One of KPGFootball’s favorite jokes seems entirely apropos in discussing the development of Joshua Harris into a football star. In case you haven’t heard, Joshua Harris has been selected to play for Team Kentucky in the Kentucky-Tennessee Future Stars Classic this coming summer in Fortera Stadium on the campus of APSU.
The joke centers around a tourist in the Big Apple stopping a person walking down the sidewalk. The tourist inquires, Pardon me, sir; but how does one get to Carnegie Hall? The answer, Hard work is the only way of which I am aware.
For the uninformed, Carnegie Hall, since it opened in 1891, has set the international standard for musical excellence as the aspirational destination for the world’s finest artists. From Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, Mahler, and Bartók to George Gershwin, Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, Judy Garland, and The Beatles, an honor roll of music-making artists, representing the finest of every genre, has filled Carnegie Hall throughout the years, or so The Great Hall’s archives tell us.
Sure, it is a popular sight-seeing destination too, thus the duplicity of the query concerning how to get there. In any event, the only way to make one’s way onto the Team Kentucky Future Stars, 8th-grade roster this summer was similar to the only way one could possibly find his way to Carnegie Hall…through hard work.
KPGFootball would suggest no one in Kentucky has ever worked any harder to achieve this goal than Joshua Harris. What you don’t realize is how KPGFootball may be in the very best position to make this kind of comparative assessment.
The author of this article coached Joshua Harris when he was just a seventh grader on the roster at HMS. He may have been our hardest worker, even then, and one could readily see the potential. He was the first kid to the drill, the first kid to give everything he had on the field every rep, gave the hardest effort when running sprints, and the first guy to give every thing he had when scrimmaging.
Our defensive line coach loved him. What defensive line coach wouldn’t? We would have loved to have had him back for his 8th grade year. Alas, it wasn’t to be.
Harris’ first cousin who is also on the team, Oscar “JT” Adams, of whom we have written scores of articles, transferred from Paducah to Christian County Middle upon his dad getting the OC job at CCHS. Joshua went over to CCMS to reunite with his cousin, and thus HMS lost one of its rising stars and most promising DL, up and comers.
It isn’t easy being JT Adams’ cousin a lot of times we are sure. After all, JT, an All-American in wrestling and football, is one of the top-2023 footballers in the commonwealth of Kentucky, or in the country for that matter. JT showed this both amply and convincingly, if not before, then certainly at the recent Appalachia Prep Combine held in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.
That consanguinity shouldn’t detract from what Joshua has accomplished through diligence and hard work shaping himself into an elite player in his own right. Joshua tried out for Future Stars last year and wasn’t selected. He didn’t let that set-back define him. Harris did what he has shone himself capable of doing countless times over the course of his young life.
Harris picked himself up, dusted off, went back to the grindstone, and has now found himself on the brink of performing in the football equivalent of the Carnegie Hall of Kentucky middle school football.
Harris found his way to “The Great Hall” by the only route one has to get there. Joshua Harris has worked his tail off…and we just couldn’t be prouder of him.
This is F.W. Long (#Brotherhood) reporting for KPGFootball reminding you to PLAY THROUGH THE WHISTLE!
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