You know Ron and Dylan Harper. Meet their sister, maybe the best athlete in the family

RAMSEY − Lets get this right out of the way. Mia Harper doesn’t particularly like basketball, even if her family believes she might be good at it, like really good.

“Yes. Yes!” exclaims Don Bosco senior and Rutgers commit Dylan Harper, the top basketball recruit this side of the Mississippi River. “She’d be like a 6-foot-2 point guard in high school. Caitlin Clark.”

“I can dunk,” Mia said, smiling. “OK, no. But I could if I wanted to.”

The Harpers are the first family of North Jersey basketball with patriarch Ron and his five NBA titles, Ronald Jr. rehabbing a shoulder injury while playing in the NBA G League, and Dylan making Rutgers fans hearts beat faster in anticipation for his first day in scarlet. Don't forget Ron and Dylan's mother, Maria, a championship-winning basketball coach.

But the best athlete of the whole family?

It’s Mia.

Well, maybe.

“It’s me,” Mia said. “Everyone says this. Yes.”

“Me, me, me, me. Me,” counters Dylan, pausing for effect on the last one. “She is a close second… she’s not first. My pride kicks in here. She’s not first, though.”

Leave it to Mom to settle the issue.

“At a comparative age of 13… Mia, 100 percent," she said with a smile. "Explosive. She jumps higher. She’s more coordinated.”

But to see Mia Harper perform, you’d have to go watch her dance. To her, basketball is boring and dancing is all action. It’s where she’s the happiest, where she can perform with her friends to the music, leaping, twisting and soaring.

“I can’t do any of the things she is doing,” Dylan admits. “All those flips and stuff. Too much concentration.”

Mia still remembers how she got hooked on dancing. She was in preschool and her best friend, Giselle, was going to do it. Mia was maybe 2 years old. Maria was busy with two other sports prodigies in the house but found some other parents to help drive Mia to classes.

“It’s not like gymnastics,” Mia explained. “It’s like ballet, and you learn gymnastics styles, but you do have to know ballet to learn how to do everything.”

Mia performs for Studio L in Waldwick. She goes to competitions all over with different musical styles, different size groups. Sometimes she performs solo. Mia is a featured tumbler, one who does the hardest tricks.

"Mia is very advanced as a dancer and a tumbler," said Kelly Larkin, the owner of Studio L. "This is a second home for Mia, always working and learning."

This is where all the flips come in, and the danger. She’s been hurt before − a sprained ankle twice, a broken foot − but while her brothers may be working on their 3-point shot, Mia also goes to practice upwards of six times a day, working with the young girls at Studio L before doing her own training.

“I’ve had two of the teachers thank me, telling me that if it wasn’t for Mia, they couldn’t keep up with all the classes,” Maria said. “She’s taken ownership of that. She loves working with the novice level kids all the way up to training for college.”

“It makes me feel good and it makes me happy more than anything else,” Mia said.

But what’s it like being the last Harper sibling? Mia said her brothers are "just normal to me."

“They’re fun to hang around with - no - yes, they are,” Mia said with a laugh.

“She keeps me entertained,” Dylan said.

Mia said that at dance competitions, the boys there know about her brothers, but so what? She doubles down on her basketball stance.

“It’s boring! It’s a bad sport,” Mia said. “I tell [Mom] this all the time. Everything is so boring and long.”

Dylan has had enough.

“She’s lying. She loves coming to practice every day,” Dylan said, laughing. “She loves coming to practice.”

Maria is just happy her three kids have all found something they enjoy. Would it be easier if all three were basketball players? Sure, but that’s not how it always works.

Could Mia dunk? Watch her compete and you'll see her vertical is pretty legit. The truth is all of the Harpers fly, just in different ways.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Mia Harper: Sister of Ron and Dylan may be best athlete in family