Caribou Chatter
Doug Flanagan
Chelan boys prove coach wrong
By Doug Flanagan
Feb. 07, 2011
At the start of this basketball season, there was some uncertainty surrounding the Chelan High School boys team, which wouldn't have the services of star Joe Harris, who took his considerable talents to the University of Virginia.
It turned out that the Goats won another Caribou Trail League championship thanks in part to the sterling work turned in by.... Joe Harris.
The player's father, Chelan's 20th-year head coach, has done a fine job this season in leading his team to an undefeated league record. Harris, for his part, is most content with the fact that his team is seemingly getting better as the season goes on.
Chelan enters this week's district play with an 11-game winning streak; the Goats went 10-0 in league play after struggling some early in the year against 2A and 3A schools.
"We've made great strides since the start of the year," he said after the Goats' win over Okanogan last Friday. "The guys have got confidence in themselves, and you can see that in the way that we're playing now. When the games are closer, they take control of things. That's really going to help us in the postseason."
Harris admitted that entering the season, he wasn't entirely convinced that his team could win the CTL championship, much less post an unblemished campaign.
"Any time you step on the floor, your goal is to compete for a league title," he said. "That said, I honestly didn't think we'd be at the top or in the position we're in. You have to give credit to the guys. They're coming along and getting better and better. They've developed a great work ethic."
Harris has seen players such as Tyler James, Aarom McQuaid and Michael Amsel Jr. play at a high level and replace the statistics and all-around contributions that his son gave the Goats over the past four years.
The Goats will need to continue to play at that high level if they want to make a return trip to the 1A state tournament; their voyage begins Thursday, when they take on fourth seed Okanogan in a district playoff game.
"Cascade, Cashmere and Okanogan were all in a logjam for second, third and fourth place," Harris said. "They're all good teams. Early on, one of the things I said was that this league was going to be extremely balanced. The consensus among coaches was that you were going to have to come to play every single night because we don't have a team that's so much better than anyone else."
With all due respect to Harris, it turned out that his belief that the league lacked a dominant team wasn't correct. His team ended up proving him wrong.
