Meet the Zoo Crew, Lamont Paris’ personal fan club — from his high school in Ohio

A few minutes after South Carolina basketball edged Florida a few Saturdays ago, coach Lamont Paris walked into USC’s locker room and was greeted by a chant.

“Heyyyyyy. Ayeeeee. … Heyyyyy. Ayeeeee. … Heyyyyy. Ayeeeee.”

Egging Paris on to dance were his South Carolina players, fresh off a stupefying performance. Earlier at Colonial Life Arena, down by 10 at one point, the Gamecocks scored 51 points in the second half and made shot after shot in crunch time.

Then, a little while laterParis walked into the Cambria Hotel and was again greeted by a chant.

“Heyyyyyy. Ayeeeee … Heyyyyy. Ayeeeee. … Heyyyyy. Ayeeeee.”

Egging Paris on to dance was The Zoo Crew, fresh off their stupefying performance at Colonial Life Arena. Sitting in their buddy’s suite, they drank over $1,000 of beer and whiskey, downing shot after shot in crunch time.

For the past seven years, since Paris finally achieved his dream of being a head coach, his friends from Findlay High School in Ohio, who still go by the name of their former student section, reassembled to support Findlay’s finest.

When Paris coached at Chattanooga they made the trip four times … and the Mocs never won.

“We were really worried we were gonna be asked not to come back,” Jayson Montgomery said.

But the Zoo Crew, armed now with more South Carolina quarter zips than they thought they’d ever own, are undefeated in the past two years. They went to Washington, D.C., last season and watched the Gamecocks beat Georgetown, feeling like they were in the twilight zone when their buddy from Findlay hugged Patrick Ewing.

They booked flights and hotels for the Florida game months ago, back when the Gamecocks were the SEC punching bag. When the trip came to pass, Paris was a college basketball superstar. His team was competing for the SEC title and the NCAA Tournament was a lock. And then South Carolina played one of those quintessential Gamecock games: Get down. Battle back. Hit clutch triples. Play blistering defense in crunch time. All in front of a rocking crowd.

“He put us in a suite up in the corner,” said Joe Rivera, who met Paris when they were second-grade classmates at Washington Elementary. “After the game, he sent a salute over to us.”

On Sunday evening, the wishes of the Zoo Crew came through. Paris’ South Carolina was sent to Pittsburgh for the NCAA Tournament, where the 6-seed Gamecocks will take on 11-seed Oregon on Thursday. It’s less than a three-hour drive from Columbus and four Zoo Crewers have already secured tickets and are planning their trip. One extra trip for 2024.

“It’s like a pilgrimage,” Paris told The State. “It’s awesome to have that kind of support. ... There’s no doubt there will be a few of them (in Pittsburgh). It’s a one-of-a-kind group.”

How the Zoo Crew came to be

Back in the winter of 1992, The Zoo Crew was the biggest, baddest student section in all of Ohio. What started as a few deep grew to dozens deep of Findlay High students, cheering on their boys basketball team at every home and away game.

The best part about it: The Zoo Crew was only together one year. It started up as a way for seniors, like Montgomery and Rivera, to cheer on their buddies who were now starting on varsity.

Bryan Adams sings about the “Summer of ‘69”, but that had nothing on The Winter of ‘92. Findlay High, led by a skinny senior point guard named Lamont Paris, was team basketball to the nth degree.

“Our junior year, Lamont came off the bench as the backup point guard,” said Findlay teammate Jeff Lobb, who has recently been adopted into the Zoo Crew. “One of the reasons we were so good our senior year was because the coach realized Lamont needed to be running the show, not this other guy.”

Four seniors started. Chemistry was impeccable. The Trojans started the season 14-0 and rose to No. 4 in the state at one point. Findlay was not particularly deep, only playing six or seven guys a night, but it was a small group that had grown up together. They were by no means the best athletes in the state, but everyone knew exactly what their role was.

“I know Lamont has said that when he thinks about building teams now as a coach,” Lobb added, “he thinks about that high school team.”

The Zoo Crew was there every step of the way, cheering on Findlay all the way through its state playoff loss to Lima Senior.

If you think you’ve seen great student sections — well, you probably have. But being a student section in the 21st century is a cakewalk. Trying to make fun of someone’s mom without Facebook? Good luck. Those pre-Internet days are where legends were made. Legends like Montgomery and Rivera, Zoo Crew OGs.

They’re not proud of all the chants they hollered. But there were no smartphones back then so any accusations are merely hearsay.

And the lack of social media attention makes some of their stunts even more memorable.

“One time, we played on Valentine’s Day so we dressed up like gangsters like ‘The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre,’’ Rivera said. “And parents paid for us to rent these costumes.”

One of their state tournament games in 1992 was about 30 miles away. You only need to know that because The Zoo Crew decided to dribble a basketball the entire way. They took turns walking through the backroads dribbling a ball while the others rode behind in trucks.

“It took us like six, seven hours to do,” said Rivera.

Again, no phones. This was not for TikTok. Not for publicity. Just for fun.

“We got there right before the game starts and here comes the team bus from Findlay,” Rivera said. “The team’s honking the horn, sticking their head out the window.”

The lengths they would go to not just attend the games, but support their buddies on the team knew no bounds. These days, there are new challenges, new adventures to support a friend.

The greatest gift of friendships: The conversations you can have with your buddies, you can have with no one else. They are the best conversations and, in those rare moments of vulnerability, the most memorable.

When Paris was a senior in college, his father Henry “Chucky” Paris died of a heart attack at the age of 46. When Paris was an assistant coach at Wisconsin, his mom, Kathy Gutierrez, passed away after a long health battle.

So now, every time Rivera sees his buddy, he makes sure to say something.

“Chuck would be so proud of you, man,” he says, “Chuck and Kathy.”

Starting the annual tradition

No Zoo Crewers were all that surprised that Paris went down the coaching route. He is, as his players now say, a basketball genius. Like he told Rivera when they were both young kids, his dream was to be the head coach at Georgetown. Thirty years later, that would almost be a demotion.

They tried to keep up with him as best as possible. Rivera said he visited his old pal when he was the assistant coach at Wooster and a few made the drive to watch Paris on the bench for Akron. When Paris got the Wisconsin assistant coaching gig in 2010, it became easy. Most of the Zoo Crew stuck around Ohio and every time the Badgers played Ohio State, Paris would dole out tickets behind the bench with the message, “Just don’t wear Ohio State gear.”

“I told my buddies, ‘When he gets a head coaching job, we need to go to his games,’” Rivera said.

In 2017, after a remarkable seven-year run at Wisconsin that included two Final Four trips, Paris was hired as Chattanooga’s head coach. Rivera sent out the bat signal. That first year, eight Findlay alums made the trip to watch the Mocs play. The boys’ trip has grown every year since.

But by no means is there an open invitation. Absolutely not. This is the Augusta National of boys trips, invitation only and only possible with enough votes.

“It’s a very select group,” Rivera said. “I’ve had people say, ‘I want to go on the trip.’ We all vote and if one person says no, then the person can’t come. That’s just the way it goes. It’s a very elite group.”

These are life’s good excuses — real, timely reasons to go through with what we’ve always wanted. People lose touch because friendship is hard. It requires effort and sacrifice and a level of commitment that is harder to maintain with spouses and kids and jobs.

For all these guys, Paris is their excuse.

“In this group, there are a lot of us who really didn’t hang out in high school. Like we weren’t super close friends,” Montgomery said. “But this kind of brought us back together.”

After everyone left Columbia on Sunday, one guy wrote in the group chat: “This is the best weekend of the year for me. I always look forward to this trip. We’re making memories with you fine gentlemen.”

Watching Paris in Columbia

Some in the group were nervous Paris wasn’t going to come through this trip. Flights and hotels had been booked for months. Rivera called him a month before the Florida game, reminding Paris they were coming, but he is a busy man, with more than 1,000 unread texts.

No one had heard from Paris the week leading up to the trip.

“He always comes through,” Rivera told them.

Sure enough, on Thursday, he texted Rivera and said tickets were all taken care of. And not just tickets, but a suite next to the South Carolina President, who might be OK if the Zoo Crew never comes back to Columbia.

Wearing their South Carolina quarter zips, they relived the glory days. At every timeout they dug out one of their old chants and started hollering little rhymes like they were 18 back in Findlay.

“We’re all turning 50 this year,” Montgomery said. “And we’ve all had the conversation that we can’t imagine our parents acting the way we act. We are not 50. We still think we’re teenagers.”

The only difference: They weren’t watching Paris chase his dreams. They were watching him live his dreams — in front of 18,000 people.

After the game, Paris met the group at their hotel, where he gave hugs, said hello then jetted off to go grab dinner with a recruit. A few hours later Paris rejoined the Zoo Crew on the roof of Black Rooster.

He, of course, asked about everyone’s families and got updates on the parents he met 30-something years ago. But it was also a chance for these guys to really get some answers. After all, they were talking to their buddy.

So of course they had to ask if there was any chance that he was going to take the Ohio State job.

“Oh,” he said. “They fired their coach?”

They couldn’t crack him on that one, but they still had so many questions.

“There were some of the guys — you would’ve thought they were in the press corps,” Lobb said with a laugh.

But mostly they just hung out and chatted about times gone by. Aren’t those the best — the conversations that always begin, “Remember when?” Remember when Rivera was livid when Paris moved elementary schools in the fourth grade? Remember when the Zoo Crew yelled that one thing at NBA player Jamie Feick? Remember when Paris just randomly tried out for the football team and was actually a good receiver?

After the trip, the Zoo Crew all got a text from Paris.

“I just want to thank you guys for coming down,” he said. “It was an electric atmosphere, that was the best game of the year we’ve had here. Thanks for coming. Safe travels.”