WEST HILLS, CA -- Monday night at the pre-league Chaminade Christmas Tournament and Menlo School coach Keith Larsen is already in mid-season form.
His team trailing by 23 points in the second quarter to Taft-Woodland Hills, Larsen calls time out, plants a chair in front of the Knight bench (he has an artificial hip) and forcefully reminds the players about making bounce passes to the post, going up strong to the basket and using good judgment.
“Just because you’re wide open in the corner, doesn’t mean you just launch it,” Larsen tells a young Knight. “We’ve got to make some shots, but we’re not making any shots so the next best thing is to try to get to the basket.”
Close your eyes for a moment and it could be last year, same tournament and the same time of year. Except that something – someone – is missing. It is Michael Harris, the 26-year-old Knight assistant coach and newly hired Menlo counselor who was killed Sept. 6 in a boating collision off Catalina Island in Southern California.
Harris was the son of former president and CEO of the San Francisco 49ers Peter Harris and his wife Jan. He was also a 2008 Menlo grad who helped the Knights to the section Division IV title as a senior, wearing No. 11.
Monday night a Navy blue shirt emblazoned with “HARRIS 11” in white letters was draped over a folding chair at the end of the bench next to Larsen as he endured a 65-41 defeat.
“We think about him all the time,” Larsen said. “Even when it comes to just the little things. I have my bag and in it is my book and whiteboard, cards for the plays we call out, marking pens, gum and mints. At the end of the game that stuff would be all over the place and he’d gather it all up for me. When I’d look in my bag it would all be there. Saturday night I was joking that it takes three guys now to (keep me organized).”
Pressed about the gum and breath-mint combo, Larsen said his mints of choice (Mentos) “perk up the gum when it starts to lose its flavor.”
“I’m not a nervous guy,” Larsen said, “but when I coach a game I’ve got all this gum and Mentos in my pockets and sometimes I’ll reach for a marking pen to draw up a play and I’ll pull out the Mentos. Then the kids are like ‘Coach, that’s not a pen.’”
Larsen was joking as is his wont, but the returning Menlo players were serious as a tax audit when describing the impact Harris had last year in helping the Knights to the section Division IV title game.
“We’ve dedicated the whole season to him,” Menlo junior forward Charlie Roth said. “Every time I step on the court I think of him, especially since I wear the same number he did. It’s just a reminder that the season is for him and the season is bigger than us and it’s really for the whole Menlo community.”
Harris was a gritty player while at Menlo, the kind of guy Larsen with his blue-collar San Bruno roots loves.
“When we’re playing or making the hustle plays we think of coach Harris,” Menlo reserve forward John Guiragossian said. “He meant so much to the team. In high school and throughout his whole basketball career he was a hustle player. We just kind of want to emulate what he did on the court and take it to the next level.”
As a Knight assistant coach, Harris acted as a buffer between the rough-around-the-edges, direct Larsen and the players. He’d pull them aside at the gym and soothe them or chase them down in the parking lot for a one-on-one chat. He made such an impact on Guiragossian that the Menlo player heaped praise on the Knight assistant at the senior retreat, roughly a week before the coach's death.
“We do this thing on the senior retreat where everyone talks about someone specific," Guiragossian said. “Coach Harris was in the room and I decided to let him know how special he was to me and the basketball team. Although it was very tragic for him to pass so soon, I’m at least happy that my last words to him were something positive. I’ll never forget it.”
So far the season dedicated so lovingly to Harris is not going as planned. Menlo (2-6) has played a killer schedule with losses to such respectable programs as Burlingame, Mills, Sequoia, Menlo-Atherton and Half Moon Bay piling up. They defeated Woodside 68-52 before heading to West Hills and took down Reseda on Saturday in the Chaminade opener, but then were no match for dripping-with-talent Taft which wasn’t even at full strength.
“They didn’t have the same talent as us,” Taft senior 6-foot-9 center Travis Patrick said of Menlo. “They played hard, but skill-wise they weren’t there.”
Menlo, like Taft, is short-handed. Starting senior point guard Ben Simon is out indefinitely with mononucleosis. Three big men Larsen was counting on are missing for a variety of reasons.
"This team is still getting together – we’ve only had about a month-and-a-half together," Guiragossian said. "I think when league comes around we’ll have it figured out and it will show how hard we’re playing for (Harris)."
Said Larsen: "There's a method to my madness. We're playing up (in competition) a little bit this year. The teams we're playing are as good or better than what we'll see in conference. We'll be fine once we get there."
So the veteran coach forges ahead, pushing his players to their limits, cracking wise to the press and trying desperately to keep his coaching bag in order.
And if it's inspiration he wants he knows exactly where to find it – draped over a chair at the end of the bench.
