Lady Moc coaches Kellie Jolly Harper and Jon Harper have a special connection. Click to enlarge.
photo by John Shearer
College basketball coaches have to spend plenty of time together because of the nature of the business, but UTC Lady Moc assistants Jon Harper and Kellie Jolly Harper do it for a different reason – they are married.
The Harpers are in their second season on Coach Wes Moore’s outstanding squad, which is now 12-2 following Monday night’s win over Furman.
Married coaches of the same team are somewhat unusual, even though former UTC softball coaches Ralph and Karen Weekly were also married. “There’s not a lot of them,” said Jon. “When we were in Charlotte last weekend to play Davidson, the paper had an article about a husband and wife coaching against each other” (at the high school level).
The Harpers have not had to coach against each other, but each has been associated with a different SEC program. Kellie -- who many Chattanoogans remember as a point guard on three of Coach Pat Summitt’s national championship teams in 1996, 1997 and 1998 – had met Jon in the summer of 1997, when he and a friend worked at Coach Summitt’s summer basketball camp.
Reared in Stone Mountain, Ga., where he was a multi-sport high school athlete, Jon was attending Auburn at the time and was a manager on the women’s basketball team after initially serving as a team scrimmage player. He admitted that he had not previously cared for women’s basketball. “That year I fell in love with it,” he said.
He also soon fell in love with Kellie, and their meeting on the court led to courtship. Following a two-year, long-distance relationship, the Harpers were married in May 1999. On one occasion while they were dating, Auburn and Tennessee met on Valentine’s Day. ESPN learned about the Romeo-and-Juliet-like romance among the representatives of the rival schools and mentioned it on its Sports Center program.
After her UT days were over, Kellie was drafted by the Cleveland Rockers of the WNBA and played briefly with them. The next year, she went to camp with the Washington Mystics before getting cut shortly before the season started. But by that time, the former standout at White County High in Sparta, Tenn., was ready to get into coaching.
“I could have tried again but I realized my future was going to be in coaching and it was going to be hard for me to do both,” said Kellie, whose modest manner gives no hint that she was a three-time national champion for college basketball’s most storied women’s program.
She and Jon applied at UTC after researching Coach Moore. “Before we came here, we did some checking and tried to find out as much about him as we could,” she said. “The man wins and he has good teams. We are fortunate to work for somebody like that.”
She said his forte is offense. “He is very good at getting the ball to the people who need to get the shots,” she said.
She is also putting to work some of the lessons she learned from Coach Summitt. “I loved playing for Pat,” she said. “She is tough and demanding but I wouldn’t have it any other way. And we got to see another side of her where she really cared about us and was nice. But she is intense in everything she does. She is very driven.”
She said Coach Summit’s and Coach Moore’s philosophies are a little different, but they have both been successful.
The Harpers also have different gifts from each other as coaches. Jon is better at thinking quickly in game-type situations, Kellie said, while Kellie is better at the x’s and o’s. “My father was a coach and, when I was younger, we would watch a game. I learned at a young age to recognize defenses,” she said.
During basketball season, the Harpers stay plenty busy. When they are not practicing or playing, she does much of the recruiting along with Coach Moore and fellow assistant Angela Crosby, while Jon handles duties such as travel arrangements and getting videotapes on upcoming opponents.
But they have found some time to get settled in the Chattanooga community. They recently bought a home in Red Bank, and they also joined Red Bank United Methodist Church. They rarely miss a Sunday church service, even after Saturday road games.
Since Chattanooga is about halfway between Jon’s family in the Atlanta area and Kellie’s in Sparta, they get to visit with family regularly.
And as co-assistant coaches, they also get to see each other plenty. “It definitely helps working together, keeping the hours we do,” said Jon. “If we didn’t, we would never see each other. But it’s still tough to make plans.”
Angela Crosby, Jon Harper, Wes Moore, Kellie Harper.
photo by Tim Evearitt