Lady Griz Orientation :: Avory DeCoite

If a lengthy profile on Lady Griz freshman Avory DeCoite is more than you have time for, in this case a single picture is able to do the job, this one handling the work of a few thousand words, the black-and-white image revealing pretty much everything you need to know about the Montana guard.

She's wearing something from the Carhartt Juniors line, a bit oversized, bib overalls, maybe a hand-me-down, the legs bunched up a bit at the feet, which are sticking to the rebel theme, shod in flip-flops, the lean torso the result of hours and hours at the gym, not yet for basketball but for actual gymnastics.

Avory DeCoite

But it's from the neck up that does the picture's heaviest lifting, eyes that bore into yours, a no-nonsense, no-fear intensity, even at that age, pursed lips giving the face its southern border, her stance and at-the-ready arms and hands completing the pose. Even at standstill she appears ready to attack.

The whole thing is a bit menacing, especially for someone her age, like she's wired on 220 volts in a 110 world. It screams TROUBLE AHEAD! for those charged with raising her, in a hard-to-handle way, like she's prepared to bend the world to her liking, or at least try. And what are you going to do about it?

"We knew from a very early point that there was a fierce little competitor in there that was ready to rumble," says her mom, Christina. "That's for damn sure."

That was the player, then a junior at Missoula's Big Sky High, who now Montana head coach Nate Harris was watching on an otherwise listless Saturday morning at Brick Breeden Fieldhouse in Bozeman in a loser-out game at the 2025 Class AA state tournament.

The energy of the facility would pick up exponentially as the day wore on, culminating with that evening's championship games. But for now, any activity was fueled by caffeine. The general vibe: It's too early for basketball. But Avory DeCoite has always been a bit of a contrarian in these matters.

She had torn her ACL prior to that fall's soccer season, her surgery coming exactly seven months prior to this game that had no bearing on that evening's championship, but DeCoite was on a basketball court, in a competitive environment, and that meant only one thing: she was ready to rumble.

It was less than two minutes into the game when the ball was heading out of bounds, near the score table, nine-tenths of the players on the floor fine with letting it go and allowing the referee to determine whose possession it should be, giving up control of the situation to someone else.

DeCoite wasn't fine with it, never has been. She got to the ball, threw it back into play, backwards over her head and crashed into and over the table, finally coming to rest at the base of the fieldhouse bleachers.

In a relatively inconsequential game, in the opening moments, while the teams were getting situated and recalibrating after disappointing losses earlier in the tournament, and with her reconstructed knee in a brace that she hated wearing, the girl in the overalls showed she hadn't changed a bit.

Because there is never anything inconsequential. Ever. Not when it comes to winning and losing. Not if the score is being kept and not if there is still time on the clock.

DeCoite didn't make a pros and cons list of the situation, she just made the play no one else thought or wanted to make. "Assessing risk is not part of her process," says Harris. "She's competed like that forever, and you can't teach that. How can you not want that on your team?"

The low-hanging fruit in this story would be to tie her to the DeCoite name, to her dad, Dave, who played football for the Grizzlies from 2000 to '03 and was the fifth-leading tackler on the 2001 Montana team that would win a national championship.

He was second-team All-Big Sky as a junior, first-team as a senior, twice voted the winner of the team's Doug Betters Golden Helmet Award, presented each postseason to Montana's best tackler and hardest hitter.

"She plays basketball like I remember growing up watching her dad play football. She's just all out, all the time. She competes and plays extremely hard, at an elite level," said Harris, who then pivots and says there are two families that make up Avory DeCoite's blood and not to overlook the Lefler input.

Her mom grew up in Frenchtown, Christina's oldest brother, Doug, a former All-American thrower of the javelin, who finished seventh at the 2004 NCAA Championships for Long Beach State. "I remember a middle-school track meet and her mom winning about every event," says Harris, who grew up in Ronan.

But basketball was her true love. Two years after playing at Frenchtown, she made the move to Hellgate High for her junior year, for the elevated level of competition, for the elevated level of exposure, thinking it might be one step closer to landing at Dahlberg Arena and suiting up for the Lady Griz.

"We would drive in for every single home game, the five of us," she says. "It was so cool to follow the program. Shannon Cate, Joy Anderson, Kelly Pilcher. I have autograph books for days from all of them. That was the dream."

A few games into her junior year, she suffered a season-ending ACL injury. That spring, she opted to join the track and field team and throw the javelin. One day she planted and tore it again. Hers would be the final girls' basketball senior class that played in the fall, so her clock was ticking, ticking fast.

"I had three-and-a-half months after my second injury if I wanted to get back and play my senior year at Frenchtown," she says. Her dad found a Missoula physical therapist, Tim Cordial, who assured the family he could put her through an accelerated program that would have her ready for the season opener.

"I moved back to Frenchtown, where I knew I could still be an impact player with two knee braces, and I got to graduate with my friends," says Christina, today an account executive with Townsquare Media.

Genetics are always a wild ride, sometimes producing what you might be expecting, other times flipping over a diamond when all the odds suggested anything but. Meet Darren, Avory's older brother by four years.

"They are literally polar opposites," says Christina. "He is sweet and sensitive and kind and incredibly athletic but the desire to win and compete just never was appealing to him."

Then, four years later, along came his sister. "He's always been the nicer one between us," Avory says. "I'm more competitive and tried to make competitions out of anything, even when I didn't need to. I'd get really competitive with him and he wouldn't really care. He's the most wholesome person ever."

That's not to suggest Avory DeCoite isn't sweet, sensitive and kind, just like her brother, but an intense competitiveness has a way of masking those qualities.

Her early days of playing YMCA soccer and basketball must have led other parents, whose kids were there for mere fun, to say to themselves, OMG THAT DECOITE GIRL. The girl who wore those overalls had already established in her mind that winning was the only thing and that losing wasn't an option.

And the only way to get there was to go all out, all the time. And anyone who didn't share the same mindset could get out of the way.

"She was fiercely competitive. Controlling those emotions at a young age was not easy for her. A loss of a soccer game in the very early days was quite an explosion. Her coaches loved her tenacity and how hard she worked, but her patience for other players wasn't always there," her mom says.

"She could be a challenge to her coaches for sure. She always wanted to take over."

They assured her coaches they were working on it behind the scenes, to be patient, and they did at home, after the temperature had dropped and the pressure had eased, guiding her toward being a better teammate with one hand while wanting to pat her on the back with the other.

"I always loved the fierce spirit in her," says Christina. "I never wanted to diminish that or wanted her to be smaller. I knew eventually, when she got control of her emotions, that it was going to separate her from other people for the rest of her life.

"Now she can handle that. Back then, there was no way for her to know what to do with that kind of energy and feelings and all the things."

She got her start in gymnastics, her mom knowing the core strength that would come from it would benefit any sport that might be in her future. She excelled on the bars and vault, those that paired with her strength and aggression. The floor? It went like you might imagine.

A young Avory DeCoite and well-timed choreography were not made for each other. Okay, begin this element of your routine at this cue in the music, not a split second before, okay Avory? This isn't a race. You have to be patient and wait for it. Avory? Where did she go?

"I would rush my routine and get done with it before the music was done, so I'd just have to stand there until the music finished," she said, confirming what you might have predicted. She would do the dictating, not be dictated to, especially by a soundtrack. She marched to the beat of a drum, her own.

All of this led to soccer, her dad's preferred sport for his daughter, and basketball, still her mom's sport of choice and game of love. She could have played either collegiately, and that would lead to a big decision having to be made down the road.

But for now, it was all fun and games. Wait, scratch that. That doesn't fit. It doesn't fit at all. Fun was winning and competition was the way to get to that destination.

"I never saw her play soccer, but you wouldn't have to work very hard to convince me she was a high-, high-level soccer player," says Harris.

"She'll be one of the fastest players, one of the quickest players, one of the most aggressive players on almost any court she plays on this year. Those are traits that lend themselves to being good at multiple sports. Athletically she could have done a lot of different things."

She played club soccer for Strikers, traveled across the West, led the state in assists and finished second in goals at Big Sky as a freshman. For basketball, she played club with the Northwest Blazers, making their national team as a sophomore.

She was going here, then going there, hopefully grabbing the right gear bag on the way out the door and not showing up at basketball practice with soccer cleats and shin guards. With more and more being asked of her, her schedule reached a breaking point.

"We were traveling non-stop. If it wasn't soccer, it was basketball. That sophomore summer, the two overlapped and collided way too much. There was no room to be absent at all," says Christina. "That was the deciding moment she had to pick. My thing was, whatever you pick, we'll go all in."

Soccer came more naturally for her, ideally suited her skill set. Basketball challenged her in a different sense, forced her to excel in a way that wasn't largely reliant on her ability to run faster than the nearest outside back, then use killer footwork to get the goalkeeper out of position before scoring.

"Ever since a young age, I thought I'd be playing soccer in college," she said. "That thought started changing sophomore year. I started questioning it. I had to work really hard in basketball compared to soccer, which came more naturally for me. I liked the challenge of that."

And basketball, too, just provides a better space and environment for what she brings, what, with its more confined space and opportunities for momentum-changing plays.

"She was a striker, and in soccer you kind of stay in your space. You can't be a game-changer outside of your area," her mom explains. "In basketball, a player can take over and make a difference that you cannot do on a soccer field."

A hustle play in soccer might happen on the other side of the field, almost out of vision of fans. On a basketball court – and prepare yourself now, Lady Griz fans, they are coming – those plays happen where everyone can see and appreciate them.

"The energy in a basketball gym is so different compared to a soccer field," Christina says. "I love soccer and loved watching her play, but the energy, the pace and speed of the game, everything is significantly different."

But she wasn't going to give up on soccer, which is why she was in Spokane in early August of her junior year for a preseason game. She sprinted for a ball, slid across the grass, then heard a pop when her foot caught on the turf.

Life can do that, put up a stop sign on even the fastest of one-way paths. The MRI images came back and she was ushered into another room. When the doctor led off with a solemn, So … "I knew right then he was going to tell me it was torn."

Almost every youth female athlete is one or two degrees of separation from someone who has had an ACL tear. DeCoite didn't have to look far to find someone who knew the injury intimately. "The next morning, I went and got her. That was tough, really tough," said Christina.

DeCoite was originally in line to attend Sentinel High, closer to her home in the South Hills than Big Sky, but this evolving, maturing girl, the one who wasn't always the best of teammates when she was younger, now didn't want to play without her best friends at her side.

A week before her freshman year was set to begin, she transferred from one school to the other. First-year Big Sky girls' basketball coach Travis Williams, whose initial team would be led by a strong sophomore class, was the beneficiary.

And this freshman had no trouble fitting in with her older teammates. "The work ethic she has, the intensity she has, the time she puts in, she just earns respect right away," he said. "She grew up playing with a lot of those girls, so it wasn't a hard transition for her."

She had surgery on Aug. 15 and most best-case ACL recoveries come in at eight months, which would put her at mid-April, a tough blow for a player in her most important recruiting year.

Her very first offer, from Sienna, in east-central New York, was extended to her the day before her ACL injury, the start of an incredibly emotional 24-hour window. Almost all communication from interested schools came, if not to a screeching halt, at least to a pause as they took a wait-and-see approach.

She landed with Clint Cordial at Electric Rehab and Fitness, who told her, provided she give him everything she had – "Hello, Dr. Cordial, I'm Avory DeCoite, nice to meet you" – he thought he could have her back on the court before the end of the season. Mid-February was six months away.

"I wanted to be back with my teammates. I wanted one final run with them because they were all seniors," DeCoite said. "That motivated me. I wanted a chance at state."

And she got to work. "My mom knew the in's and out's. She kept telling me, the pain is going to hurt but it's not a bad pain. You just have to keep working through it."

That's also when the Lady Griz extended family wrapped its arms around her, even before anyone knew she would end up signing with Montana. They can be like that, ballers looking out for fellow ballers.

Former Lady Griz Krista Redpath, who had the same injury during her collegiate career, reached out and stayed in contact. "I absolutely love (Krista) and Avory really looks up to her," said Christina.

"She was a great mentor, reminding (Avory) that it's going to be okay and that she can come back from this and to believe in herself. It's one thing for me to say it, but to have someone who's played on that court, you want to listen to that more than you want to listen to your mom, and that's fair."

As most schools took their Avory DeCoite Interest Level from 60 to idling faster than she could say 'ACL injury,' Harris, then Montana's associate head coach, reached out and gave her another boost.

"He texted me. Heard about your injury. Want you to know we're still here. Let me know if you need anything. That was a really big moment for me. At least the school I really want to go to is there for me," DeCoite said.

"When I got cleared and started hearing from schools again, I was kind of salty. I haven't heard from you in six months!"

ACL injuries rarely have a silver lining, but DeCoite's did. "Her ace in the hole was always, I'll out-compete anyone you put out there. I'll play harder than them," says Harris. Now she couldn't do either, so she focused on other parts of her game that needed her focus, particularly her shooting.

What, you thought she was going to sit around and binge-watch? "She has always been a nightmare for the other team defensively," says Christina. "The offensive end, from a shooting perspective, needed to improve. Slowing down gave her the time and forced her to work on those things."

"Overall it ended up helping her," adds Williams. "She is such a relentless worker that the time she put in, she came back even better. All of it made her a more polished player and helped her in the long run."

Late in the season, she was gifted two minutes per quarter. The next game it was three. By the final game of the regular season, she was allowed to go full, and Big Sky High played its way to the state tournament.

"I was bawling the first time she went in. I can't tell you how many times I gasped," says Christina. "My nerves were through the roof. But every game she went out there, I became less and less nervous."

Because Avory DeCoite finally eased back and quit playing so hard as a matter of self-preservation? (Pause here for the laughter to die down.) "The thing about her, you can't change her style of play. She was still going to dive for every ball. You can't stop that. You kind of have to let it go."

It was a frustrating what-could-have-been situation in Bozeman in mid-March as Big Sky routed Bozeman 46-24 in the opening round before falling 35-31 to Gallatin in the semifinals. Gallatin defeated Billings West 66-63 in overtime in the championship game, keeping Big Sky from its first title since 2009.

Hellgate lost its opening-round game against Billings Skyview, then knocked off Helena in a loser-out game to advance to play Big Sky in a quiet gym on a Saturday morning, when Harris saw DeCoite put herself in harm's way to try to save a ball heading out of bounds early in the first quarter.

No one else does that. She does.

That's why you'll see her on the court this season as a true freshman. "It leads to her being game-ready pretty early on in her career because so much of what you do on the defensive end in college is about playing as hard as you can for as long as you can, and that's something she's a natural at," Harris said.

DeCoite didn't play soccer her senior year, instead focusing on becoming the best basketball player she could be, now that the path was set before her. "We lost a lot of good talent from my junior year, so I wanted to be the best player I could be going into senior year and help our team be good," she said.

"Knowing I put all those extra hours in really helped my confidence. I felt more confident with the ball in my hands my senior season." Williams adds, "You could tell right away she was going to be a problem for other teams."

Indeed, she was. She averaged 21.7 points, 4.7 rebounds. 4.5 assists and 5.5 steals last winter for the Eagles and was voted All-State, the Western AA MVP and the Western AA Defensive Player of the Year.

Big Sky won three games at the state tournament but two came on the left side of the bracket after a 48-45 loss to Billings West in the semifinals.

Williams got the job at Big Sky prior to DeCoite's freshman season. They went out together with a 46-35 win over Hellgate in the third-place game. He stepped down in April with a four-year record of 68-25. "I wanted to see Avory's group through all the way. Special group for me," he said.

Williams won a Class B title as a senior at Three Forks in 2001 and played at Carroll before getting into coaching.

After working as an assistant at Montana Western for two years, Williams taught and was the head boys' coach at Douglas High in Wyoming for three years, then moved on to teaching and coaching in Wenatchee, Wash., for seven before moving to Missoula.

He's seen a lot of players, coached a lot of practices, been around hundreds of games, "and I've never coached another player who plays with the type of motor she does and the mentality she does," he said. "She is relentless, like nothing I've ever seen before in any player I've ever coached.

"She's the type of player who changes the culture and the standard of what you're doing day in and day out in a program. That's Avory in a nutshell. She plays every play like it's her last play."

As Harris said, How could you not want that on your team?

In the documentary "The House That Rob Built," detailing the career of former Lady Griz coach Robin Selvig, who won 865 games over 38 seasons, there is a scene of the bench, with Selvig stealing the spotlight. But if you look behind him, you can spot a young Christina Lefler.

Kevin Rocheleau, husband of long-time Selvig assistant Annette Rocheleau, worked for Lefler's dad, so some pretty sweet tickets, right behind the home bench, would frequently find their way into the hands of the Lefler family.

"Two of us would take turns sitting behind the bench," Christina says. "It was everything a little girl aspired to be. If you loved basketball, which I did, you wanted to be a Lady Griz. It's a special program. It just is."

Whether her dream would have come true or not, it was definitively derailed by a pair of ACL injuries that led her to ultimately take on the title of Former Player, then Mother, and then Avory, that girl in the overalls who knew no quit, who knows no quit, got her back in the game.

What she didn't expect to discover is that it's 10 times better this way, to see her daughter doing what she was denied. Make that 100. Make that 1,000. Ah, just go ahead and call it priceless.

"When Nate called her, she came into the house and we literally hugged for a full 10 minutes and just cried," Christina said.

"Watching your daughter achieve what was once my biggest dream is so much more gratifying. After all her hard work, getting to be able to play on that court? It melts my heart when I think about it."

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