Together and apart, twins Alayna and Grace Arnolie have proven they’re forces to be reckoned with

Alayna’s twin sister Grace, a guard for Division I Brown University, texted her congratulations. “I didn’t even know that you were about to get it,” Grace wrote.

To Grace’s surprise, Alayna responded, “You’re also close.”

Grace’s moment came exactly a week later, on Feb. 1 against Princeton. For the twins, it felt like deja vu from high school, when Grace scored her 1,000th point only a few weeks before Alayna did.

“It was just really cool,” Alayna told The Next, “that not only — I mean, it’s a great accomplishment, especially playing at the higher level, but just also that we got to do it around the same time, kind of with each other.”

Alayna and Grace are flourishing separately — but similarly — in college after playing together all through high school. They’re both leading their teams in scoring this season, at 15.6 and 15.2 points per game, respectively.* And their head coaches describe each of them as confident and supremely coachable players who are steadying forces for their teams.

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Basketball began for the twins at home in Vienna, Virginia, where there was an 8-foot hoop in the family’s sunroom. Their dad Anthony had played for Penn in the 1980s, and he introduced his kids to all kinds of sports — while secretly hoping basketball would be the one to stick.

“They were working on their shooting form inside the house,” Anthony told The Next, “until Mom said that I had to get rid of the outdoor hoop inside because it just didn’t look good with the rest of the decor.”

Anthony quickly put his daughters on youth teams, and he coached them through seventh grade. To keep the peace, there was a key rule for the twins: no guarding each other, whether that was in scrimmages in practice or workouts in the backyard.

“It would always get way too competitive, way too physical,” Alayna said.

“That was necessary because I wanted them to not be injured,” Anthony said. “And they play hard today, but they never play harder than if they’re going against each other.”

Instead, Anthony redirected that energy away from one-on-one battles and into developing good fundamentals. Over the years, Alayna and Grace grew into combo guards who could swap roles on and off the ball. 

At James Madison High School, they eventually played with two other pairs of sisters — and for a head coach and assistant coach who were also sisters. Those family ties helped power Madison to three straight state championships in the Arnolies’ sophomore through senior seasons.

“We kind of had a lot of that dynamic where you grow up playing together for so long that you kind of have that chemistry already that most people have to go to high school and then develop,” Alayna said.

Alayna won Virginia 6A State Player of the Year as a senior and was a two-time All-Region selection. Grace was named first-team All-State as a senior and was a four-time All-Region selection.

Together, the Arnolies “changed women’s basketball at Madison,” head coach Kirsten Stone told DC News Now in December 2021, during their senior season. She credited them with increasing the work ethic and energy during practice and pushing their teammates to another level.

Though Grace and Alayna had so much success together growing up, they quickly decided their college recruitments would be separate.

“We had class together, we had every single sport together, we lived together, we shared a room. It was just a lot,” Alayna said. “And so I think we knew kind of from the beginning that we wanted to branch out a little bit and kind of be our own people.”

Alayna opted to play at the Division III level and soon zeroed in on Gettysburg as one of her best academic options. Grace wanted to play Division I, and there was mutual interest between her and Brown early on. But Brown didn’t offer her right away, and she “got a little antsy,” so she verbally committed somewhere else.

Several months later, though, there was a coaching change where Grace had committed. She reopened her recruitment, and Brown immediately reentered the picture. “We tried to act as quickly as possible with making sure she knew that we wanted her here,” Bears head coach Monique LeBlanc told The Next.

“I’m really actually super glad that the pieces fell where they did and … they were still interested in me,” Grace told The Next.

The Arnolies’ winning pedigree and ability to play both ends of the floor made them stand out as high schoolers, Gettysburg head coach Nate Davis told The Next. Those things also prepared them to hit the ground running in college.

“Any time you can get a more complete player coming out of high school to your program, they’re going to be able to make an impact right away,” Davis said. “And … they were part of big moments. They were part of big games. So that transition from high school to college, I think, was a little bit easier for them, because they had that experience and that confidence to come through in those big moments.”

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Like they’ve done this year, Alayna and Grace put up similar statistics as first-years, while making the transition to the college level look easy. Alayna was a starter for the Bullets right away, averaging 10.8 points, 4.3 rebounds, 1.6 assists and 1.4 steals in 32.1 minutes per game. Grace entered Brown’s starting lineup in mid-November and averaged 11.5 points, 2.2 rebounds, 2.1 assists and 1.9 steals in 27.3 minutes per game.

Alayna won Centennial Conference Rookie of the Year and was named to its second team. She was also named Most Outstanding Player when Gettysburg won the conference tournament to qualify for the NCAA Tournament. Meanwhile, Grace was an honorable mention All-Ivy selection and helped Brown nearly double its win total from the previous season.

Off the court, too, Grace and Alayna thrived. “It was just kind of cool to look around and be like, ‘Oh, I’m just me,’” Grace said. “‘It’s not Grace and Alayna; it’s just Grace.’”

In fact, the twins barely talked during their first semester of college, which worried their parents. “I remember our mom being like, ‘Are you guys even friends anymore?’” Grace said. But they reconnected over winter break, and now they frequently text and FaceTime, even with their busy schedules.

As their college careers have progressed, Alayna and Grace have expanded their games, racking up accolades and shouldering more responsibility. Alayna, for example, added a stepback jumper to her arsenal as a sophomore after struggling to guard an opposing player’s stepback as a first-year. And Grace started bringing the ball up more — a precursor to playing more point guard this season.

Alayna was the Centennial Conference Player of the Year and a WBCA honorable mention All-American as a sophomore, and Gettysburg went back to the NCAA Tournament. Grace ranked eighth in the Ivy League in scoring and earned another honorable mention All-Ivy as Brown continued its ascent, finishing with its best winning percentage in nearly 20 years.

Both of them played alongside another star that season. For Grace, it was first-team All-Ivy honoree Kyla Jones. For Alayna, it was Mackenzie Szlosek, herself a former Centennial Conference Player of the Year.

This season, though, Jones is a graduate transfer at Northwestern, and Szlosek is a senior but suffered a season-ending injury in the Bullets’ third game. For Grace and Alayna, that has meant doing more.

“There were times last year where Grace was our leading scorer — a lot of times where Grace was our leading scorer — but probably most people would think of … Kyla [as] Batman and Grace [as] Robin,” LeBlanc said. “But this year, Grace is Batman, and that’s a change, too.”

“[Alayna] had somebody that kind of took some of the pressure off her, and now all of a sudden, that person’s not there,” Davis echoed. “And Alayna had to adjust to that a little bit.”

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Both have risen to the challenge, and not coincidentally, their teams have found success. Brown is still in contention for an Ivy League Tournament berth despite several injuries, and Gettysburg will begin NCAA Tournament play on Friday after winning its fourth straight conference title.

Playing mostly off the ball, Alayna is averaging 15.6 points, 3.5 rebounds, 2.6 steals and 2.3 assists in 32.3 minutes per game. Her points, assists and steals are all career bests. On Nov. 20, she had the second 30-point game of her career, scoring 32 points on 7-for-9 3-point shooting against Penn State Altoona.

“With the recruiting, you hope that it’s going to be great,” Davis said of Alayna. “… But man, she’s been everything as expected and then some.”

Grace is averaging 15.2 points, 3.8 assists, 3.5 rebounds and 1.5 steals in 32.9 minutes per game. Both her points and assists are career highs, and she ranks in the top 50 nationally in assist rate. But her assists understate her growth as a point guard, LeBlanc said, because she is also excelling at creating shots for her teammates, even when they don’t go in.

When Grace entered college, she didn’t think of herself as a point guard, she said. Even as a sophomore, she was willing to facilitate but wasn’t fully confident doing that. This year, she’s more comfortable, and her passing has helped relieve pressure when she’s facing double teams and extra attention. The result can be games like she had against Yale on Jan. 11, when she had 35 points and seven assists and was able to drive into the lane basically at will to shoot or pass.

“Literally every time we’ve asked her for something, she’s been able to meet it,” LeBlanc said. “… When I’m like, ‘I think you can be doing more of this,’ she’s always proved me right. So I want to keep challenging her because she keeps proving me right.”

Grace and Alayna didn’t watch each other’s games much as first-years, while they were finding their way individually. But now, they try to watch when they can, and each sister can point to parts of the other’s game that have grown. Alayna talks about how well Grace slashes to the rim, and Grace both praises and laments Alayna’s on-ball defense.

“She picks pockets like crazy. It’s so annoying,” Grace said, thinking back to offseason pickup games where they’ve ended up guarding each other. “Like, [on] every move, even moves that I feel like work in my games right now.”

The stars even aligned for Alayna to see Grace play in person once last season. Gettysburg’s first-round NCAA Tournament game was at Rhode Island College, which is only about five miles from Brown. The Bullets lost, ending their season, but Alayna stayed to see Brown host Cornell the following day. Grace scored 25 points in the Bears’ win.

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The twins make sure their paths cross in the offseason, too, working out together with their longtime trainer or going to a park near their home where they’ve practiced since childhood. They’ll rebound for each other on the park’s double rims, engage in shooting contests against their dad or play against their older brother and try to avoid getting their shots blocked.

“I think they really get after it pretty hard,” Davis said of the family’s workouts. “And I think that’s part of what they love to do. … They have a lot of fun getting better.”

“I’m a fan as much in the offseason as in the regular season,” Anthony said. “… It’s even more fun in the offseason because I know they’re putting in the work to be better players when the next season rolls around.”

That’s paid off for both Gettysburg and Brown over the years, and especially this season. When Alayna and Grace head back to school after each summer, it’s almost like they’re bringing a piece of their sister with them, because of how their sister has molded and shaped the player they’ve become.

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* Many of the statistics in this story are from Her Hoop Stats, which only includes games against opponents in the same division. In each season of Grace’s career, Brown has played one game against a Division III team (not Gettysburg), so those games are not reflected in the Her Hoop Stats data.