At the beginning of the school year, the SHS Assistant Athletic Director stepped down, leaving the role open. Tony Harris decided to fill this role and assist Athletic Director Nick Stevens after being involved with sports for quite some time already at other schools.

1. What school were you at previously, and what did you do there?

I was at Franklin Community Schools before I came here. For the last six years I was the middle school Athletic Director, then the nine previous years before that I was a special education teacher at the high school.

2. What brought you to SHS?

I’ve been the soccer coach (at Franklin Community High School) for the last 17 years. My son is a senior this year, and we just finished our season, and Southport had an opening. I was in the process of starting to look for a high school Athletic Director position, and I got an opportunity to interview and got to go through the process and really enjoy the people here, so (my wife and I) thought ‘man, this is going to be a great opportunity to go to Southport, and here I am. 

3. What do you plan to do as Assistant Athletic Director?

I hope to assist Nick and bring great ideas to the table, and hopefully we can do some really neat stuff. Supporting kids is really important to me. Education-based athletics is why I got into this. It’s the reason I got where I’m at now … so (my goal is) just to help our teams, help our coaches, help our kids and get better in any way I can.

4. How are you liking the new position so far?

It’s crazy. I love it. It’s been awesome. But it’s just learning non-stop; it’s just this new thing, so there are going to be bad days. But I’m pretty chill, so I’ll be fine.