Kellie Harper introductory press conference
Posted by Tennessee Vols Update on Wednesday, April 10, 2019
KNOXVILLE - They first met in 1997 while working one of Pat Summitt's summer camps. Jon Harper was a practice player then for Joe Ciampi's Auburn University women's basketball team. Kellie Jolly, of course, was already something of a University of Tennessee women's basketball legend, a homegrown Lady Volunteer from Sparta who owned two national championship rings at that point.
As occasionally happens when the stars align just right, they've pretty much been together ever since, including three years (2001-04) on Wes Moore's staff at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
"We actually still own a house in Red Bank," Jon said Wednesday afternoon, a few minutes after Kellie Jolly Harper was introduced as the third coach in Lady Vols basketball history.
"My sister, Suzanne Courtney, lives in Ringgold. Kellie's brother Brent (a former UTC men's assistant) lives in Chattanooga. It will always be a special place to us."
Mark WiedmerThe Ray and Lucy Hand Digital Studio became a special place Wednesday for everyone who cares about the Lady Vols' past, present or future. Noted UT athletic director Phillip Fulmer while introducing the school's newest head coach: "We've known for a long time we have something special with our Lady Vols basketball program. We have an amazing brand that resonates across the country."
Then he said something more personal, something we all hear or think about too little in these coaching hires: "We needed to find someone who, in essence, would be a second parent."
Jon and Kellie have been parents to son Jackson since November 2013. Daughter Kiley arrived last June. The two youngsters were front and center Wednesday, appropriately dressed in UT orange. If Jon continues as one of Kellie's assistant - a role he has held at each of her previous head coaching jobs - Jackson and Kiley could letter for the Lady Vols before they reach middle school.
Noted Kellie when asked about returning to a campus where she was once almost as famous as some quarterback named Peyton: "It's a little surreal when you walk past the national championship trophies. It's fun to point out your picture to your children."
Now she has a whole Lady Vols team full of young women who too often played and acted like children for former coach Holly Warlick, who was an assistant to Summitt when Kellie was helping the team win three straight national championships from 1996 to 1998. In perhaps the only awkward moment of the news conference, someone asked if she had spoken to Warlick, whom Fulmer dismissed March 27.
"Holly and I have played a little phone tag," replied the new coach.
In the old days, when Kellie was still playing for the Lady Vols, she said Summitt used to "kid me, 'You'll probably come back and coach Tennessee one day.' I always brushed it off because I thought she would be the coach forever.'"
But forever ended in 2012, Summitt forced to retire due to her ongoing battle with Alzheimer's. She died four years later, the weight of that loss a constant struggle for Warlick, who always appeared to be someone who took the job more out of loyalty than love.
Kellie's pressures will be different because her path to this job is vastly different from the one taken by Warlick, who grew up in Knoxville, starred for the Lady Vols and remained on Summitt's staff for the vast majority of her professional life.
Kellie, however, has seen the sport from all levels and locales, having been an assistant at Auburn and UTC as well as a head coach at Western Carolina, North Carolina State, Missouri State and now, in her words, "my dream job."
It is certainly a dream hire for all those longtime Lady Vols fans who wanted to mine the Summitt coaching tree at least one more time.
"It was essential, I think," Fulmer said at one point.
But what's most essential is that the Lady Vols' second parent returns the program to first in the nation.
"She knows what she needs from a player standpoint," said younger brother Brent. "She knows how to get the chemistry right, get everyone playing together. But she's also willing to change her strategy. She'll reinvent her system when needed."
Said Kellie, her voice strong, "I'm pretty competitive. I want to win."
Which might be why Summitt wasn't kidding all those years ago when she talked about her star point guard coming back to coach the Lady Vols one day. She just probably had no idea at the time how essential that return might become to return her program to its glory days.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.
