The 2011-2012 basketball season marks Kellie Harper’s third season coaching at N.C. State, and it’s already started off with a 3-0 record.
Prior to Harper’s years of coaching experience, she had a successful basketball career of her own. Her history with the sport is surely an asset when it comes to coaching the Wolfpack .
Harper was raised in the small Tennessee town of Sparta. During her high school years, Harper played for White County High School, which was nationally ranked at that time. Over the years, she was named MVP of several tournaments.
“When I was in high school, I was on a really, really good team,” Harper said. “Our team was ranked number one in the nation for a while. A lot of my former high school teammates played college basketball. I think probably 15 of them at some point played college basketball. That’s what we did in my small town–girls grew up and they wanted to be basketball players. That was the cool thing.”
After high school, she went on to play for the University of Tennessee under Pat Summitt . Summitt , the Lady Volunteer’s head coach, has been coaching at Tennessee for 38 seasons, with a remarkable 1,071-199 overall record. Among her many achievements, she was inducted in to the basketball hall of fame in October of 2000.
Summit led Harper’s team to three national championships. At that time, Harper ranked in the top 10 career leaders in several areas, including three-point field goal percentage and assists.
“[It was] an amazing experience to be in that kind of atmosphere every single night,” Harper said. “We played in front of 25,000 people multiple times. In the 90’s, it was the best place for women’s basketball.”
Prior to her arrival at State, Harper coached at Western Carolina. Her team went to four post-season tournaments and two conference championships during her time there.
Harper began her first season at State in strong fashion, leading her team to the NCAA’s.
“I love playing for Kellie,” sophomore guard Myisha Goodwin-Coleman said. “She’s energetic; she’s into her job. I’ve never seen anyone that loves their job like Kellie does. Kellie is day-by-day doing different stuff, whether it’s recruiting, on the court, off the court, always into it. Basketball is her life. She loves it.”
Goodwin-Coleman’s sentiments about Harper are representative of the entire team. Senior forward Bonae Holston also loves playing for Harper.
“It’s fun playing for Coach Harper because everybody gets the same opportunity,” Holston said. “Coach Kellie and the coaching staff always do their best to get us prepared for each and every game.”
Harper admitted that her team struggled defensively last season. She has focused a lot of practices this season on improving the team’s defense from last year. The team also has a new strength and conditioning coach this year, and according to Harper, the team is already showing results.
“As far as just basketball is concerned, I think we have more depth now than we did when I first got here,” Harper said. “Anytime that you have a new staff coming in, everybody has their own philosophy, and players have to learn and buy into that philosophy. Right now, our players are to the point where they could probably design and run a practice for me. I probably wouldn’t have to create it myself. They could do it, and you can’t get to that point unless your players are very comfortable with who their coach is and what their coach stands for and what’s important to our program.”
