Harper: Born to Coach

Kellie Harper, coaching NC State in the 2010 ACC Championship game against Duke.

 

This profile of Kellie Harper was first published on GoPack.com, the day she was hired to succeed the late Kay Yow. Harper was young, just 32 years old at the time, but her basketball pedigree was already well-established. Maybe it didn't work out for longterm success in her four years at NC State, but she was a coach on the rise and she's now the head coach at her alma mater, Tennessee, which plays NC State at Reynolds Coliseum for a chance to go to the Sweet Sixteen. If you enjoy reading "One Brick Back" and would like to help offset research expenses for stories such as this one, please make a small donation to the cause and help keep posts like this free of ads.

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profiles: Wes Moore | Kay Yow | Pat Summitt

BY TIM PEELER

RALEIGH, N.C. – The day Peggy and Ken Jolly brought their daughter Kellie home from the hospital, they put a basketball in her hands and snapped a picture. She’s rarely been caught without a bouncing ball ever since.

Who knew on that day some 32 years ago that Jolly could produce so many championships, from her playing days in Sparta, Tenn., and with the University of Tennessee, to her coaching days at Auburn, Chattanooga and Western Carolina?

In those three short decades – shorter than Kay Yow’s35-year tenure at NC State – Harper won two Southern Conference championships as the head coach at Western Carolina, three SoCon titles as an assistant coach for Wes Moore at Chattanooga, four SEC titles and three NCAA titles as a collegiate player at Tennessee and three AAU state championships during her high school career.

In short, since first slobbering on that family basketball as a two-day-old infant, Harper has been a basketball winner.

She always knew that she would be a basketball player and a coach. Both her parents played basketball at Tennessee Tech. Her father, Ken, was a Tennessee high school coach and an assistant at White County High during Kellie’s junior and senior seasons there.

“I have always loved the game of basketball,” Harper said Thursday morning, shortly before she was named just the third women’s basketball coach in NC State’s history. “It’s been such a big part of my life. I could not imagine graduating college and not having that part of my life any more. I love teaching the game. I love it.”

So, early on, she decided she would follow in her father’s footsteps and become a coach. She didn’t know until she got to Tennessee, where she played for the most successful coach in women’s college basketball history, that she wanted to be a college coach.

“Coach Summitt knew it was something I wanted to do, whether it was on the high school or college level,” Harper said.

Her coaching career began as a program assistant at Auburn, and quickly advanced to an assistant coach for the Lady Tigers, then a full-time assistant position at Chattanooga under Moore [profiled here]. She became the head coach at Western Carolina – a team that had never won a conference title – at the tender age of 26. At the time, she was the youngest coach in NCAA Division college basketball. She proceeded to lead the Catamounts to two tournament titles and a regular-season title in just five years.

“She is the perfect fit to follow in the footsteps of Kay Yow,” said Western Carolina men’s coach Larry Hunter, who was an assistant for the NC State men’s team from 2001-05. “In some ways, Kellie is a younger version of Kay, possessing many of the same high personal and humanistic qualities. She is a great person and the Wolfpack nation will quickly recognize that fact and grow to love and respect her.”

Harper admired and respected Yow, who died on Jan. 24 after a courageous battle with breast cancer. Harper never competed against the Wolfpack during her playing career, while helping the Lady Volunteers become the most dominant program in women’s college basketball.

But she faced the Pack as an assistant for the Auburn team that beat NC State 79-59 in the first round of the 2001 NCAA Tournament. And on Dec. 30, 2007, Harper visited Reynolds for the first time, as the Pack beat Western Carolina 75-61.

She remembers walking to midcourt, shaking Yow’s hand and saying “It is an honor and a privilege to play here.”

It wasn’t the first time the two had met, but it was the first time that Harper ever had the opportunity to be one of Yow’s peers. Now she is her successor.

“Obviously, if you are in the women’s basketball coaching community, you knew Kay Yow,” Harper said. “I look at this job as the opportunity to continue her tradition.

“Coach Yow built such a great legacy here. To respect her and to honor her, I want to continue that tradition. That’s going to be a big challenge.

“The ACC is a tough conference, but it’s something I am really looking forward to and am excited about.”

Harper became a coach by translating her playing skills. Hall of Fame Tennessee coach Pat Summitt once said Harper was “the smartest and most consistent point guard I have ever coached.” In that way, she is similar to Wolfpack men’s head coach Sidney Lowe, who guided NC State to the 1983 NCAA Championship. The difference is, Harper helped the Volunteer win three of them.

The young coach has big plans for the program. She wants to run an up-tempo game that relies on high scoring and strong rebounding. She wants to recruit versatile players who are capable of shooting inside and outside. She wants her teams to be entertaining, as well as successful.

“We are going to play hard,” Harper said. “When you play hard and have that passion, the fans can’t help but love it.”

But there is more to the program than just success on the court. Western Carolina was ranked No. 15 in the nation academically two years ago and fifth in the nation last year. Harper, who graduated third in her class in high school, was a three-time Academic All-SEC selection.

“We understand, regarding academics, that the word ‘student’ comes before athlete,” Harper said. “When you target very driven kids, you also find that they are driven in the classroom.

“We let them know it is important to our entire staff.”

Harper wants the entire NC State community to know that she is dedicated to building a championship program for the Wolfpack. She can think of no better way to pay homage to her predecessor.

“I have to be me,” Harper said. “I can’t be someone else. We will do our very best, in the coming years, to put this program in the position that she would be proud of.”