The new face of Garinger High: Freshman Misa Garris wants to win, and she wants to win now
.JPG "Garinger High freshman guard Misa Harris shoots a free throw during first half action against Providence High Tuesday, February 7, 2023 at Providence High School.")
You’ve got Garinger High all wrong, Wildcats girls basketball coach Jorvewe Gibson said.
For a place synonymous with losing athletic teams and at least the perception of a rocky and volatile student school life, Gibson said he was a little surprised when he came over last fall.
What he saw was definitely not what he was expecting.
“I’ve been in a lot of school environments,” said Gibson, 38, a Providence High graduate with teaching and coaching history at Hopewell and Chambers. “It’s so peaceful on campus. It’s like the perception of it is all wrong.”
Another perception that Gibson wants to see changed is that Garinger can’t be competitive in sports, particularly the major ones like football and basketball. And he thinks that freshman basketball player Misa Garris can help with that.
With a laugh, Gibson calls Garris “the new face of Garinger High School.” He’s not only talking about Garris, though. He’s talking about a new influx of young players, across many sports, who seem determined to stay at Garinger and do well at Garinger.
A 5-foot-5 point guard, Garris leads the Wildcats in scoring (17.5 points per game), steals (3.9) as well as field-goal percentage (35) and assists (0.6). She’s second in rebounding (4.9) and blocks (0.4). Garris is among the nation’s top 100 freshman in scoring and No. 6 in North Carolina.
And she’s already impressed her teams’ rivals.
“She’s very good,” Providence coach Jennifer Bean said. “I mean, she’s very, very, very good. She single-handedly destroyed us. She had 33 (points, eight rebounds and six steals) on us and they scored 40 as a team. We couldn’t guard her. I said to Coach Gibson after the game, ‘Man, she is good.’ She’s got that confidence, like she’s slightly cocky, but in a good way.”
On Friday, Garinger beat Rocky River 41-29 to finish the regular-season 9-14. That ended a three-game losing streak. Garris had 18 points, five rebounds and four steals.
It’s been more than 16 years since Garinger has had a winning season. And just once in the past 16 years have the Wildcats won as many as eight games — until this year. In 10 of those previous seasons, Garinger won three games or fewer.
But for Garris, this is just Season 1 of changing expectations.
“It’s been kinda great,” she said, matter-of-factly, about the way she talks about most things. “It’s been a lot of ups and downs, and I feel like we’re getting there.”
Rising up, from the bottom
Garinger hasn’t always been bad in athletics.
In the ‘70s, a future San Francisco 49ers NFL world champion, Dwight Clark, was a star on the Garinger football team. In 1989, Garinger won the N.C. 4A state boys’ basketball championship. In the ‘90s, the girls’ basketball team was a regional power, led by a high school and future Tennessee All-American named Tiffani Johnson.
But in the past 30 or so years, Garinger has really struggled.
“It is difficult to get kids to come out (for sports),” Garinger athletic director Art Malorzo said. “My first year was COVID (2020-21), and I’ve seen (participation) increase, little by little, each year I’ve been here. But it is challenging to field all the teams, to get all the numbers for a lot of sports, so we have to get creative.”
To his point, the Wildcats football team was 0-10 last season under second year coach Shon Galloway. In the fall of 2021, the school shuttered its varsity program for a junior varsity schedule due to a lack of participation.
The coach before Galloway, Greg Fowler, never coached a game. He resigned just hours before the Wildcats were going to kick off the COVID-forced spring 2021 season at Myers Park.
Galloway is Garinger’s 12th football coach since 2011. The Wildcats football team has had two winning seasons since 1995, a span that’s also seen the school shoulder the state’s longest active losing streak more than once.
This year, the boys’ basketball team was 0-23 heading into Friday’s regular-season finale. In the previous four seasons, the Wildcats won a total of four games.
“I can’t pinpoint what it is,” Marlorzo said. “I know a lot of our kids have family obligations. It’s a very blue-collar community, and our kids work after school and on weekends and don’t have time to commit to sports and sometimes having academic standards is a hurdle. We have to try to find different ways to introduce kids to sports, through PE classes and clubs and intramurals and try to get them to try different sports, especially the ones that aren’t popular.”
Marlozo said only about 250 of the school’s estimated 1,300 students play sports.
Garinger’s boys’ soccer team, however, has had back-to-back winning seasons, and from 2013-15, it was 59-9-1. Girls’ soccer is on the rise there, too.
Gibson and Marlorzo are banking on players like Garris to help basketball join the party.
“Having a player like Misa helps a lot,” Marlorzo said. “I think it lets other athletes see that they can come here, play here and be successful. Hopefully, that promotes kids coming up, rising freshmen, to come to Garinger and stay at Garinger. We’ll for sure have more girls coming up through the ranks that are basketball players if they can see someone like Misa doing so well.”
A good student, a good baller
Garris has a 3.5 GPA taking Honors Classes. Gibson said his team GPA is slightly higher than that. He believes that’s something most people aren’t expecting, either.
“When people think of Garinger,” he said, “they think aggression and that we have a lot of fights and trouble in our school; that it’s a dangerous place and the education is not top-notch and our students are not high achievers. It’s such a big misconception. I thought coming here (working as a Behavior Modification Technician), I would see a higher number of fights and incidents. Quite frankly, I twiddle my thumbs most days and I’m learning Spanish from other students. It’s so harmonious. We’ve got parties during lunch, disco DJs. It’s just a calm, chill vibe. It’s like a small college.
“Our biggest problem is kids wanting to go to the store across the street.”
Garris has thrived in that environment, making new friends and feeling supported enough to embrace a role as a team leader at 15. She’s played basketball since she was 5, when her stepdad, Joseph Samuel, started taking her to the park.
Nowadays, you can find Garris probably two places — in the gym or relaxing at home, where she often is making TikTok dance videos for her page (but not too much for Instagram or Twitter).
“There’s a lot of interesting stuff on TikTok,” she said, “a lot of entertainment, and it’s joyful. Whenever I’m bored, I get on TikTok and get my laughs in. It’s just not the same on the other two.”
At home, she’s got a UNC-Greensboro women’s basketball poster on her wall, and she definitely wants to play in college, even if she doesn’t know where.
“It’s kind of like a big dream,” she said. “I want to make it to the next level.”
She also wants to make Garinger a consistent winner. And no matter how this year turns out, the Wildcats have made some definite progress. And next season, Gibson will return all seven of the freshman, including Garris, that he’s playing at least 20 minutes of every 32-minute game.
“Time is on our side,” Gibson said.
His star agrees with him.
“People are going to talk the way they talk” about Garinger, Garris said. “You’ve got to prove them wrong. I never thought about not coming here. I want to get something going here and win a championship.”
PHOTOS: Misa Garris, Garinger High
This story was originally published February 12, 2023 at 5:30 AM.
