Mike Harris likely coached more high school varsity sporting events than anyone locally during the 2025-2026 school year.

He served as the Claysburg-Kimmel golf head coach in the fall, C-K boys basketball head coach over the winter and Hollidaysburg Area softball head coach this spring.

But next year, he’s cutting back.

“I’m going to go to a lot of games and just watch,” Harris said. “I don’t have to be stressed out like you are when you coach.”

Harris stepped down as the Claysburg-Kimmel basketball coach and Hollidaysburg softball coach this week, though he will remain the Bulldogs’ golf coach.

“I have been coaching for 34 years,” Harris said. “I have been working hard for everybody else’s kids, and I just felt like I wanted to do something else. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to coach. I might help someone out. I might volunteer somewhere, but basketball is such a grind. If you are going to do it right, it’s a grind.”

Harris was hired in 2015 and coached Claysburg-Kimmel boys basketball for 11 years. During that time, C-K improved from a program everyone was trying to schedule for a win on their senior night into one of the top teams in the Inter-County Conference.

“We have built Claysburg-Kimmel into a pretty good program,” Harris said. “When we first got there, we had two kids at an open gym. We had seven senior nights (scheduled against Claysburg) that first season. We wrecked four of them, but that’s where the program was. It was really hard. My first game, we played Northern Bedford and lost by 30. Dr. (Brian) Helsel, who was the athletic director at the time, came down to practice the next day to make sure I showed up.”

Harris finished 103-151 at Claysburg-Kimmel and is 170-216 in 16 years overall with another head coaching stint at Tyrone Area High School. The Bulldogs finished 20-7 this year and set a school record for most wins by the boys basketball team in a single season.

“When coaches go down the preseason checklist and see how many games they might win, they see Claysburg-Kimmel and think — I’m not sure about that one — and that’s what we have accomplished,” Harris said. “We had the best four-year run in school history. We won a state playoff game, we went to the ICC championship in back-to-back seasons. We won 20 games this year and won another playoff game and had a fantastic season for a school that was known as a wrestling school.”

Though Harris led Claysburg-Kimmel to several special moments over the past decade, including a last-second 63-62 victory over Muncy in the 2024 PIAA playoffs which is the only Claysburg-Kimmel boys state playoff win in school history, his best memory came from his first season.

“One of the best memories was our first year when we played Portage,” Harris said. “Portage was 16-2, and we were hovering around .500 on the road. We beat them 51-50 on a last-second shot. That’s when we thought we could do something. The next summer we had about eight kids at open gym and kept building it and working hard. When Dr. Helsel hired me, he said we had to change the culture into a competitive one, and I took that to heart when he said that.”

Harris also coached Claysburg-Kimmel senior Brayden Haney, who became the boys all-time scorer with 1,843 career points, the last four years.

“I feel pretty good,” Harris said. “We worked hard. That’s what I always tell young coaches — you can’t accomplish anything without hard work. When I worked under coach (Kraig) Hetz, he always said, there’s no shortcut to success, and there isn’t. You have to put the time in and work hard, and that’s what we did at Claysburg. Once the kids saw that we were there every day and saw we were going to be there for them they started coming to work.”

Claysburg-Kimmel athletic director Corey Reffner said Harris stepping down was a surprise.

“Mike was our coach for 11 years and had a really good run,” Reffner said. “It kind of came as a shock that he intended to step down. I thought he would be coming back, but the district owes him a lot as far as his contributions to the basketball program. He’s going to really be missed.”

C-K has already started the search for a new coach.

“We’re taking applications right now,” Reffner said. “As far as a timeline to hire someone new, I don’t have that right now, but we’re taking applications.”

Harris saw his softball season end last week in a 6-4 District 6 5A semifinal loss against Mifflin County.

That completed his third season back with the program after coaching 10 years in his previous stint with the Lady Tigers.

“He resigned right when I first came in, so I didn’t know much about his first tenure,” Hollidaysburg athletic director Homer DeLattre said. “But he was a well-known coach when I came into the district, and a few years back when we were looking for a softball coach we knew he had experience, and he came back. He did a great job and got a lot of girls out. There are a lot of girls in the program with over 30 playing softball with a full junior varsity team, which not a lot of schools have. He’s definitely leaving a good legacy and has built the program back up. They doubled the win total this season from last season, and he didn’t leave the cupboard bare, there are a lot of good young girls on the roster who will carry this on.”

Hollidaysburg has also started the search for a replacement.

“By contract, we have to take internal applications through the middle of next week,” DeLattre said. “Then we’ll post it outside of the school and start the process there. The timeline will probably be early fall to hire a new coach.”

Harris said he’s been surrounded by plenty of good people throughout all his coaching endeavors.

“I worked with some really good athletic directors and administration coaching,” Harris said. “Brian Helsel, Corey Reffner, Homer DeLattre, Dean Rossi — those guys are some really good people who take care of their coaches and give guidance when you need it. I also had really dedicated players and assistant coaches who put in a lot of time and worked very hard.”

Harris will enter his second year coaching Claysburg-Kimmel golf next fall and said he’s likely done with softball, but he said he’s open to returning to basketball someday as an assistant coach.

“I’d like to help out some young guy,” Harris said. “Maybe there’s a young coach out there that gets a head coaching job and wants some help, and I can be like Tex Winter — an old cagey veteran sitting on the bench.”