Back at Saint Vincent, coach D.P. Harris says he is a different person after stint in Florida

Pittsburgh Steelers training camp is woven into the fabric of Saint Vincent College, and after a two-year hiatus caused by the covid-19 pandemic, this longstanding partnership has been revived. The campus is buzzing in anticipation of the team’s arrival in less than a month.

Senior associate athletic director D.P. Harris will be extra busy, as he has been for past training camps. Mostly he helps direct the student workers, but he also acts as a liaison for training camp guests — primarily SVC alumni — and even picks up trash if need be.

“It’s a team effort,” Harris said. “The Steelers take over the campus, but we never shut down. We do what needs to be done.”

Though he doesn’t have quite the longevity of Steelers training camp, Harris also has an extensive association with Saint Vincent. Mainly, he served as the men’s basketball coach from 2003-19, compiling more than 300 wins, earning two Presidents’ Athletic Conference Coach of the Year awards and winning four PAC titles.

All of that secured Harris a place in the school’s athletic hall of fame.

And, like the Steelers, after a brief time away, Harris is back. He spent two years as the men’s basketball coach at St. Thomas, an NAIA school in Miami.

“I was just a little too comfortable at Saint Vincent,” Harris said. “When you’ve been in a place so long, I had to get ‘uncomfortable’ again. I needed another challenge.

“I really took over a broken situation at St. Thomas, and I really wanted to challenge myself, as a middle-aged man, to see if I could build something again. And it was fun.”

In the season before Harris’ arrival, the St. Thomas program slumped from a perennial 20-game winner to 11-16. In Harris’ first season, the Bobcats went 22-6, and his two-year record was 36-17.

He even made a little history when he hired — appropriately — Saint Vincent grad Kayla Slovenec as a graduate assistant on his staff. She was the first female men’s college basketball coach in Florida.

Then, Saint Vincent came calling again. The school was building a $20 million athletic facility, and, Harris said, school president Father Paul R. Taylor and vice president Jeff Mallory, Ph.D., asked him to come back to help with the fundraising.

Harris said he had no intention of coaching the men’s basketball team again. Last year, in his first year back, Harris said he attended only one or two games and rarely went into the athletic office.

It wasn’t long until his previous job beckoned. The Saint Vincent men went 3-22 (2-16 PAC) last season, and Harris said some alumni reached out to him and said he had to come back to “fix it.”

“I really wasn’t sure I wanted to do it,” Harris said. “I wanted (former coach) Terrance (Smith) to be successful. I wanted us to win championships. It just didn’t work out. … But we always say at Saint Vincent, no one is bigger than the program, and that includes me.”

Harris said he brought a lot of Saint Vincent to the St. Thomas program — including hiring several assistants with SVC ties — and now he plans to bring some of what he learned in Florida to the Unity campus.

He said he learned that the Saint Vincent “process” works. His players at St. Thomas often teased him because he talked about SVC so much.

Perhaps more importantly, Harris said, he is not the same person who left for Florida three years ago. There are 14 new players on the Saint Vincent roster, the vast majority of whom knew Harris only by name and reputation. But whatever notions they might have had about him likely will be null and void.

“I came back a different person,” he said. “This time around, I want to be a little more patient, a little bit more kind. You’re a different person when you’re 32 years old when you get a job and now you’re in your 50s and you come back and take a job. … I want to help as many people as I can.”

That includes helping the members of the men’s basketball team experience winning again. A 3-22 year just doesn’t happen at Saint Vincent, he said, and he aims to turn that around sooner rather than later.

“Bring back the culture we’ve always had,” he said. “We feel like every time we throw it up at Saint Vincent, we should compete for a championship.”

Almost like a certain football team that will be on campus in a few weeks.