What must it be like to coach the team you played on ten years ago? Coach McCurley is about to find out.
After a very successful career as the boys’ soccer coach, Junior High social studies teacher Chris Johnson is hanging up his soccer cleats, and High School intervention specialist and current JV boys basketball coach Connor McCurley is taking over as head of this thriving program.
Mr. McCurley has coached the JV boys basketball team two successful years, and although he loved coaching basketball, when the opportunity to coach soccer came up, he decided to make the switch. McCurley was the JV head coach for the boy’s basketball team during the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 season where the JV basketball team compiled a record of 37-6 while winning 2 league titles under his leadership. Mr. McCurley said that the reason he chose the soccer job was because of the “opportunity to continue building a powerhouse program for boy’s soccer and to see the best out of the players athletically and personally.”
McCurley is no newcomer to soccer, though. For the last two years, McCurley has served as the varsity boys assistant soccer coach. In the 2023-2024 season, the team had a record of 32-3-3 and winning the conference championships. This year, the team also won the conference championship, and for the first time in school history, won the district championship.
One reason this switch makes sense for Mr. McCurley is that he is a former soccer player. A proud Harrison alumni, McCurley was no stranger to the soccer field. During his high school soccer career McCurley was a 3-year starter at the Centre back position from 2011-2014, and was the team captain during the 2014 season. Connor was a member of the first Harrison boys soccer team to ever win a league championship in 2013 and first team to ever win a OHSAA tournament game in 2013. In fact, McCurley was also the All-Conference player during the 2014 soccer season.
Heading into his first year of coaching, McCurley is excited about the team’s prospects. When thinking about this upcoming soccer season, McCurley reports that “the Harrison boy’s soccer team will only return 6 varsity players, so our program will be very young.” However, McCurley believes that “we have the guys to have another strong season.” The biggest area that the team needs to work on will be filling out the defensive back line, due to players graduating. Key returning players are Logan Wagner, Connor Barnett, Jaden Murphy, Luke Davis, Chase Wagner, Eli Gaffney and Hayden Carter, and with these players, McCurley has high hopes to build a great team.
Hopefully these players will help the boy’s soccer team go far in next season–into the playoffs would be great! And just think, in ten years, one of these players might just be joining McCurley on the coaching staff.
