LEXINGTON – If Jay Harris’ multiple championships as a tennis player and coach don’t impress you, perhaps this one will.
Harris bad-mouthed former Baltimore Ravens linebacker Terrell “T-Sizzle” Suggs, a seven-time Pro Bowler, two-time Super Bowl champion and one of the NFL’s all-time leaders in sacks, and managed not to get slapped in the face. guy like some defender.
It was his shirt that did the talking.
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Harris and Suggs, two of the all-time winningest players on the Ultimate Hoops basketball circuit, were members of teams playing in a U Hoops national tournament in Manhattan.
“My goal,” Harris said, “was to take a picture with him, wearing a very specific shirt, and I managed to do that.”
Harris arrived at the gym wearing a t-shirt showing his allegiance to the Cleveland Browns, Suggs’ former AFC North rival.
“I went up to him and he looked at me,” Harris said, “but he didn’t say anything.”
Harris, who returned to his hometown of Lexington to play in the 91st News Journal Tennis Tournament, is used to being in the presence of sports legends. He has spent the last 10 years in New York on the John McEnroe Tennis Academy staff, working with “Johnny Mac,” one of the sport’s all-time greats and his brother, Patrick.
As he has made a name for himself in tennis, it may surprise someone visiting Harris’ Facebook page that his profile photo shows him throwing a shot over a defender, not brandishing a tennis racket.
Should we read something about this?
“It’s funny, basketball has always been (my first love),” Harris said. “Think about how I grew up. My dad is a basketball coach and I go to every high school gym. He was (head coach) at Cardington. He was (head coach) at Lexington. It was my education. I grew up loving basketball.”
His father, John, was also a tennis coach, and it was in that direction that Jay saw his life take after he was cut, because he was too small, from the seventh and eighth grade basketball teams.
As a junior in high school, Harris was only 5-6 years old. But the summer before senior year, he grew six inches. And his tennis game, already very good, grew with him.
Harris qualified for the state tournament the following spring and went on to play collegiately for Ohio University and, after OU dropped his program, for the University of Cincinnati.
Ironically, after being cut from the basketball team in eighth grade, he ended up playing against Tom Young, the coach who fired him, the following summer in the boys’ intermediate division of the News Journal tournament.
“My dad faced Tom in the first round and lost to him,” Harris said. “At that point, I thought my dad and I were tied (in skill). I was 13, 14 years old at the time. I played against Tom right after he beat my dad and I won 2 and 3. I was very focused. This was a big victory.
“I’m joking now, but since I got cut I played more tennis. I didn’t even try out for basketball in ninth grade.”
A 1989 Lex graduate, that senior class included Tom Scholl, Jeff Hoeppner and Donn Restille, who that year led the Minutemen to the first of two state basketball championships under coach Gregg Collins.
“I could have been part of this team; I played with all those guys,” Harris said. “I felt like I was good enough in terms of talent, but it was too low. I joke now that I couldn’t have my basketball career, so I have it now.”
In your comfort zone
Harris played intramural basketball in college and continued to play while he was the head men’s tennis coach at Bowling Green and Brown University. But it was when he moved to New York and joined the Ultimate Hoops league on Long Island that he began living out his childhood fantasy.
Harris won his 23rd U Hoops league title in June. He won age group titles in the men’s open and over-35 divisions. He turns 53 on August 10 and is the oldest player in his league at 10 years old.
He has no plans to slow down. His 23 titles rank fifth on the all-time list and he’s looking to catch the Suggs’ brothers, Rico and Terrell, who play at Arizona and are second and third with 27 and 26 titles, respectively. Adam Bickerstaff, also at Arizona, is No. 1 with 31 titles.
“In a weird way, I think playing recreational basketball kept me in New York,” Harris said. “It helped me stay sane. I’m such a competitive person that I was missing that. I was out of college coaching, which was super competitive.
“Coming back to basketball, after getting into the tennis business world, I was playing with all these guys who are competitive and good. I felt comfortable and then I had to figure out how to compete at that level in a different sport.
“The crazy thing about the league is that so much of it revolves around management and coaching. Every season there is a draft. Everyone enters the draft. Sometimes I’m a captain; Sometimes I’m not. Sometimes I make a draft; Sometimes no.
Harris can easily imagine himself coaching basketball, like his father. In graduate school at the University of Miami, all of his closest friends were basketball coaches. On the men’s team at the time were future Ohio State coach Thad Matta and current Xavier and former Arizona coach Sean Miller.
“Who knows how that would have turned out for me?” Harris said. “I ended up becoming a college tennis coach when I was 24. That would have been impossible in basketball.”
Leaving your mark on tennis
The sneaker shows worked out really well for Harris. When he got the job at Bowling Green, he was the youngest coach in the country. In six years at BG, he led the Falcons to two Mid-American Conference titles and was named MAC Coach of the Year in 2002.
He then spent eight years at Brown, becoming the most successful coach in the program’s 100-plus year history. He led the school to its highest national ranking (33), two Ivy League titles and seven consecutive NCAA appearances.
Since leaving college as a coach, he has helped place more than 250 players in college programs as director of the McEnroe Academy College Combine. He is also director of tennis at Port Washington, part of New York’s Sportime family of clubs and home to the McEnroe Academy. Port Washington is where greats like John McEnroe, Vitas Gerulaitis, Mary Carillo and Tracey Austin trained as juniors.
If Harris doesn’t get cut from his middle school basketball team, maybe none of this will happen.
“It would have been really cool to be on that state championship team, but I needed that (senior) year to catch up on tennis (after his growth spurt),” Harris said. “I knew if I wanted to play at a good college with really good players, I was going to have to beat some nationally ranked kids.”
It was in 1991, two summers after graduating from Lexington, that Harris won the first of his six News Journal men’s singles titles by defeating former St. Peter’s star and Brigham Young All-American Will Calhoun.
To show how Harris’s tennis career has come full circle, he and Calhoun played singles and doubles in last year’s News Journal tournament, 32 years after their title clash. Calhoun, who lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, played in the tournament for the first time since 1996.
Even though they were easily the oldest players in both draws, Harris reached the quarterfinals and Calhoun the semifinals in singles and reached the finals together in doubles.
They are the nation’s top 50-and-older doubles team, a USTA ranking they have maintained for two years.
Calhoun is dealing with knee problems, so Harris played doubles in this year’s News Journal with her son, Mason, who will be a freshman on the tennis team at Nichols College in Massachusetts.
“Jay has been very good at local tennis and at this tournament,” said tournament director Ron Schaub, the Lakewood teaching pro who, seven years ago, at age 60, won the men’s doubles with Harris. “For him to still come back and play in this tournament at age 50… it’s really cool.”
Even “T-Sizzle” would have to agree.
This article originally appeared in the Mansfield News Journal: Basketball headlines show different side of News Journal tennis legend
