Darik and Trenton Brown have spent much of their lives playing against one other in the driveway or at the neighborhood basketball court.

So it’s not all that strange that they’re suiting up for different high school teams.

Darik, a senior guard, plays for Coal Ridge. Trenton, a sophomore guard, plays for Rifle.

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And their teams could be on a collision course in the 3A Western Slope League district tournament.

If both Darik’s Titans and Trenton’s Bears win in tonight’s semifinals, they’d face each other in Saturday’s district title game. If both teams were to lose, they’d square off against one another in Saturday’s third-place game. All Friday and Saturday games will be held at Palisade High School.

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They’ve already played twice this season, with each brother’s team picking up a win.

Kris Harris, the mother of Darik and Trenton, is just happy that, no matter how Friday plays out, she’ll able to watch both her boys play on Saturday.

“Either way, I enjoying watch them both play,” the proud mom said. “I’ll get to see them both play. They’ll be in the same gym.”

That’s a good thing for mom, who has kept plenty busy tracking both of her sons’ teams in 2011-12. Because he’s in his senior year, she’s made Darik’s games a priority this season.

“That’s the only thing that bothers me a lot, missing Trenton’s games,” said Harris, who keeps the scorebook for Coal Ridge. “I had never missed a sporting event of any of my kids.”

Trenton played for Rifle’s C team last season, so it wasn’t as much of a juggling act then. This year, though, has been a different story.

“I knew at the beginning of the season it’d be tough,” Harris said. “I had to sit down and write their whole schedule out.”

Basketball is a family pastime that Harris passed down to her children. She played in college at North Central College in Naperville, Ill.

Darik, Trenton and their sister, former Rifle basketball player Ciara Euler, took to basketball early in their lives. Harris isn’t even sure when their initiation to the sport took place. She just knows they’ve pretty much always played.

“I don’t even know,” she said. “Maybe first grade. Since they were old enough to put a basketball in their hands.”

Said Trenton: “It was a family thing.”

Darik and Trenton both credit countless hours spent shooting and playing games of one-on-one against each other with honing their games.

“It’s always competitive when we play against each other,” said Darik, who transferred to Coal Ridge from Rifle his sophomore year.

That includes not only a childhood spent going at it on a neighborhood court down the street from their Rifle home, but also their two meetings in this year’s high school regular season.

Rifle won the first meeting, 70-64, back on Jan. 13. On Feb. 7, Coal Ridge scored a 64-52 win.

There are times both Darik and Trenton wish they played on the same team, but Darik doesn’t regret choosing Coal Ridge over Rifle High School.

“There are times I wish we could play together, but I love it here,” said Darik, who said he chose Coal Ridge because he had a lot of friends at the school nestled between New Castle and Silt. “I just played basketball with them growing up. We played on a traveling team together.”

Though they play on separate teams, basketball still brings Darik and Trenton together. Whenever their schedules permit, they attend each other’s games. They also talk basketball often.

“We kind of talk about other teams and our teams and what we do,” Trenton said. “We compare our teams’ practices, stuff like that.”

Friday’s proceedings in Palisade will dictate if the brothers get another crack at one another in a high school game.

Trenton hopes it happens.

“It’d be cool just because we’re like a rivalry,” Trenton said. “He’s my brother and everything. It’s his senior year. It’d be cool to play one more time against him before he goes off to college.”

Either way, mom won’t have to miss either son’s game.

jcaspersen@postindependent.com