Jones County adds another Harris to the Greyhounds' basketball family, Buck joining wife in move from Baldwin
By Michael A. Lough
The Sports Report
centralgasports@gmail.com
The life of a coach is not one of routine. Put two coaches in one house, and multiply that unpredictability by two. Add an infant?
But things will be a little more normal – such as “normal” will be defined - in the Harris home in Gray.
Jones County announced Buck Harris as its new head boys basketball coach Wednesday morning, giving the Greyhounds another Harris on the basketball bench.
Buck will be the junior Harris at Jones County, his wife ChoRhonda Harris just completing her second season heading the Greyhound girls basketball team.
Dennis Woolfolk is stepping down after eight seasons to assume a full-time role as assistant principal at Jones County, after a year and a half of splitting that position with those of teacher and coach.
Woolfolk went to athletics director Barry Veal a few weeks ago and told him it was time to make the change. Harris interviewed on Friday and was approved Tuesday night.
That efficiency is one reason Harris is amped about his new job.
Dennis Woolfolk, a Jones County grad, can now focus on his assistant principal duties.
Photo: Jones County
“It went quickly,” Harris said. “(Veal) wanted to get it done fairly quickly. Everything pretty much fell into place (Tuesday).
“That speaks volumes for the program, and the athletic director at Jones County. He does a great job, Coach Veal.”
Administration stability was as big an attraction to Harris as anything.
Veal has been at Jones County for 25 years, taking over as full-time AD after retiring as the long-time baseball head coach. Superintendent Chuck Gibson has been in the county system on a variety of levels – including as a coach and as athletics director – for more than 30 years.
“When you look at the programs and you look at the athletic department and you start comparing things … and how they do things there, it just kind of overwhelmed me to what we’re doing here at Baldwin,” Harris said. “In the span of the four years that I’ve been here, I’ve been through three athletic directors.”
Harris was hired by then-athletics director and head boys coach Rechard Larkin, who was replaced in 2016 by Henry Hankerson, coming from Toombs County Middle School to also serve as an assistant principal.
Hankerson was arrested for cruelty to animals after Toombs County law enforcement responded to a complaint about a dead dog on Hankerson’s Vidalia property. The dog was chained up with access to water, but no food. The dog was found in a plastic bag.
He resigned in April of 2018, also having a job offer from Glenn Hills High pulled a month later after he had been approved.
Rather than go with head football coach Jesse Hicks, who had returned to Milledgeville, as AD, the system picked track and cross country coach Dexter Ricks as athletics director.
The school is also under its fourth principal since 2013-14.
“I’m not a young guy,” the 49-year-old Harris said. “I’ve been around, I’ve been been involved in athletics, so I kind of knowhow things should be and how I want things to go. When you get to the point when you don’t have to go through some things, if you can change some stuff, you do it.
“I think the way they do things (at Jones County), it allows me to continue to grow as a coach and to do the things I like to do, which is coach basketball.”
Harris graduated from Westside in Augusta, played at Midland (Texas) College and then-Augusta State. After working with an AAU team, his coaching career started at South Carolina State, continued at Augusta, at Campbell University – a former Atlantic Sun foe of Mercer – before assisting at Laney High for three years and head coach for two years, going 55-7 for a career mark of 123-50.
Harris has good timing. He’ll have a new court to stalk, Jones County replacing the original 30-year-old floor.
Veal knew Woolfolk – a Jones County grad - would be looking to move into administration full-time at some point, and that came last month.
“I’m happy for him,” Veal said, “but I’m happy for us also, because having him around as assistant principal at the high school is fantastic.”
Woolfolk and Veal talked about candidates and possibilities.
“I had a couple of people in mind,” Veal said. “To be honest with you, Buck was at the top of the list. In my opinion, we got the best coach out there.”
Granted, the job change will slice only about 20 minutes from Harris’s daily commute, but every minute counts. The coaches became parents to Emmanuel James last month. ChoRhonda was homebound for about a week, and then watched the final few weeks from the stands.
Assistant, and Jones County alum, Robert Welton took over. The girls’ season ended at 22-7 with a loss at Griffin in the second round of the GHSA Class 5A playoffs. Harris was named Region 4 coach of the year.
Buck’s Baldwin team was surprised in the first round of the 4A playoffs by Howard, an early ending to the season after reaching the Final Four last year.
“We didn’t embrace the fact that we were no longer the hunter, but the hunted,” Harris said of the Braves’ 16-11 season after 24-7 in 2017-18, the program’s first 20-win season in more than a decade. “When you win back-to-back region championships and you go to the Final Four, you gotta get ready to play every night. Everybody’s going to give you their best.”
He said there were some discipline issues, and admitted he didn’t handle some of them properly, which he said he’ll learn from. Still, the 2017-18 year was special.
“We did a lot with less in some areas,” Harris said. “There were a lot of teams out there we played that had more talent than us, but these kids here at Baldwin, they played hard and they bought in to what we were doing.
“We had some special kids here, especially the team that made it to the Final Four. That was a special group of kids.”