Dec 19, 2017 6 min read

The premier caretaker of the basketball at this end of the state, perhaps, is a wisp of a girl, 4 feet 6 inches tall with braids, a shy, easy smile and a soft voice. She is seven years from legally driving a car, but has few peers at driving the lane.

“Best 9-year-old girl in the history of life,” Jamal Woodson, one of her coaches, said of Karis Thomas, wunderkind Washington Park Elementary student.

Woodson, director of Slaam Basketball, an AAU program in Pittsburgh, may have been a bit effusive in his praise. But he couldn’t help it during a live interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” with Karis and her father, Randy, on Nov. 14. It followed a video in which Karis displayed her wondrous skills to the national TV audience.

She is a fourth-grader with grade-A athletic abilities. Dribbling is her specialty, the ball seemingly an extension of her fingers as she moves as effortlessly behind her back or between the legs as she does straight ahead. And she has a crossover that will fake a defender out of her socks.

Yet Karis has a textbook jump shot, with a high arc and proper rotation, that is especially impressive when she catches, stops and pops without putting the ball on the floor.

This Washington kid, in basketball parlance, has become a prime-time player. Now she is poised to sparkle again in true prime time. Karis entertained the halftime crowd at the Pitt-Duquesne men’s game the evening of Dec. 1 – the largest crowd for which she has performed – and will be at center stage again at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh Dec. 26. She will play for the world-renowned Harlem Globetrotters in a holiday gift that, personally, will keep on giving.

The Trotters, who play strictly for fun, will open their world tour that day with performances at 2 and 7 p.m. Karis will play only at 7.

Known informally as “the Clown Princes of Basketball,” the Globetrotters reached out to Karis during her GMA appearance at Winchester Thurston School in the Shadyside section of Pittsburgh. Player Zeus McClurkin surprised her with a team jersey and an invitation. “I saw you got some amazing basketball skills,” he said. “I want you to come out and join the team.”

So she will for one night.

Karis’ emergence as a mini-celebrity – physically and athletically – is due in equal parts to her skills and her father’s perseverance. Randy Thomas, an employee in the city’s public works department, is an otherwise congenial man who admitted the two “pretty much barged our way” into a clinic Woodson was conducting at Oakland Catholic High School.

Woodson said on GMA: “We were holding a very competitive clinic for high school athletes and in comes this 4-foot nothing with her dad, barging in, trying to get in, and I tried to stop them and her dad was not having it.

“He was like, ‘Let my daughter play for just a little bit.’ I did not want to do it, but he insisted, and so I did.”

Within minutes, Woodson was no longer doubting either Thomas.

“As soon as she set foot on the court, she outshined the entire clinic of about 75 people.”

Karis displayed a winning personality on the morning show, talking hoops and extolling the achievements of Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James. She said James “dunks real crazy, which I love” and “he works as hard as me,” eliciting laughter from the GMA hosts and audience.

Hard work is among her hallmarks, though. During a brief workout in the Washington Park gym last week, Karis said she practices “about two hours each day.” She plays during the winter, of course, and in spring and fall leagues at Brownson House.

She also is being tutored by a former player with a pedigree: Micah Mason, an outstanding three-point shooter at Duquesne several years ago. Mason, who began his collegiate career at Division I Drake, scored 1,269 points in three seasons as a Duke.

“Karis has been nothing but enjoyment for me to work with these past five months,” Mason said in an email. “She has one-of-a-kind talent and loves the game. Anything we teach her she picks it up instantly. She will be a very special player because she lives in the gym.”

The payoff, as Karis proved at the Oakland clinic, is she can distinguish herself against older players. Her father, in fact, recommends she compete beyond her age range. “If you want to get better, you play against kids who are as good as you or better,” said Randy, who played baseball and wrestled at Washington High School in the late 1990s.

Neither he nor his wife, Ciarra, played varsity basketball, but their two children – both daughters, both point guards – do. The elder sibling, Randi, 15, is a sophomore in her second season as a Wash High starter, and an inspiration to the fourth-grader in her house.

“I’ve learned from her. She’s one of my favorites,” Karis said.

“She loves her sister and really looks up to her,” Ciarra said in a phone interview, adding with a chuckle that the love can be tough.

“They hone each other’s skills. They practice and talk smack to each other.”

Randi, however, isn’t the only one providing motivation and inspiration to the family’s youngest member. She may not even be providing the largest quantities of those qualities.

Ciarra Thomas is in a full-fledged fight with cancer. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in January 2016, had a double mastectomy and said she was declared cancer-free that August, but the disease returned in a pelvic bone and the liver. Ciarra said she has been treated mostly at Canonsburg and Allegheny General hospitals of the Allegheny Health Network, and a recent change in chemotherapy treatment from infusion to pill has boosted her spirits and hopes.

“It’s a promising type of medication that hasn’t been on the market for long,” she said. “I feel a lot better.”

Karis’ long-range aspiration is to play professionally, but her mother’s travails have her contemplating an ambitious alternative career. “Her ultimate goal is to play in the WNBA,” Randy said, “but Karis wants to be a doctor. She hates cancer and wants to be the one who finds a cure.”

“This is why I work so hard in the classroom,” his young daughter said.

In the meantime, there are those 81/2 years of school before college or the WNBA. But after that … Karis, ideally, would like to play either for the iconic Connecticut program or Duquesne. She has become a big Dukes fan, not only because she was allowed to perform at halftime of the men’s City Game, but received a LeBron James ball autographed by members of the Duquesne women’s team that night. A week or so later, Karis attended a Duquesne women’s game as the team’s guest.

She enjoyed the attention, something to which she is becoming accustomed.