In 1991, at the age of 25, Shelly Pennefather gave up a career in basketball – and life with her own family – to become a cloistered nun, writes Elizabeth Merrill for ESPN.com.

Pennefather scored 2,408 points at Villanova University and won the Wade Trophy in 1987 as the best women’s college basketball player in the country.

She secured a $200,000 contract to play basketball in Japan with the Nippon Express.

After a few years as a professional basketball player, Pennefather decided to join the Poor Clares, one of the strictest religious orders in the world. Pennefather, now Sister Rose Marie, will never leave the monastery, unless there’s a medical emergency.

She gets two family visits per year, when she can converse through a screen. She can hug her family only once every 25 years.

In June 2019, at 53, she celebrated the 25-year anniversary of her solemn profession with a renewal of her vows.

“I’ll be here at 103 if you can hang in there,” her mother, Mary Jane, told her.

She hugged nieces and nephews she had never touched before. She embraced siblings whose hair had turned from dark to gray.

“I love this life,” Sister Rose Marie told them. “It’s so peaceful. I just feel like I’m not under-living life. I’m living it to the full.”

Read more about Sister Rose Marie at ESPN.com.

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Editor’s Note: This post first appeared on VISTA Today in August 2019.

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