Harris having grand time at MCLA

December 3, 2011

By Josh Colligan, North Adams Transcript

For the second straight season, MCLA needs to update its men’s basketball 1,000-point club. With a put rebound basket a miss early in the second half, senior Chris Harris etched his name on the list for all to see.

But he had to wait a few possessions after drawing within one point of the mark for the historic basket. Harris connected on a jumper to push the MCLA lead to 53-50 after RPI had pulled within one. Then moments later, his put-back basket gave him 1,001 points.

"It didn’t even cross my mind until after I scored [the basket] that put me over 1,000," Harris said by phone after the game. "[Ten years down the road] I’m going to think about all the hard work that got me to this 1,000 and my teammates that helped me get my 1,000 points."

Hard work on multiple fronts is exactly what it took for Harris to get tot he point.

The 1,000-point club was anything but a certainty when Harris arrived on campus, unannounced to coach Jamie Morrison.

In addition to growing up in what Harris called the roughest neighborhood in Boston, the freshman from Dorchester was barely recruited in high school. He tore his ACL prior to his senior season at John D. O’Bryant High School but played the whole season before having it repaired. He wasn’t the player he was before the injury and colleges stayed away.

Morrison was in Boston looking to recruit one of Harris’ teammates when the coach, Juan Figueroa, urged him to look at Harris. He did, and Harris knew MCLA was interested. But that’s about as far as it got until he moved into the dorms.

"He got accepted, came up for orientation, and didn’t even tell me he was coming," Morrison joked. "Admissions people were like, ‘He was here. He came and he left, did everything he had to do.’

"I really didn’t get to have a good conversation with him until it was the first day he moved in."

And that’s when he understood why Harris was at the second-farthest school from Boston in the state. Harris’ mom wanted him to move away from home, knowing there was nothing positive for him on Blue Hill Avenue. Harris credited his friends for keeping him on the straight and narrow.

"All my friends were in to basketball and school," he said. "They didn’t smoke or anything. We were focused on ball, and we all wanted to go to college. We all had one main goal."

He’s done that, and made the most of all the time he’s spent on the court.

Harris didn’t start his first game in a Trailblazer uniform. His 10 points off the bench tied the team high. The only games he hasn’t started since were senior games. Over the course of his three-plus seasons, he’s wracked up season point totals of 209, 382, 348. He has 66 through six games this season.

His value goes far beyond the scoring. His defensive presence can turn a game, too. He has 142 steals in his career, including his seven from Friday night.

"I think [his scoring] overshadows his totality of his game," Morrison said. "He’s probably our best defensive player. It’s tough on him when he’s asked to guard the other team’s best guy and then also shoulder the scoring load. I try to take at least one away from him on a given night."

Harris will graduate next summer, something many college kids take for granted. Not Harris. That kid Morrison was initially recruiting wasn’t accepted to MCLA because he didn’t have the grades.

"I’m doing it for other people like my family, friends, coaches. There’s a lot of people that had an influence on me that I want to follow through with this and graduate and achieve what I put in, instead of being on the streets."

Figueroa knows the odds are stacked against someone growing up in Dorchester -- he grew up there, too. After coaching Harris at an exam school dominated by blacks and Latinos, he is now at a top-level prep school in Boston whose student body is 75 percent white.

"I can count on one hand [kids] that I grew up with that let alone graduated from high school, that even graduated from college," said Figueroa, who now coaches at Beaver Country Day School. "It’s special for me to see a kid like that that had the same type of experience growing up that I did make it.

"It’s really a miracle that it happens, it really is. People want to talk about why does it happen. In the end, I think it just goes to the person."