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PA Profile of
Kellen Harris
By Todd Irwin,
Pennsylvania Wrestling Newsmagazine, April 2007
Sharon's Kellen Harris captured
his second Class AA state title in March with a 28-second pin of Bethlehem
Catholic's Ziad Haddad in the championship finals and was later voted the
Outstanding Wrestler by the media.
To get the OW, you have to distinguish yourself from among the other 13
state champions. Harris did it with three pins in the PIAA Championships, but
he's actually been distinguishing himself among his peers his whole wrestling
career.
Harris began wrestling when he was 5 years old, and by the time he was in
sixth grade, he was practicing with the high school varsity team. When he was in
junior high, he wrestled for the junior high team, but he practiced with the
high school team.
"I was wrestling kids that were stronger than me,"
Harris said. "I'm only 17 now. In seventh grade, I was 11, and I was wrestling
kids that were 18. At first they didn't like it too much, but it was all right.
They just picked on me. Most of them knew my brother (Kevin)."
Harris qualified for the Pennsylvania Junior Wrestling State Tournament
five times, but he never won it. He finished second three times, losing to
Baldwin's Dan Mahoney twice, and also placed third and eighth.
"That's ironic," Sharon coach Dave Ciafre said, "but we knew he was
special."
"When you're younger you get psyched out," Harris said. "They would
circle around you and stare at you.
Back then I worried too much. I let that stuff bother me. It's different now."
Harris would also distinguish himself on the football field. An outside
linebacker who was an Associated Press All-State selection as a junior and as a
senior, he signed to play at Marshall University.
Harris, who had 138 tackles and 12 sacks his senior year, was obviously
the star of both teams. But there was a little bit of a difference in the way he
was treated by the coaching staffs of the teams.
"There was never any thought in his mind of about getting preferential
treatment," Ciafre said. "He wouldnát have gotten it from us anyway, but he
never expected it. He wanted to be one of the guys. He kind of felt that in
football they put him on a pedestal and left him alone.
"He told me at the beginning of the season 'Coach, don't stop coaching me
this year.' I said 'Why would I do that?' He said 'I feel they did that in
football.
They talked to the rest of the team. They reamed the team out. They made the
team run. They left me out. I didn't feel like I was part of the team. I said
'You won't get out of anything here. You're one of 20, and you're going to do
what everybody else does.' "
"They were like 'Well, he knows enough,' " Harris said, "so they kind of
backed off and didn't say much.
I was a like a free agent. In wrestling, Coach Ciafre just kept coaching me."
After practicing with the high school wrestling team for years, Harris
finally came up to wrestle for Sharon as a freshman. He didn't qualify for the
state tournament, but as a sophomore, he qualified with a third-place finish in
the Northwest Regional and then placed fifth at 189 in Hershey.
"When I was in ninth grade, I was expected to do good," Harris said. "I
started out at 189 and I was undersized. My 10th grade year, I lost some matches
because I was too nervous."
Last season, Harris went 38-2 and beat Mars'
previously unbeaten David Pisarcik, 8-6, in the 189-pound state finals. That, of
course, put a target on his chest to either shoot for or run away from.
"There's a lot of pressure with repeating," Ciafre said. "It's definitely
harder to do it the second time. People are looking at you. Everybody's watched
you on film. They know what you do. He was ranked number from the beginning of
the year through. That's a lot of pressure on a kid. He handled it very well."
"The most difficult thing about it is some people didn't want to wrestle
me," Harris said. "They ran away from me. Coach Ciafre made me go up to
heavyweight so there would be no forfeit. I only had one forfeit."
What makes Harris so good? Ciafre says it's a combination of things.
"He's athletic. He's like a cat," he said. "He's a 215-pounder, and they
don't move like that. He's very strong. He's very focused. He's very coachable."
Harris would go 44-0 this past season and win a District 10 title and a
Northwest Regional title to reach Hershey. He breezed to the semifinals with a
technical fall and a pin, but he had his trouble there, going into overtime
against Bloomsburg's eventual third-placer Jeremy Gross. Harris pinned Gross
with a second left in the overtime period
"The kid was very tough," Ciafre said. "He didn't give us much to work
with. Kellen kept pushing the action.
He's in phenomenal condition. We really work him hard.
I don't feel we should lose a match because of conditioning, so that's in the
back of our mind."
He entered the finals well underweight at 201 pounds, but that didn't
mean a thing. His pin of Haddad in the finals came off a cradle.
"I was surprised by that," Harris said. "I felt totally different going
into that match. I was real hyped about that match before I went out there."
Harris, who finished his career with a 147-22 record, was selected to
wrestle in the Dapper Dan Wrestling Classic, where he ran into Virginia
four-time state champion Cody Gardner, who earned the United States' Outstanding
Wrestler award with a 13-5 win.
It was the last bout of his career. If he stays at Marshall, there won't
even be the temptation of wrestling because the school doesnát have a wrestling
team.
"I'll miss it," Harris said. "I think it's more family-oriented than
football is, at least in high school it was." The above profile was printed in the April 2007 issue of PWN.
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