By Joseph Wilson

For one player on Israel's team, playing the EuroBasket Women 2009 in Latvia is a true homecoming.

Ekaterina Abramzon, the twenty-two-year-old Israeli forward, was born in Riga on January 7^th, 1987 to a Latvian mother and a Russian father. When Ekaterina was three, her family began an odyssey that took them to Russia and then eventually on to Israel, where she has lived for the past twelve years. 

Yet with three nationalities to choose from (four, actually, if you count her husband's homeland of Macedonia as well) Abramzon opts for the diplomatic route and says none of the above. 

"I don't feel like I am Russian, Israeli, or Latvian because I have moved from place to place. Wherever my family is, that is my home. So my home is Latvia, Russia, and Israel," she said. 

Abramzon's maternal grandparents still live in Riga and will be in the stands to cheer her on for Israel's Group D games against Belarus, Italy, and France in Valmiera.  If it came down to a game between Latvia and Israeli, this granddaughter is convinced there would be no doubt which jerseys her grandparents would wear.

"For sure Israel," she said and then added with a smile, "if they did wear jerseys, which they wouldn't in any case."

Even though her Latvian relatives will be behind her, Abramzon's basketball genes actually come from the other side of her family tree. 

Abramzon didn't start playing the sport until she was thirteen and her mother was not too pleased with the idea.

"When I told her I was going to play basketball, my mother asked me please not to, calling it a sport for men," she said.

It was her father who told her to go ahead and then her mother who later came around when she saw how her daughter excelled on the court.

Her father's support was no coincidence.  In fact, it had a lot to do with the fact that his own mother, Abramzon's paternal grandmother, had once been a member of the Soviet national women's basketball team. 

Abramzon's Russian grandmother has not just given her granddaughter moral support; she has also provided the clear, practical kind of advice that only a former player can pass on: "keep your butt down and shoot the ball higher."

"But then when I fall down on the court my grandmother is always yelling oh, goodness," Abramzon said with a laugh.

Only time will tell if a grandmother's wisdom is enough to help Israel pull off a surprise and make it to the Qualifying Round in Riga.