MCC’s Winning Combination Will Be Hard To Match In Future

Combination Will Be Hard To Match In Future

by Lori Riley

MANCHESTER —

Peter Harris has “retired” from coaching basketball twice.

He coached the Manchester Community College men’s team from 1991 to ’97. Then he came back to revive the women’s team in 1999 and left again in 2004.

But a few years ago, he was back, helping a friend and former MCC player, Robert Turner, coach the women’s team.

“I thought it was only going to be for a week,” Harris said Thursday night after practice at the Great Path gym. “It’s been four years.”

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Turner was originally Harris’ assistant. Now, Harris is Turner’s assistant. They are a team, a package deal. Over the past decade, they’ve made the MCC women into a highly successful program. The team won the National Junior College Athletic Association Division III Region 21 championship in 2002 and 2010, finished as the runner-up in 2008 and was fourth in the national tournament last year.

This season, despite having only eight players, the 10th-ranked Cougars (20-1) have lost only to Roxbury (Mass.) Community College, the team they beat last year in the regional final. They will get another shot at No. 3 Roxbury, most likely in the final of the regionals at Roxbury Feb. 26-27. They’re hoping for another trip to the nationals.

But this is the last season for Harris and Turner. “The last hurrah,” Harris calls it, and you get the feeling he really means it this time.

Neither of them particularly wants to leave. It’s just the way things worked out.

When Turner took the coaching job, he worked part time at the college and part time as a basketball coach. But when a full-time job in the counseling department opened up, Turner — who is married with four children — knew he would be crazy not to take it. So he did, with the stipulation that he had to stop coaching.

“What it comes down to is the job he applied for and got is a full-time counseling position that is vital to the college,” athletic director Cynthia Washburne said. “Our enrollment is up 20 percent over the last few years. That’s a very busy position. They need their full-time energy dedicated to that position.”

And union rules, Turner said, stipulate that he can’t get two paychecks, if one is full time. So one job had to go.

But he had seven freshmen on a team that finished fourth in the national championships last year. He didn’t want to leave just yet. So he worked out a deal: He would take the full-time job if he could coach for one more year. For free.

Not that that’s anything new for either of them.

“Peter’s been volunteering since he left,” Turner said. “I volunteered a couple years before.”

They do it simply because they love it.

“They stay with us for an extra three hours — and they have families — but they love it,” said sophomore point guard Shenielle “Shorty” Duncan-Clarke, who is the NJCAA Division III leader in assists (9.7) and steals (119). “They say the best part of their day is practice.”

Part of their success, the two coaches insist, is that they have been together so long and that they are both at the college, available to help their players if any problems arise. Some of their opponents have had to cancel games because they have a hard time fielding teams for the entire season.

“In terms of academics, I’m on top of that stuff,” Turner said. “We’re able to monitor and look at what our students are doing. The other part is we have a winning formula. And it works.”

“Our coaches help us out with everything, our schoolwork, classes,” said Duncan-Clarke, of Bloomfield. “Even if it has nothing to do with basketball, they help us out.”

It’s been a good season, but there have been ups and downs. Games have been canceled for various reasons. Early on, they had 13 players but some quit and one was academically ineligible.

“We have eight people left and seven of us are sophomores,” said sophomore guard Callie Tambling of Manchester, who has a team-leading 56 three-pointers this season. “Everybody wants to end their year going to the nationals again.”

Ah, the nationals. But first they will have to go through Roxbury, which handed the Cougars a humiliating 112-55 defeat on Dec. 21 in which Roxbury shot 55 percent and Manchester had 35 turnovers.

“They really had something to play for,” Turner said. “We beat them badly in the regional championship last year. They had something to prove, especially when the rankings came out and we were third and they were seventh. They were ready.”

Said Harris: “It will be interesting. I don’t think they’ll shoot 55 percent and I don’t think we’ll shoot 29 percent. It was probably easier to take than a one- or two-point loss. What it did was it said, ‘You’ve got to get better.’ We thought we were top dog.”

And what about next year? One player will return, Elise Chase from Vernon. Washburne said she is committed to finding a new coach who can continue the program’s success.

Harris, the director of enrollment management at the school, doesn’t want to coach because Turner won’t be there. Harris said he is going to park his car in a different space so he doesn’t have to walk by the gym anymore.

He might get sucked in again.

“It will be tough,” he said. “In a way you hope somebody comes and says, ‘Coach, can you run a couple plays by us?’ but then you don’t want to get to the point where you’re immersed back into it. Basketball can draw you back in.”