HOUSTON - The teenaged girl fixing to change her sport of choice literally would rather fight than switch - switch tactics, switch athletic pursuits, switch herself just to fit into people's vision of what she is supposed to look like or do. Once, she raced downcourt during a club-basketball tournament in Galveston, Texas, and knocked a girl out, reprisal for being kicked in the head. In a den turned workout room at her home in the north-central part of this major Lone Star metropolis, Brittney Griner has speed and body bags, the latter which she pounded so hard the first time, she suffered cuts on her bare knuckles.

Griner now uses wraps or leather gloves and, at 6 feet 8, needs to be mindful of the ceiling fan that keeps the room in healthy supply of cool breeze.

"You don't think about it, but that's one of the hazards of being that tall," says her father, Raymond, a Harris County deputy sheriff, nodding at the fan. He still has to nod upward, being only 6-2.

She'll eventually take a boyfriend, Griner says, but she doesn't have many prerequisites just yet. "He'll have to be tall, I guess," she says, pursing her lips into a tight, shy smile.

The teenaged girl fixing to change the whole of basketball - period - often is discovered by her parents at 1 or 2 a.m., parked in front of a television switched to the Military Channel. She has become somewhat of an expert on military tactics and knows more than you'd think any civilian should about military weaponry, past, present and especially future. She can, for example, describe in vivid detail a new weapon that emits heat waves, making a space so hot that people needing to be controlled will not want to remain in it.

Her mother, Sandra, recently was in the Griners' backyard, pulled on a string she thought odd to be where it was, and was struck on the noggin by a small projectile that came screaming out of a nearby tree. The architect of that surprise used to balance cups of water on her bedroom door, call her older sister Pier, and squeal with delight when the trap was sprung. Brittney Griner can describe how to craft a swinging trap door, and knows all about the booby traps the Viet Cong used to craft for American G.I.s such as her father, a former Marine who served in Nam in 1968 and 1969.

"She ain't your ordinary teenaged girl," Raymond Griner offers.

Brittney Griner, a soft-spoken, yes-sir, no-sir type, brightens up at talk about playing with the guys.

"Yes sir," she says, a widening grin affixed to her face. "That's a barrier I'd like to break."

The girl now ranked by ESPN HoopGurlz as the No. 1 prospect in the 2009 class hasn't had much of a buildup, so there is a dropped-off-by-aliens quality to her ascent as a player. Her sophomore season at Nimitz was just her third in organized basketball, yet she averaged 23 points, 11 rebounds and six blocks. Last summer was her first on anything resembling a national circuit and, in Birmingham, Ala., she collected 19 blocks against Essence, the team that went on to win Nike Nationals and earn acclaim as the best team in club basketball last year. This past season, Griner averaged 24.6 points, 12.3 rebounds and 7.0 blocks, helping Nimitz to a 27-7 record before the Cougars were dropped by red-hot Cinco Ranch in the quarterfinals of the ultra-competitive Region III playoffs.

Making such quick work of the female game makes the prospect of taking on the male side of things seem not so daunting. Actually, the barriers between the sexes already were barely holding up under the weight of Griner's prodigious talent. Among the trophies prominently on display in the Griner living room are two from the NFL's Punt, Pass & Kick competitions. Griner competed as a grade schooler and was the only girl. She robbed boys out of their hardware, or such was their perception, and they began picking on her.

Turns out, self-defense is not the only thing Griner learned from her father. Raymond Griner has taught his daughter how to work on cars almost from the time she could walk. Brittney Griner can change oil and repair brakes. "I don't know what some things are called," she says, "but I can fix them." She loves playing the video game "Grand Theft Auto II," but doesn't need to steal a vehicle because her father bought her a 2006 Dodge Magnum. She just hasn't had the time to get her license. About the only "girlie" thing Griner does is crochet a little. "If you ever need a pillow," she says, "I can make you a pillow."

In the 10th grade, Griner started practicing with the boy's team at Nimitz, beginning with the girls after school, then moving over when the teams switched gyms. It was about that time that she also began to seriously contemplate the prospect of dunking a basketball the way she watched the guys doing it. In preparation, she worked out with one of the Nimitz football coaches in the weight room, building up her legs.

Learning to dunk was an arduous process. Griner says she fell a lot. Then one day, with a couple friends in the gym, she got one down. Word spread like a virus at Nimitz. Her teammates were eager for her to prove that she'd done the deed. She made them wait until about halfway through practice. A short time later, while working security at the school, Raymond Griner was told of the feat by a couple of the kids. It was a surprise to him; she wanted to hold off telling him until she perfected her form. That afternoon, Raymond Griner returned home from work and noticed the rim on the basket at the end of their long driveway was bent. "You've been dunking, haven't you?" he asked his daughter. She had to own up.

For Brittney Griner, dunking became a fever she could not shake. Once she mastered the timing of the simple flush, she quickly expanded. Right hand, left hand, two hands. She studied the NBA players and tried to replicate. Reverse, off the backboard, off the floor. Griner says she always has a dunk "in development" and recently has been working on a 360 version she vows to perform in a game.

A coach at the Nike Regional Skills Academy in Houston told Griner he once won a dunk contest by throwing the ball off the wall, catching it from a start behind the baseline and throwing it down reverse. That's next, she says. After that, she wants to go after the guys at the dunk contest held in conjunction with the McDonald's All-American Game. No girl has been allowed to compete since Parker won the competition in 2004. It hardly seems likely that Brittney Griner can be excluded next year in Miami.

If it seems as if the quantum leap in the game that Brittney Griner represents came from nowhere, imagine the shock, 18 years ago this October, when their daughter came to Sandra and Raymond Griner at 10 pounds, 11 ounces, the biggest baby born that day at St. Joseph Hospital in downtown Houston. Raymond may be 6-2, but Sandra is only 5-6. Their older daughter, Pier, is 5-8.

How did this happen?

"I asked the same question," Raymond Griner says. "I said, 'Where's the daddy?' ... I thought it would be a problem. I told my wife, 'This kid is going to have a complex.' "

Raymond Griner laughs one of his laughs, the kind that comes from the back of the throat - ah-hee-hee-hee-hee. There's been no complex. No growing pains. No hitches, save a scuffle here and there. Being a sheriff, retired then unretired, for 35 years, he's as protective and paranoid as any father. Yet he's taught his daughter all too well. Brittney Griner can handle everything from a waveboard to a carburetor to a low-post double team.

Just the other day, on a ride in from New Orleans, Raymond Griner had stopped to gas up his truck. Another big truck pulled up and out jumped a couple guys. They strolled over. Raymond Griner had his guard up, but his 6-8 passenger did not flinch.

"You," one of the guys said, pointing at Raymond Griner's daughter. "You're the one on TV, the one who dunks."

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