Historic father vs. daughter coaching rivalry reveals Paris family’s love of basketball

As Maurice Garrard lifted himself out of the seat from which he’d coached most of Frankfort’s game at Henry Clay on Feb. 3, a couple of players rushed over to hug him. They wore the opposing team’s colors.

Freshman Brinley Dumphord, his granddaughter, and senior Alli Stone, a former player for his AAU club, flanked Maurice as he approached the head coach that had just handed him a 33-point loss. They’d both had it circled dating back to late summer, after his daughter-turned-coaching-rival convinced him to take the Panthers job when they attempted to poach her from Lexington.

“I kept saying, ‘No, no, no, Ashley,” the 65-year-old said. “I had to pray on it. God led me down here, so I’m enjoying every minute of it. They give me something to continue to fight hard for.”

Father-son face-offs aren’t uncommon across Kentucky high school sports, but the meeting between Ashley and Maurice Garrard was believed to be the first father-daughter battle between high school basketball head coaches in 11th Region history, and perhaps that of the state. It is almost certainly the first such showdown featuring a Black father and daughter in Kentucky sports history.

“I told ’em, this is a personal game. ‘You let Frankfort come in here and win, and we’re gonna have a problem,” said Ashley Garrard. “We’d have been practicing all day Sunday.”

Destiny

The youngest of Maurice and Janet Garrard’s four children, Ashley climbed up the record books at Paris High School before signing with the University of Illinois-Chicago in June 2002. Her finest accomplishments as a player came between scholastic seasons, though, as she helped the Central Kentucky Storm for about three years dominate the state’s AAU circuit. On at least one occasion, the team showed up to the state tournament’s “Final Four” and the remaining teams all forfeited.

“We walked into the gym and were already named state champions,” said Maurice, who co-founded the AAU program in 1991 and has guided it since. He knew while he was coaching her that it wasn’t a matter of if Ashley would follow in his footsteps, but when.

“She’s old school,” Maurice said. “She took major pride in her game and what we did as a team. She’s one of them kids that, our offenses and defenses, she knew every one of them. For all five positions. That was a peak into the future.”

After getting pregnant with her daughter Asja-Li during her second season at UIC, Ashley returned home to Paris and started coaching alongside her father. She took the reins of Henry Clay’s girls team in 2021 following a virus-riddled season in which the Blue Devils managed to play just 11 games and finished 2-9.

They got off to sluggish starts each of her first two seasons (0-4 in 2021-22 and 0-5 in 2022-23) but finished both campaigns well above .500, and in her first year won the 42nd District Tournament and reached the 11th Region Tournament semifinals. Entering Wednesday, her current group was 17-7 overall with an 12-4 mark against regional foes.

Ashley’s girls have made their gains by embracing the same philosophies Maurice preached to her two decades before they were born.

“I coach like my dad,” she said. “We’re a defensive team, he’s the same way. We’re both very vocal and aggressive.”

Fighting

Maurice, a three-sport star at Paris who in the 1970s helped the Greyhounds win two Class A KHSAA state track-and-field championships, never really sought scholastic coaching opportunities. He helped out occasionally with Paris’ middle school teams and was briefly a head coach at nearby Pendleton County High School, but his career as an IT professional always made it difficult to coach during the week.

However, it also afforded the means for Maurice and his family to help hundreds of kids in Central Kentucky develop life skills around their favorite sport. When their own kids started earning college sports scholarships — “We’re better than the stock market,” Maurice says with a laugh — the Garrards started funneling the college savings fund into building the program that would become Central Kentucky Storm. He prides himself on never having profited “a penny” from his summer program, and on covering expenses as often as needed for less-fortunate children when they travel around the state.

Ashley’s taken on a greater role in the program in recent years. Maurice was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2001 and then lymphoma in 2011, and “that monster has came back as we speak,” he says, noting that he undergoes chemotherapy five days a week. “I still try to be here for these kids and I can hold my head up.”

If not for a pronounced arch in his back, you’d never guess Maurice wasn’t in the greatest health. His on-court demeanor is as fiery as that of the protégé he raised on and off the hardwood. The game keeps him young, Ashley says, as does the challenge of whipping a group of underdogs into form.

“I hate to say it, but I always tell him, ‘You’d be happy if you passed away on the sidelines,” Ashley said. “Coaching is his life. That’s what keeps him sane.

“Now I say, ‘Look at that. Now you can go year-round.’”

A rematch is already on the books for next year. Afterward they’ll hug and smile, but for 32 minutes?

“We will be going at her throat, no doubt,” Maurice said. “And she’ll be going just as hard.”

This story was originally published February 9, 2024 at 7:00 AM.