Garrett Thomas has seen a fair share of athletes come through the Paris girls basketball program.

Thomas has a good team this season as the Lady Coyotes won 54-35 at Class 2 District 5 foe Van-Far (7-12) to clinch his 200th career win. In his 14 years as the program’s head coach, Thomas has eight winning seasons and is on his way to his ninth winning season this year. 

Paris at Van-Far Photo Gallery

“I’ve coached a lot of really good players,” Thomas said. “They work really hard. When you can get them to play with championship habits and you’re coaching talented kids, things can work out. I’m very fortunate to coach the number of kids that I’ve had to have worked really hard.”

The Paris with Faith Walk defense worked hard to stall Van-Far’s offense as the Lady Coyotes (15-6) didn’t allow 10 points in a quarter until they were outscored 16-13 in the fourth quarter. Thomas said Paris tried to stay in Elliott Utterback’s face before she led Van-Far with 16 points — 12 points in the second half.

“It started with our defense pressure,” Thomas said. “We did a really good job of guarding in the first half. In the second half, we let the Utterback girl get loose a little bit, and she capitalized there. In general, we made it hard for them to score inside and I was happy how we guarded them in transition for the most part.”

Van-Far head coach Heather Minter said “a lack of effort” hurt the Lady Indians and made it more difficult to stop a Paris team with a lot of quickness. 

“I haven’t had to question their effort up until tonight,” Minter said. “We’ve got to get other kids scoring. Until we figure that piece out, we’re going to struggle to score.”

Chloe Zumwalt finished with nine rebounds and one block and was the team’s second-leading scorer with seven points. The defensive pressure applied by Paris made it hard for another scorer to emerge.

“If Elliott is shooting and hitting and then we look to go inside, they find out who is not scoring for us,” Minter said. “They sag off them and smack Zumy. We’re going to figure it out before next week and districts.”

Melanie Moore led Paris with 16 points and five assists, Reese Sutton followed with 14 points and seven rebounds, and Hailey Morgan had seven points. Nine Lady Coyotes scored and five girls each had at least one 3-pointer.

Thomas said the ball movement is better this season after being “a little turnover prone” last season. He said this leads to better shots and better efficiency. The offense has caught up to the good defense over the past few years. 

“It’s just experience in general,” Thomas said. “We’ve been that way all year long. We move the ball pretty well, and that comes from coaching a veteran group. They’re used to what we do at this point.”

Paris has some talented young talent to add to the veteran core, including the freshman Morgan. In the Lady Coyotes’ final two games of the Sturgeon Tournament, Morgan led the team in scoring in both contests, including with 26 points in a 59-47 semifinal win over state-ranked New Franklin. 

As a freshman, Thomas said Moore showed much skill in handling the ball and scoring from multiple levels. He is seeing that from Morgan, and this gives Paris three girls — Moore, Morgan and the recent 1,000-point scorer Sutton — who are capable of being the team’s leading scorer.

“Hailey has played a ton of basketball prior to getting to me, too,” Thomas said. “Although she is young in terms of age, she’s played as much ball as my older girls, too. She has mixed in pretty well.”

In its district, Paris has defeated Louisiana, South Shelby but lost to Silex by eight points. 

Van-Far has played four other teams in its district. The Lady Indians beat Silex and Sturgeon but lost to Louisiana and South Shelby, with their largest margin of victory being 13 points against Sturgeon and largest margin of defeat being 12 points to Louisiana. 

“We have competed (in the district) up until tonight,” Minter said. “We weren't making shots or looking to attack.”