Coach Harris was an extremely emotional individual at times, but one could always tell if you had pleased him or not. So many things occurred during our years on the field, ranging from his son's injury at a practice at football camp to the assassination of President Kennedy on the day of what turned out to be our last high school football game-talk about a distraction! He coached me in both football and baseball and has always been a coach against whom I measured all coaches thereafter, both in temperment and in philosophy. He was one of a kind but will forever be in my memory for his impact on me.
I left CPHS with a rather negative opinion of the coaches, with the exception of Coach Harris, for whom I had the greatest respect. He coached me on the B-team in 8th and 9th grade, and was always a kind and generous person to me. Never once did I see him lose his temper nor did he use derogatory language toward us players. Even when I decided after my sophmore year that my college prospects were better served by focusing on academics rather than football. At 5'-5" and 110 pounds and somewhat klutzy at catching passes, I wasn't exactly the kind of Left End that made college football coaches salivate (although the first person I ever tackled in a real game was the famous quarterback Fran Tarkenton as he tried to scramble into the CPHS end zone in the Class A region championship in 1955; Athens High School was leading 39-0 late in the game, so we sub-freshmen were put in for one play, and that's when I had my one moment of football glory, I kept him from scoring on that play). After I dropped out of the football program, Coach Harris still greeted me in the hallways with a smile and usually a cheerful and encouraging word or two, whereas Coaches Badgett and Shaddix always deliberately and obviously turned their heads and sometimes their backs and never spoke a kind word to me again (and I was told by several people that both said derogatory things about me behind my back from time to time during my term as student body president, probably because I had learned by then not to worship mindlessly at the altar of sports ... how un-American of me!). What a difference, but that's indicative of the good and caring man Coach Harris was. He was the smallest football coach at CPHS, but the biggest man among them. CPHS was lucky to have him as a coach, and so was I.
Les Wilson (1964)
Coach Harris was an extremely emotional individual at times, but one could always tell if you had pleased him or not. So many things occurred during our years on the field, ranging from his son's injury at a practice at football camp to the assassination of President Kennedy on the day of what turned out to be our last high school football game-talk about a distraction! He coached me in both football and baseball and has always been a coach against whom I measured all coaches thereafter, both in temperment and in philosophy. He was one of a kind but will forever be in my memory for his impact on me.
Dan Bruce (1960)
I left CPHS with a rather negative opinion of the coaches, with the exception of Coach Harris, for whom I had the greatest respect. He coached me on the B-team in 8th and 9th grade, and was always a kind and generous person to me. Never once did I see him lose his temper nor did he use derogatory language toward us players. Even when I decided after my sophmore year that my college prospects were better served by focusing on academics rather than football. At 5'-5" and 110 pounds and somewhat klutzy at catching passes, I wasn't exactly the kind of Left End that made college football coaches salivate (although the first person I ever tackled in a real game was the famous quarterback Fran Tarkenton as he tried to scramble into the CPHS end zone in the Class A region championship in 1955; Athens High School was leading 39-0 late in the game, so we sub-freshmen were put in for one play, and that's when I had my one moment of football glory, I kept him from scoring on that play). After I dropped out of the football program, Coach Harris still greeted me in the hallways with a smile and usually a cheerful and encouraging word or two, whereas Coaches Badgett and Shaddix always deliberately and obviously turned their heads and sometimes their backs and never spoke a kind word to me again (and I was told by several people that both said derogatory things about me behind my back from time to time during my term as student body president, probably because I had learned by then not to worship mindlessly at the altar of sports ... how un-American of me!). What a difference, but that's indicative of the good and caring man Coach Harris was. He was the smallest football coach at CPHS, but the biggest man among them. CPHS was lucky to have him as a coach, and so was I.