Harris learns on a ‘daily basis’ as 1st-year coach

In the moment, it is easy to judge the merit of a team’s season based on playoff performance.

Coaches everywhere deal with that reality, positively and negatively. Win a few games in the NCAA Basketball Tournament, and a coach is likely fielding job offers. Lose in the first round of the playoffs after a record-breaking regular season, and fans are sometimes disappointed.

Jamie Harris said he hopes fans do not fall into that trap after his first year as the head baseball coach at Vestavia Hills High School.

“We had a good year. That goes without saying,” he said.

The Rebels cracked the MaxPreps Xcellent 25 National Baseball Rankings after ripping off a 15-1 start. They spent two weeks ranked No. 1 by the Alabama Sports Writers Association.

“28-4 in the regular season is obviously great,” Harris said. “I don’t know if I would’ve guessed we would’ve been that successful.”

The Rebels ran through Class 7A, Area 6 and earned the top spot via tiebreaker with Hewitt-Trussville. However, a hot Oak Mountain team knocked off Vestavia Hills in the first round of the state playoffs.

“7A baseball, the difference between winning and losing is razor thin. I feel like we were just as good as the two teams in the finals,” he said.

Off the field was where Harris had more to learn, and put to use the old saying, “You learn something new every day.”

“Every final decision comes down to you,” he said. “This year, I had to do something that I’ve never seen before almost on a daily basis. Part of that’s fun, part of it is not fun.”

He called coaching the baseball games the “reward” of the job. “It’s all been great, but it’s a learning experience, your first year,” Harris said.

As far as expectations go, blame the late Sammy Dunn, the architect behind Vestavia baseball’s “decade of dominance,” in which the Rebels won nine of 10 state championships from 1991 to 2000.

“At Vestavia Hills, we’ve created a culture where we did win championships in the past. Will we get it back to the level coach Dunn had it in the past? That would be tough to do,” Harris said.

The more time separates the present from the playoff losses, it becomes easier to view seasons as a whole, and not let them be defined by one or two moments, he said.

“The further you get away from it, you have a more level head about it. You’re less emotional about it. To go 29-6 (overall) is special, but with that being said, these kids want to win championships,” Harris said.

He said he is not going to define success within his program on wins and losses, but by how the infrastructure of the team is helping kids in the present and the future.

“Running a program is a big job,” Harris said. “We try to do everything right, and we try to set up players for success. That takes a lot of help, a lot of planning, a lot of preparation.”