Wyoming High School girls basketball head coach Davary Anthony, at a recent practice with his team. (WKTV) 
Wyoming High School girls basketball head coach Davary Anthony, with his team, at a recent practice. (WKTV) 
Wyoming High School girls basketball head coach Davary Anthony, with his daughters, at a recent practice with his team. (WKTV) 
Wyoming High School girls basketball head coach Davary Anthony, with his team, at a recent practice. (WKTV) 
Wyoming High School girls basketball head coach Davary Anthony, with his daughters, at a recent practice with his team. (WKTV)
By K.D. Norris
Davary Anthony, the first-year varsity head coach of the Wyoming High School girls basketball team, knew the time and place was right for him to leave behind his longtime ties to Comstock Park basketball and take over the Wolves program.
First, it just seemed like the time for the challenge. Then there was the fact that he knew several players on the Wolves team from coaching them at the local AAU level.
But the biggest thing, maybe, was that from the moment he took the job he felt he and his family were welcomed into the Wyoming girls basketball “family.”
“Once I started here, I started to go to a lot of the youth games during the summertime. It is amazing how big Wyoming travels for basketball for their youth, especially for their girls,” Anthony said to WKTV at a recent practice. “The parents are loud. It is a family atmosphere. Everybody is hanging out, everybody is doing things together. They have even brought in my family as if it were their own.”
And it certainly seemed like a family affair at practice as Anthony’s Wolves prepared for their season opener — Nov. 30, at home versus Benton Harbor — as Coach’s daughters stood with their father and Wyoming assistant coach Taylor Johnson during drills.
Coach’s history includes AAU ties
While the “family feel” was one of many reasons, coach Anthony said, Wyoming high was the right place and early this year to be the right time for a career change.
Anthony graduated from Comstock Park high in 2009, and started coaching Comstock Park middle school boys the next year as part of varsity boys basketball head coach Scott Berry’s program.
Anthony was also head varsity coach of the boys team for one season at West Michigan Academy of Environment Science, before returning to Comstock Park. But maybe more importantly, he also coached girls basketball at the AAU level (16-under) with the West Michigan Drive.
It was at the AAU level that he got to know several players from Wyoming high — and that relationship worked well for him when then Wolves girls head coach Troy Mast stepped away after six seasons at the helm ending with a pandemic-impacted 2020-21 season when Wyoming finished 10-7 overall.
“I just felt like it was fate, that everything happens for reason,” Anthony said about the opening. “I as coaching a young girl on the (Wyoming) varsity team, Aaliyah Ratliff, she’s on my AAU team. I saw a post and was thinking ‘I should apply’ and she said the same thing. … I ended up getting the job and I felt like it is a prefect fit for me.”
And that familiarity with some of the players through AAU — junior Ratliff, sophomore Isabelle Castro, and especially seniors Michelle McGee, Mikayla Marzean and Avery Jirous — will also pay off on the court, Anthony said.
“Anytime you can have instant chemistry, everything kind of works out better,” Anthony said. “I’ve watched these girls. They’ve watched me. … Everything just connected. It made the move over here pretty much easy.”
Coaching style comes from mentors
When it comes to the kind of team he wants to put on the court, the way his team and program will be thought of, coach Anthony said “We are very aggressive … I like to push the tempo … I like to challenge my players to learn more than just the simple things of the game.”
He learned coaching basketball, and running a basketball program, from several mentors he has played for, coached with, or worked with.
“First off, Coach Scott Berry (when was at Comstock Park but is now at Sparta) … he got me into this thing,” Anthony said. “At the end of high school, I didn’t think this was something I was going to do … but he did.”
He also worked with coach Colleen Lamoreaux-Tate, who was successful at Catholic Central before moving to the college ranks — “She was an awesome person. She taught me a lot of Xs and Os. She showed me that practice is where you get better and not just the games.”
Anthony also credits Larry Copeland, the director of West Michigan Drive, for giving him “a lot of the insights into the administrative part of the business and the industry of basketball … making me a better coach that way.”
