Welcome back, coach: After time with national power, Reggie Harris is Antelope coach
Reggie Harris is back on the West Coast, ready for a football fire-up session and season.
And he brings with him the familiar pregame glower and scowl. It is the sort of look that could make even the toughest of teenagers quiver a bit just by staring at them.
A top assistant for 12 wildly successful seasons at Grant High School before helping a national powerhouse excel in Florida, Harris is the new Antelope Titans coach, the school announced Friday afternoon.
Harris takes over for Matt Ray, who started the Antelope varsity football program from scratch when the school opened in 2008. Ray led 10 consecutive playoff teams with seven league championships and stepped down to catch his breath and to spend time with his young family.
“Man, I’m so excited to come back to Sacramento, a great place that feels like home,” Harris said by phone. “I’m ready to display my leadership skills, my football knowledge, because teaching and coaching is always about the kids. I’m big on this: be a good student, be a good citizen, be a leader in the classroom and do good things in your community. I’m a firm believer that when you do good things, good things happen to you.”
A native of Virginia and a three-year letterman in football at Hampton University in the early 1990s, Harris’ quest to teach and coach landed him in Del Paso Heights in 2000. He was at the coaching forefront along with head coach Mike Alberghini at Grant during the Pacers’ heyday, leading some of the best teams in regional history. The men worked side by side. Harris said, “it’s an honor to be a coaching pupil of Mike Alberghini.”
Grant reached the Sac-Joaquin Section playoffs all 12 seasons when Harris and Alberghini worked together, a run that included 10 league championships, three section crowns and the 2008 CIF State Open Division championship, the only Northern California team besides De La Salle to do so.
Following the 2013 season, Harris became assistant head coach at St. Thomas Aquinas in Ft. Lauderdale, where the program won 7-A state banners in 2016 and ‘19 and was a state finalist in 2018 while playing a national schedule. Harris also helped the program send 32 players onto the college ranks as full Division I scholarship athletes over a six-year period.
But the chance to return to Sacramento and to head his own football program was too good to pass up, Harris said. He and wife Rina have five children, including three 14 years old and under. Harris will teach science and physical education at Antelope. He was awarded the Twin Rivers Unified School District Teacher of the Year honor in 2009..
Harris gained his work ethic and the scowl from his demanding father while growing up in Virginia.
“My mom used to say that when I scowled, ‘You look just like Daddy,’” Harris said with a laugh.
His father Larry Harris, worked three jobs, sometimes at once, including as a longshoreman.
“My dad worked hard, on the docks, and he put my mother (Doretha) through college and graduate school because he valued education,” Harris said. “He worked, worked, worked. Provided for the family. What a man. When I was 12 or 13, he would ask me, ‘What is your plan? You need to have a plan!’ That’s why I’m coming back to Sacramento. I have a plan.”
Antelope principal Tino Guzman wrote in a letter to Antelope faculty, staff and parents, “After a comprehensive search, it is with great pleasure to announce Reginald Harris as Antelope High School’s next head football coach. We believe that with his coaching experience, relational equity and transformational coaching lens, he will continue to build upon the established success of our Titan football program.”