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Josh Pratt was hired May 18 as the new girls' basketball coach at St. Vincent Pallotti High School, replacing Debbie Skelly, who stepped down for personal reasons after 10 seasons.

Pratt returns to the Laurel private school after serving as an assistant boys' basketball coach under Mike Glick from from 1993-98. Pratt also was on Glick's staff from 1998-2004 at Archbishop Spalding. Glick is now the boys' coach at Gwynn Park.

Pratt spent the 2004-05 season as the head coach at St. Mary's-Annapolis and then moved on to Towson Catholic, where he compiled a 98-41 record in four seasons as head coach. His career coaching record is 107-57.

The Pallotti job will be his first time coaching a girls' team.

"It will be a challenge," said Pratt. "Girls have a different attitude, but coaching is coaching. It's a good challenge for me, it really is."

Skelly won more than 100 games at Pallotti, and guided the Panthers to Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association B Conference championships in 2006 and 2007. Pallotti was 11-12 last season and reached the conference semifinals.

Elsewhere, one of the county's top girls' basketball programs is looking for a new coach after Gina Miller said she resigned from Riverdale Baptist for personal reasons. Miller led the Crusaders to a 26-3 mark last season and was 81-13 in three seasons at the Upper Marlboro private school.

Shelley Evans has been hired to coach the first-year girls' basketball team at Princeton Day Academy in Lanham. Evans coached at Jericho Christian Academy in Landover last season and guided its girls' team to a 26-5 record in the Maryland Independent Schools Athletic League. Jericho Christian will no longer be fielding athletic teams, as it will close its middle school and high school at the end of the 2008-09 school year.

Princeton Day's boys' team also is fairly new, having just completed its second season under coach Van Whitfield. The boys have won 61 games in two seasons, including a 33-3 mark last winter, when they reached the finals of two private school national tournaments.