At 80 years old, the soft-spoken Ada Red Horse is an avid Dakota Wizards fan.

She knows the players by face and by name. With her son, Ben Red Horse, and sometimes her grandson, Tyler, she's become a permanent fixture at home games - she's only missed two this season.

Basketball enthusiasm is a delightfully surprising facet of her personality, but it's not the whole story. The more she tells, the more delightful and surprising she becomes.

Ada Red Horse was born Ada Walks Quietly in a tent near South Dakota's Grand River. She remembers growing up on the family farm and ranch, where her father kept cattle and horses and grew corn or wheat. There were two gardens there - one for potatoes, the other for vegetables.

In 1948, she married Jacob Red Horse and moved to McIntosh, S.D. They had four sons and two daughters. None of them played basketball, but she had two foster sons who did.

"I went to all the home games and got interested," she said.

After her divorce, Red Horse raised her family alone. She moved to Bismarck about 37 years ago, where she attended United Tribes Technical College. While she was there, she went to as many UTTC basketball games as she could.

Red Horse began working as a clerk at a district shop for the state highway department in 1976. She retired in 1991, but she still stays quietly active. A normal day for her could include baby-sitting one of her grandchildren, rinsing out plastic bottles to take to the recycling bin, or working on star quilts.

On fair-weather days, she often walks to the Heritage Center, where she searches the archives for members of her family tree. She gleans many names from obituaries written in Sioux (she's one of the few who can read the Sioux language).

She also walks to the Bismarck Public Library, to the laundromat and to Arrowhead Plaza, where she drops off her recycling, does her banking and shops.

Basketball resurfaced in her life three seasons ago when her son, Ben Red Horse, said he was interested in finding out more about the Dakota Wizards. He invited her to come to a game with him. She said yes.

"We went, and after that, we just kept on going," she said.

They attend nearly every home game now and are usually at the Civic Center about an hour before the game starts. Their faces are familiar even to the Wizards; Ada Red Horse can list the players and cheerleaders who have acknowledged her from the floor.

"We always sit in a certain place, and they seem to know we're there," she said.

Red Horse has a Wizards scrapbook for each season she's followed. Besides photos of the players, she collects Bismarck Tribune articles about them, autographed season schedules and game programs (she writes the score for each quarter on the back). As she flips through the pages, she comments on her favorite players and reminisces about some of the things she's seen.

Among her favorite ballgame memories is one about a son's friend who played basketball in high school. She remembers him being surrounded under the basket, but jumping and making a hoop. From her seat in the stands, she encourages the Wizards to do the same.

"When they all crowd around under the basket, I say jump, and they jump. It looks like they can hear me," she said.

Red Horse treasures a time when she got to see the Dakota Wizards in person. She was also excited at a home game when her son won a T-shirt with the name and number of Maurice Baker, one of her favorite players.

As the season comes to a close, Red Horse is already looking forward to the next one. While she waits, she'll celebrate her 81st birthday. She'll recycle. She'll quilt. And she'll keep on quietly walking.