It was late December of last year at the Chaminade Tournament in Southern California and Menlo School had just won its opening-round game.
Suddenly I got a tap on the shoulder from a young Knight assistant coach and an invitation to go to the locker room to hear coach Keith Larsen address his team.
That Knight assistant was Michael Harris, who was killed nine days ago in a boating collision off Catalina Island in SoCal. He was the son of former president and CEO of the San Francisco 49ers Peter Harris and his wife Jan.
But to Menlo School basketball coach Larsen and his players, Harris wasn’t just a Menlo grad and newly hired school counselor with the impressive pedigree – he was an astute coach, sounding board for players and occasionally comic relief for Larsen’s always interesting program.
I got to know the team that night in SoCal during a post-game meal with the Knights and their parents. As Larsen tackled a plate of ribs fit for a king and spun his endless tales, I observed Harris to be a pleasant, unassuming young man who radiated goodness.
“He was 26 years old and had his whole life in front of him,” Larsen said. “He never mentioned that his dad used to be the CEO and President of the 49ers or that he lived in Atherton. He was just a great, grounded kid who was living in San Francisco, had a new girlfriend and loved his coaching career and counseling.”
Often those passions blended as Harris used his counseling background to smooth ripples in the figurative Menlo basketball pond sometimes caused by the excitable Larsen.
Asked how his players were responding to the tragedy, Larsen said: “As an assistant, he had an impact on the kids that I didn’t know about. I’m a little rough around the edges and have a direct approach and the kids could go to him with his counseling background and he could talk to them. It wasn’t good cop/bad cop, it’s just that every coach needs a (buffer) like that. And he knew when to share something with me and when to keep it private.”
Larsen, 59, said his young assistant told him 5-6 times during the season how much he appreciated being able to coach in the Knight program, learning from a guy who had been the head coach at Menlo College and Cal State Stanislaus and an assistant under Mike Montgomery at Stanford.
A 2008 graduate of Menlo School, Harris played basketball for the Knights under then-coach and current athletic director Kris Weems. Senior year his team won the section Division IV tite.
Said a recent statement from the Valparaiso Avenue school: “We knew Michael as a kind-hearted, caring, joyful young man. His enthusiasm for his work was infectious. In his short time in Menlo's counseling department, he already earned great respect from colleagues and the students alike.”
Having grown up in working-class San Bruno in the 1960s and 70s, Larsen appreciated Harris’ modest, down-to-Earth nature.
“He was an old soul,” the Knights’ coach said. “One great story is we were playing the alumni and Michael is a real quiet, soft-spoken person, but he puts on that alumni shirt and he’s in the lay-up line and he starts smack-talking us!
“So I got my team together at the other end and I told them ‘I don’t care if we lose by 100, we can’t let coach Harris score.’ He got the ball in the game and he had five people running at him. After that any time he got on somebody during a game somebody would say ‘Hey coach, what about that alumni game – how come you didn’t score?”
Classic, and some neat insight from Larsen.
Michael’s humility and subtle manner will be sorely missed on Valparaiso Avenue – both at the school and on the Menlo bench. Our best to the Harris family and the Knights.
John Murphy is the Web Content Manager of Prep2Prep. Contact him at jmurphy@prep2prep.com and follow on Twitter @PrepCat
