Mount Sinai's Casey Campo has grown her game on the basketball court

Casey Campo always felt most comfortable on a court. She didn’t need her mother to hide behind. She didn’t need her father pushing her to stay mentally strong. She didn’t need to concern herself if someone was questioning an eye roll.

All Campo needed was a basketball. The rest took care of itself.

Campo, a 5-9 senior guard on the Mount Sinai girls basketball team, remembers battling some form of adversity since an early age. She said she had social anxiety when she was young and often could be found hiding behind her mother’s leg in public.

In the second grade, Campo began experiencing Tourette’s symptoms, such as neck jerking. She said the symptoms were at their worst in the sixth grade. Her eyes flicked, rolled and darted from side to side and she demonstrated shoulder and neck tics.

"My tics started around second grade and it made me more anxious because I was embarrassed," Campo said. "I didn’t want to be seen and asked ‘Why are you doing that?’ People would ask ‘Why are you rolling your eyes at me?’ And I wasn’t. It was just something I couldn’t control."

One thing always helped Campo, however: Sports. She began playing basketball and lacrosse in the second grade, and basketball quickly became her dominant game.

"When I played, something in my brain switched and it helped me focus better," Campo said. "I was more relaxed and I wasn’t focusing on my tics and my neck and my eyes and all that stuff."

Campo still dealt with adversity along the way. Sure, when she was running the fast break or squaring up for a jumper, she felt completely free. But sometimes her tics would show themselves in timeout huddles or on the bench.

"It wasn’t easy," she said. "I had to deal with being uncomfortable at school. I was always in constant pain. I had to push through. My dad always told me that if I have a strong mind, I have a strong body, so I just had to keep my mind strong and work through all my tics and keep working through."

She worked though it well enough to become one of the top players in Suffolk. Campo, a five-year starter, is committed to play at Molloy College and is averaging 23.5 points for a Mount Sinai team with a 14-4 record. She scored her 1,000th point during a 35-point effort in a 75-36 victory over Wyandanch on Jan. 25. Campo had 32 points in the first half.

"Basketball gave me confidence," she said. "Whenever I’m on the court, I feel very confident and I need to be confident. I can’t let my tics embarrass me anymore. I don’t let them affect me anymore."

Campo credits her father, Mike, as her most influential trainer.

"He didn’t let my tics define me," she said. "He didn’t let them affect me and he didn’t focus on them. We’d just always go to practice and going to practice would always make me feel better, even if it was just for an hour or two."

Campo was moved up to the varsity for the playoffs as a seventh-grader after playing on the junior varsity. She was a member of back-to-back 20-plus-win teams as an eighth- and ninth-grader, often called upon to play tough defense in the game’s pivotal moments.

But she knew entering her sophomore season that the team would rely on her more as a scorer. She worked with her father and her coaches throughout the offseason to become a more aggressive scorer and went from averaging 3.2 points to 15.6 points in one season.

"At the time, I don’t think I realized how much work I was putting in," Campo said. "I was just really motivated to want to be the strong player on my team."

Mount Sinai coach Jeff Koutsantanou has seen Campo’s emergence from a young age.

"I coached her when she was little and she was very shy, very reserved," Koutsantanou said. "And you’ve seen such growth from her from the social standpoint. She’s so outgoing with her teammates, she’s so confident. She’s a team leader. Talking in huddles, talking to the girls. Always offering positive reinforcement and trying to make them better."

Campo said she still deals with tics occasionally but that many kids in school or players she goes against would never know she battles Tourette’s.

"Even now, I can just go to a court and I can shoot around stress-free," she said. "I feel like I don’t have to worry about anything. It just takes away so much anxiety because it’s something I feel like I’m really good at. I feel like I belong."