‘It’s bigger than football.’ Why West Charlotte coach Josh Harris is now AD instead
During the 2019-20 school year, West Charlotte High football coach Josh Harris became an assistant to Lions athletic director John Yewcic.
As Yewcic was teaching him the ins and outs of athletic administration, he also told Harris that he was planning to retire.
“He taught me the ropes,” said Harris, who was named Lions’ athletic director this week. “We worked very well together and it kind of came out that he may be retiring. I expressed to the administration that I was interested, if the possibility presented itself. I said, ‘If it comes up, just think about me.’ It kind of worked out that way.”
Harris, 35, will have to give up his head coaching position due to a longstanding Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ requirement that athletic directors not be coaches.
Harris was named West Charlotte football coach in January 2017 after coaching six games on an interim basis in the 2016 season. He took over a team that was 0-5 under coach Daren Hart and led the Lions to a 2-4 finish. That was a major turnaround for West Charlotte, which was outscored 178-37 in its first five games in the 2016 season.
From 1972-99, West Charlotte had three head coaches — Rudy Abrams, Bruce Hardin and Tom Knotts — and plenty of success. The Lions had 21 winning seasons, six N.C. 4A state championship appearances and a 1995 state title under Knotts.
Mike Helms coached the team in 2000, going 6-5. He was followed by Pete Gilchrist, whose 2006 team reached the state finals. Gilchrist had just one losing season in six years.
Since Gilchrist left, however, West Charlotte has had hit hard times.
From 2007-19, the Lions have registered just three winning seasons and have had eight different coaches.
Harris, however, appeared to have West Charlotte turning around. His 2018 team went 7-6, West Charlotte’s first winning record since 2010. His team last season finished 4-7, but returns the bulk of a young roster this fall.
Harris said it was hard to walk away from what he and his staff were building.
“I felt like I was coming into my own as a head coach,” he said. “I’m still relatively young and I loved what we were building at West Charlotte and the impact we were having on the school, community and the kids. We got to where we were competitive, stable, and we were about to turn the corner to where we’re competing with the top-notch teams in Charlotte. But thinking bigger picture, I saw what we were able to do with the football team and I wanted to do that with all sports.”
Harris said he feels a new energy at the school, led by first-year principal Donevin Hoskins, whom Harris said is a former college basketball player and an advocate for athletes. Harris said CMS is also expected to start construction soon to build a new campus on West Charlotte’s current site, scheduled to open in 2022.
Harris played multiple sports in high school, first at North Mecklenburg and then at Hopewell, where he was part of the school’s first graduating class 17 years ago. He remembers when West Charlotte was one of the area’s top all-around athletic programs and said his biggest goal, and the biggest reason for the job change, is to make Lions athletics that way again.
That will start with hiring his replacement as a football coach.
“All of my family went to West Charlotte,” Harris said, “and I ran track against those state championship teams and with the ideas I have for the program, it would just be easier for me to do this from the athletic director standpoint. It’s bigger than football.”
This story was originally published April 29, 2020 at 1:53 PM.
