifically the triple jump.

“I just really enjoyed the triple jump,” she stated, “maybe it was the challenge, but it just appealed to me.”

It was in her junior year competing at the Dogwood Relays at Bud Moody Stadium – “We had a cinder track around the field at the time,” she advised – that her athletic career was derailed. 

She described the moment. “On my finals jump, two loud and sharp cracking sounds came from my knees. It sounded like gunshots. When I landed I had blown-out both of my knees.”

Not one to resign herself to fate, she worked hard at rehabilitation and eventually regained her mobility. However, her days as a competitive athlete were over. 

From Quitman High School she attended University of Houston and East Texas State University (now Texas A&M University – Commerce), receiving a bachelor’s degree in general studies with an emphasis in psychology/sociology. She went on to earn a master’s degree in counseling from Grand Canyon State University. 

Having returned to Quitman, she worked as a counselor at the Johnston state prison unit in Winnsboro. In the meantime, she married and began a family. Daughter LaDawn and son Kenzie followed. 

Sessions can easily trace five generations of family back to the land off FM 2966,  just west of Quitman Lake.  She grew up on Sessions Hill where her father, H.E. Sessions, Jr., and grandfather worked a dairy for many years. 

Although the dairy was sold in 1990, most of the family yet resides on the same acreage. Sessions lives with her daughter LaDawn and son-in-law Timothy, within a stone’s throw of her childhood home.  

It is family, of course, which was the genesis of her score keeping.

“There was a gap there between Kenzie’s graduation and Trey’s games as a youngster,” she admitted. It wasn’t a lengthy gap, however, and soon she was covering both Trey and Allie. 

That knee injury from her track and field days had permanently weakened her knee joints, and today has left her permanently mobility-challenged. 

The word handicapped isn’t in Sessions’ vocabulary. She is more than able to drive a modified car and will often follow the team bus to out-of-town venues.

“If I follow the bus, Allie comes off the bus and helps me into my chair,” she explained.  Some games she attends with her daughter and some with her son. 

Traveling around East Texas has been one of the sources of satisfaction during her score keeping.

“Discovering some of those small, out-of-the-way places in East Texas – like Boles Home – is a lot of fun,” she remarked.

Also rewarding, Sessions admitted, were the kindnesses of folks from the other schools. She offered the example of a lady from Mt. Vernon who never fails to seek her out before a game, just to pass on a joking reference about score keeping. Likewise, during a Little Dribblers national tourney in Lubbock, a whole host of people cared for her as the city experienced historic flooding on the days of the tournament. 

Of course, it is family which is both the cause and the reason for her scoring. Sessions recounted three “joyous moments”: Kenzie’s placing third in state in the 100-yard dash; Trey and his teammates returning Bulldog basketball to the playoffs after many years; and the one-game playoff qualifier Allie and the Lady Bulldogs played against Mineola in Winnsboro recently.  

Sessions remains a big fan of scholastic sports. As she described, “It develops a sense of challenge and responsibility, teaches how to be successful as a team and builds leadership.”

With respect to her score keeping, it is her hope that someday her grandchildren will be able to show their children and their children some of those scorecards and know that “they have special meaning because they came from family.”