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ALBANY, N.Y. — The first time that Hannah Hidalgo and Maddie Booker met, they didn’t quite hit it off immediately … at least in the version that Booker tells. They were paired as roommates by staff for a weeklong stay in Colorado Springs, Colo., for an under-17 Team USA training camp.
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On the court, Hidalgo wasn’t unlike what she is today for Notre Dame — an undersized player with such a defensive game that made it seem like there were three of her on the floor. She drove the other training camp participants up a wall with her steals and defensive pressure. But Booker, who was considered the team’s extrovert, was surprised at how, off the court, Hidalgo was really quiet.
“She wasn’t social,” Booker said. “She stood out because she was more to herself.”
One night, while in their room, Booker began prodding Hidalgo to start talking more and to open up around her potential new teammates. Booker remembers Hidalgo looking up from her phone and saying, “I’m good.”
Booker realized that Hidalgo was chattiest when she was arguing about something. So Booker thought, if that was the only way Hidalgo would engage in conversation, then she would take it as a challenge to find those topics about which Hidalgo would argue.
“I used to purposefully just get on her nerves,” Booker joked. “We started arguing — it was all fun and games. … But people would tell us, ‘When you two leave from here, you’re going to be best friends.'”
Booker thought there might be some truth to that. Hidalgo, even if only on principle, disagreed.
So, it should come as no surprise that when this story is run by Hidalgo, she has a differing opinion.
“She’s lying,” Hidalgo said with a laugh. “When we’re together, we only talk to each other. … I think I brought her out of her shell more.”
The disagreement in question is emblematic of their relationship. Within Team USA’s leadership, many refer to Hidalgo and Booker as sisters — they bicker like none other, but there are few as loyal as these two to each other.
Over the last two years, Booker and Hidalgo have grown close as they’ve traveled the world together for basketball. Following that training camp in Colorado Springs, they traveled to Hungary for the U-17 World Cup in 2022, where once again they were roommates. In March, they were both in Texas for the McDonald’s All-American Game. Not long after, when Team USA invited both to take part in the Hoop Summit in Portland, it came as no surprise to anyone on staff that they requested to room together. And by the time trials came around for the U-19 World Cup this past summer, Team USA didn’t really even need to ask if they would want to room together. And when the team traveled to Spain, where they eventually won gold together, Booker and Hidalgo didn’t even need to check if they’d be roommates there, too.
Hannah Hidalgo, left, and Maddie Booker became friends during Team USA travel. (Courtesy of Team USA)
Now, they’re playing on different sides of the country in the Sweet 16 but with the same goal after similar freshman-year journeys that turned them into national stars in the sport. Hidalgo has fueled injury-riddled Notre Dame, a No. 2 seed, which plays third-seeded Oregon State on Friday in Albany for a chance to advance the Irish further than they’ve been since 2019 when they were the national runners-up. Booker has been the spark for top-seeded Texas, who lost its best player for the season in December and will try to get by fourth-seeded Gonzaga in Portland to reach the Elite Eight for the third time in four seasons.
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Through their expanded roles on the floor, Booker and Hildago have remained connected as ever, texting and messaging one another during the season. Booker said they encourage each other’s successes and that whenever one hits a tough patch, the other will exactly understand the feeling.
“You need somebody like that — they know what you’re going through, you know what they’re going through. … It helps to talk to somebody who’s in that moment with you.”
Their bond blossomed, Booker said, when they began to talk about their faith, but that similar basketball experiences connect them, too. They knew the pressures of wearing a Team USA uniform, and they both found themselves making their college pick at the same time. Booker, ranked the No. 12 player in the 2023 class, committed to Texas in September 2022. Less than two months later, she became a sounding board for Hidalgo, the No. 5 player in the 2023 class, when she committed to Notre Dame.
But this season, they have relied upon each other in a deeper way as they were called upon to shoulder more for their teams.
Hidalgo arrived on campus in the fall with question marks swirling around Notre Dame’s starting point guard Olivia Miles. The junior, who had twice been named All-ACC, had suffered a knee injury at the end of last season. With Miles’ availability in flux, Hidalgo understood she might be thrown into the fire earlier than expected.
Booker arrived in Austin with her own two-time All-Conference selection in point guard Rori Harmon. But 12 games into the season, Harmon tore her ACL, forcing Booker to move into the lead guard position for the Longhorns.
Though Hidalgo and Booker had goals of starting and playing big roles, neither imagined becoming focal points. Without Miles, Hidalgo became the engine for Notre Dame, and without Harmon, everything Texas did began to funnel through Booker.
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Through their expanded roles on the floor, the two remained connected as ever, texting and messaging one another during the season. Booker said they found encouragement with each other’s success and that whenever one of them hit a tough patch, they knew the other one would have an exact understanding about what they were feeling.
Now, as Booker and Hidalgo enter their first Sweet 16 experiences, their journeys continue in rhythm.From each coast, they are rooting for each other. They continue to argue about who is rooting harder, but at this point, it’s basically their love language. In just two years, they’ve created such a shared history and walked such similar paths that neither can quite believe how lucky they were to have Team USA room them together in Colorado two and a half years ago.
“We just clicked,” Booker said. “It was just like we found the right person at the right time. It means so much.”
(Top photos of Hannah Hidalgo and Maddie Booker: Courtesy of Maddie Booker)
