Meet Kevin Harris

Kevin Harris, current USRowing board member and a rowing coach since 1990, is one of the three coaches working with this year's CanAmMex squad this summer along with Asiya Mahmud and Matt Grau. CanAmMex is an annual collaboration camp between Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. that includes a week of training followed by a regatta. This year's regatta will take place July 14-15 in Sarasota, Fla.

1. Tell me a little about yourself and your background, where you grew up, and your family.

I grew up in Alexandria, Virginia. I attended and rowed at TC Williams (now Alexandria City) High School. I attended George Washington University, graduating with a history degree in 1992. I taught history at Gonzaga College High School and helped found the rowing team there. I also coached women at Yorktown High School, Potomac Boat Club, DC Strokes, and Capitol Rowing Club while in D.C. I've coached at Mount Holyoke College, Mills College, Kansas State University, and University of Tulsa. I am married to Dr. Jennifer Busch Harris, who is a petroleum engineer for ConocoPhillips, and we have two lovely daughters, Victoria (18) and Alexandra (15). Victoria is a freshman at University of Chicago and Alix is a sophomore at Lamar High School in Houston, Texas.

2. How would you identify yourself (gender, race, ethnicity)

I am Black, cisgender, male.

3. Why rowing? What drew you in and when?

I joined rowing at my high school in eighth grades. I did it because my friends were doing it. I stayed because people made me to feel like I belonged.

4. You coached at Tulsa University for 20 years. How long have you been coaching, and what is your motivation/drive for continuing to do so?

I have been coaching since 1990. I've coached club, youth, scholastic, national team development, NCAA Division III (Mills College and Mount Holyoke College) and Division I (Kansas State and Tulsa). My motivation? The athletes. I like teaching and rowing is a hard thing to teach, and I think I am pretty good at it.

5. What are some of your measurements of success as a coach?

Measurement of success? Are the athletes laughing and smiling after the hardest work? Are they supporting each other? Do they come to me when they need help? Those are all measures of success for me. Winning is nice, but if the athletes feel supported, winning happens.

6. Throughout those 20+ years you have transitioned through many different groups of athletes. What have been some of the challenges of such generational shifts among the program and you as a leader?

I say there are challenges only because we are trying to do it better. Athletes want to be treated right and sometimes that means that coaches feel that they are "soft." That's not good. However, it can go both ways. Sometimes athletes need to hear and absorb truths that can feel hard in order to get better. That balance is the hardest part of coaching – being able to have athletes trust their coaches enough to hear hard things.

7. Have you ever been to the CanAmMex regatta before as an athlete or coach? What was that experience like, and what are you looking forward to this year?

I was on the junior women's committee in 1994 when the idea of the CanAmMex was first broached. In other words, I was among the group of people who actually had to approve it. I was CanAmMex sweep coach (2022) last year with Richard Hull in Canada. Last year, the women's sweeps swept all the events and rowed the fastest times ever. Additionally, five of the women from that team of 13 are heading to worlds in Paris. Two more are back for CanAmMex. It was a very successful group, and I hope we will see their names for a long time in the high-performance system.

I am very excited to see what this group can do as a slightly different composition than in the past. Before 2023, we only sent U18 athletes to the regatta. In other words, we only sent athletes who were going to have one more year of eligibility for U19 worlds. This year, we took that away, and the athletes are generally older. It will be interesting to see how they rise to the occasion.

It's also been a huge honor to get to work with the female scullers this year. It's not something I have done a lot and it's expanding my own skills getting to work with some very talented athletes. Also, getting to work with Coach Mahmud and Coach Grau has been tremendous.