Yuba City star is on cusp of national 3-point record. ‘Good luck stopping her’
Lauren Harris is not always a fan of the Lauren Harris she sees on tape.
The senior scoring sensation for Faith Christian High School in Yuba City is not light on self-esteem, but the 5-foot-11 guard is something of a perfectionist. Little things strike her as big things in her pursuit of greatness.
In the images that play out on a laptop of the that night’s game, Harris doesn’t see her Sacramento-area leading 31.6-point scoring average, the 13.3 rebounds or 5.7 assists she contributes for the 18-1 Lions, the defending CIF Sac-Joaquin Section and CIF Northern California Division VI champions.
She sees flaws. What she views as a fundamental lapse makes her frown, never mind that opponents generally flinch at the sight of Harris on film and especially in person. Teams for four seasons now have set up defenses in an attempt to prevent Harris from buckling them with a barrage of shots and all-around game excellence. To those opponents, film does not lie. Lauren Harris is the real deal.
And she is so good, that it makes sense to say her first and last name, all rolled together.
“Lauren Harris is the greatest shooter in girls high school basketball that I have ever seen,” said Sacramento Adventist Academy coach Scott Tedmon, who has coached the sport locally for more than 40 years at various schools and has watched hundreds of games of players across the state as a fan of the sport.
Tedmon isn’t alone in his angst in trying to solve Harris. You don’t solve shooters like this. You don’t throw them off their game with matchup zones, or any gimmick defense. A coach hopes the great shooter misses more than they make, or that they miss the bus on the way to the game. Coaches see Harris handling the ball with either hand, moving without the ball, and unleashing a torrent of 3-pointers that have skyrocketed her up state shooting records and has her on the cusp of history.
Harris enters Friday four 3-pointers shy of becoming the most prolific long-ball shooter in the history of high school girls basketball. That record of 740 made 3s by Texas prep phenom Aaliyah Chavez, now averaging 18.8 points as a college freshman for the Oklahoma Sooners, likely falls on Friday night in a home game against Sacramento County Day.
Harris is also the Faith Christian student body president but doesn’t have to mandate that students show up on Homecoming Night. The cozy gym on the west side of town has for years been a big ticket with spectators young and old, all of it reflective of small schools who compete in simple gyms with players that harbor big hopes and dreams. Faith Christian opened 50 years ago and currently has 52 students, none towering in achievement more than the humble Harris.
That Harris is a 4.2 GPA student taking Advanced Placement courses shows that she isn’t just a baller. She’s the complete package as a versatile player known as a great teammate. Harris has maximized her student-athlete experience by playing multiple sports. And she is proof that small-school talents can land full athletic NCAA Division I scholarships.
Harris is headed to Long Beach State of the Big West Conference to study Kinesiology and to impact games, a realization that she called “a dream come true, my prayers answered.”
Harris takes basketball and her studies “really serious,” she said. She has not had a grade lower than an A in her entire life.
If so, bench and ground her, right? Her Faith Christian coach is her father, Geoff Harris, a starter for Faith Christian’s boys team that played for championships in 1998. Coach Harris laughed at the suggestion of her daughter slacking in anything in a season where there’s been a lot of smiles in the Harris household.
But that game film? Harris rolls her eyes in talking about it.
“I watch film all the time, but I actually hate to watch myself,” the jovial Harris said. “I want to get better. I see things on film and I think that I can come off screens tighter. Sometimes I look at film and go, ‘What am I doing?’ But my family loves to watch the film, and that’s all that matters.”
Inspired by sister who averaged 46.3 a game
The Harris family clan includes grandparents who travel to every game, and they study the game film, finding more star power than fundamental breakdowns. They flock to her after games, offering hugs and cheers in abundance.
Harris’ older sister, Audrey Harris, set the sibling tone of basketball stardom. The elder Harris averaged a whopping 46.3 points a game at Faith Christian in 2022, the highest single-season scoring average in state history, according to Cal-Hi Sports, the decades-long magazine and website that chronicles such things.
Audrey Harris can now be found at Faith Christian games with a camera and broad grin as she chronicles her sister and history.
“Lauren was in the shadow of Audrey growing up,” Coach Harris said. “Lauren grew up wondering of she could be the leading scorer in her own household, let alone the school or the section or anything else. That’s a difficult shadow to be in, and Audrey has been so supportive. It’s been the right amount of pressure and perseverance.”
Said Lauren Harris of her sister, “She’s my biggest role model. Everything she did, I wanted to copy since I was a young girl.”
There’s also this matter of whom the best Harris is at the dinner table. Audrey? Lauren? Or dad? Coach Harris still invites the chance to compete against his younger daughter in the front yard of their Yuba City home in a pick-up game.
“She might be mad if I told you who won the last one-on-one game,” the dad said with a laugh. “I’ve got the longer arms.”
Added Lauren Harris: “Yeah, dad has the athleticism on me. I used to leave those games with him frustrated, but I’ve gotten a few shots on him. I hit a Dream Shake on him once. Dad’s pretty good. He doesn’t look like he can ball, but he can ball.”
Record-setting arc
When she was growing up, Harris wasn’t sure she could handle the rigors of basketball. She couldn’t shoot straight, or at all.
“I started playing when I was in third grade,” Harris said. “I couldn’t shoot a 3 until the end of my eighth-grade year. That was my biggest weakness. No strength, no form. I was a pretty weak little 8th grader, and then I started lifting weights and kept working on my shot.”
Trainers including Shamir King and Julian Scott worked with Harris’ shooting form, using an elastic band around her waist to ensure that she didn’t use “my whole body to throw up a shot,” she said.
“We spent hours doing that, learning to jump straight up and using my legs,” Harris said. “One of my trainers told me he wished he had a video of me crying on the court every day, trying to perfect my shot.”
Harris made a state-record 191 3s a year ago as a junior as she averaged 30 points, 14.2 rebounds and 6.7 assists for a 29-2 team. She made 167 3-pointers as a sophomore.
Harris has scored on everyone this season. In elite-level summer competition, she lit up scoreboards with her range, which led to scholarship offers. College recruiters do not care about the enrollment of a school. They want to see talent.
Against longtime regional power Bear River of Lake of the Pines, Harris scored 43 points with 8 3’s in a 72-48 nonleague victory. In a 60-56 nonleague victory over a Placer of Auburn team that is 22-2, Harris had 32 points and 6 3’s. In an early season league rout of Sac Adventist, another championship program, Harris dropped in 38, including 9 3’s. And in a 76-59 effort over a 19-2 John Adams Academy of El Dorado Hills team last Saturday Harris had 50 points, including 10 3-pointers, to go with 14 rebounds.
1990s Del Campo great Viglione on Harris
Harris enters Friday with 3,080 career points, leaving her nine shy of becoming the Sacramento-area’s all-time career girls scorer.
That mark belongs to the great Danielle Viglione, a star with Del Campo High of Fair Oaks in the early 1990s who excelled with the Texas Longhorns and played several seasons professionally. Viglione has for decades been regarded as this region’s greatest 3-point shooter, but she has company, and she is thrilled about it.
A highly regarded teacher of the game at the prep, college and professional levels, Viglione made herself a good shooter as young teenager, spending hours in the gym.
“That’s great,” Viglione said of Harris’ record achievements. “I would love to meet her. We sound a lot alike.”
‘Good luck stopping her’
Tedmon, the Sacramento Adventist coach, raved about Harris’ all-around game and the class she and her family exhibit. Tedmon’s teams have played Harris twice this season, unable to slow her down.
“She’s not just an elite shooter,” Tedmon said. “Lauren is a generational player who has honed her game by spending thousands of hours in the gym. When I first saw her play (three years ago), it was her ball handling that impressed me more than her shooting.”
Tedmon added, “Lauren has a Steph Curry-like ability to get anywhere she wants on the court off the bounce, and she is lethal with her lightening-quick release. She has crazy in-the-gym range. Over the past two years, Lauren has become a willing passer who seeks out her teammates rather than hunting for her own shot. But when she knows it’s time for her to score, good luck stopping her. Facing double and triple teams are just another day at the office for Lauren.”
A common thread between Harris and Viglione and any other great scorer is the love of the game.
“I just love basketball,” Harris said. “It makes me happy.”
It makes the entire Harris family giddy. Coach Harris said he can hardly comprehend what has happened. He coached one daughter who led the country in scoring, and then along comes another who is setting records left and right. And he’s had the best view as the coach.
“No chance I ever thought this would happen,” the coach said. “I couldn’t even fathom any of that, but here we are.”