MARATHON -- You could call them dreads or dreadlocks. Tamika Multy, at first does. Then, she tells you what she calls them: Flockas. You know, those matted coils of hair.

"Biandrea does it for me," Multy said of basketball teammate Biandrea Dawkins. "It takes two or three hours."

Multy, now a junior at Key West High School, says she has been styling her h...