CHARLESTON, W.Va. — He was the heart and soul of Capital High School football. Many associated with the program this week have reflected on their memories of of the late Tony Harris.
Harris, age 53, died last weekend.
“He started at Charleston High in 1980 in 9th grade and made the move to Capital High and he’d been at every Capital game,” said Capital Head Coach John Carpenter.
Harris was the team’s equipment manager, but that was the last thing he wanted to be called.
“We called him the ‘Director of Football Operations’ when I got there,” Carpenter said. “If you called him ‘manager’ he’d get upset.”
“Hype-Man” was another term Harris liked to use. During game week, he was constantly amping up the energy among the players and he was the ringmaster of the pregame circus in Capital’s locker room.
“The music, the dancing, it was a party and he led it all,” said Carpenter. “He wanted to make sure everybody knew high school football was about having fun.”
“‘Tone’ Harris is a fitting nickname because he set the tone for the entire football program,” said former player and longtime friend Donteako Wilson in a Facebook post. “Ya’ll saw a guy dancing, but we saw passion, we saw love, we saw the heart of a lion and a man that loved his Capital Cougars.”
There was no doubt Harris had fun. He led the team onto the field for every game in Capital’s history. That’s why Carpenter and Harris’ family believed it would be fitting for his funeral Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon to be at Laidley Field. Past cheerleaders and players will form a final tunnel on the field to allow Tony to leave the field in style one final time.
While it was all fun to Harris, he would also have a laser like focus on his job. According to Carpenter, even though Harris didn’t like the title, he was the equipment manager for the team—and he was good at it.
“He did a LOT of work. He got everything ready and took care of everything like loading the trailer and doing all of the things necessary to move a football team” he said. “A lot of people don’t realize that’s not easy, but he took care of all of that.”
Nobody lasts one place for 39 years without creating stories. There are a million Tony Harris stories.
“One of the funniest ones was his very first game they played at Princeton and Capital kicked the extra point,” Carpenter said. “The kick went out of the stadium so Tony went out to get the ball, and they made him pay to get back in.”
It was a story, Harris repeated every time he returned to Anne S. Hunnicutt Stadium throughout the years.
His character, enthusiasm, and passion for Capital football were undeniable. Players loved him, fans idolized him, and Harris ate it up. During playoff years, Carpenter would put Harris’ picture in the WVSSAC program as the head coach rather than his own.
“Tony Harris taught me a lot about humility,” said Carpenter. “I told him, ‘You run things around here, I’ll put your picture in there.’ He got tore up and told me not to do it, but I did it anyway and he loved it. It was a genuine deal. He was the heartbeat of that program, nobody else.”