Jim Harris’ Family Plays Together, Has Stayed Together : Prep basketball: Ocean View coach’s son is his team’s leading scorer. Oldest daughter is an assistant coach.

The parents took their firstborn daughter to all the games. The father played guard for the college team. The mother sat in the stands with the baby’s carriage parked in front of the band.

The music in the cramped, noisy, sweaty gymnasium was sweet to their ears. The band’s bass drum thumped an endless beat, the basketball beat out its own rhythm on the hardwood floor and the fans screamed their song.

Years later, the father became a high school basketball coach, and so did the child.

When he was old enough, the parents’ only son became the high school team’s ball boy. Once he ran to the court to fetch an object thrown in disgust from the stands. He was there only a moment, but the electricity ran through him like a current. “This is what I want to do,” he told his oldest sister.

Later, the boy became the team’s star, the focus of the crowd’s attention.

One day, the father was so consumed by coaching that he wasn’t sure he’d have time at home to celebrate his second daughter’s birthday. So the mother moved the party to the gym. There was cake and ice cream at the scorer’s table and the party guests tumbled on gym mats at center court and shot baskets.

Twenty-three years after the birth of their first child, the parents had another baby girl. They notice she grows excited whenever she enters the gym. She calls it, “Daddy’s home.”

Jim and Sandi Harris have five children: Kim, 25, Kristi, 20, Kathryn, 19, Jim Jr., 17, and Kelsey, 2.

Right from the start, Sandi knew her husband couldn’t bring his work home to the family, so she brought the family to her husband. To be a nuclear family, the Harrises had to become a basketball family.

It started when Jim was playing for Coach Dick Perry at Cal State Long Beach in the 1960s. It continues today at Ocean View High School, where Jim is in the midst of his 14th season as the only varsity basketball coach in the school’s history.

Harris has never had a losing season. In 1984-85, Ocean View advanced to the Southern Section championship game, losing to Mater Dei. The Seahawks have been to the semifinals once and the quarterfinals four times. Three of Harris’ players have become professional basketball players.

Through it all, his family has been close by.

Of course, it’s easier these days, what with Kim on the bench as one of Jim’s assistants, and Jim Jr. on the court as the Seahawks’ leading scorer.

At lunch, Jim Jr. drops by his father’s office inside the gym to heat up something to eat in a microwave. Father and son chat a few moments, then it’s back to class. Kim, who teaches at Liberty Christian, a block or two east of Ocean View on Warner Avenue, also stops by to have her lunch with her father.

On game nights, Sandi brings Kelsey from the family’s home in El Toro. Kristi, a junior volleyball player at the University of San Diego, drives up when she can. And Kathryn, a freshman at Cal State Long Beach, rarely misses a game.

It doesn’t matter whose game it is, all the Harrises try to attend.

“Thank God volleyball season isn’t at the same time as basketball season,” Jim said, laughing.

In the past, some Ocean View games have been better attended by family members than assistant coaches, which explains how Kim landed a spot on the bench next to her father.

Harris was without his assistants during a tournament game in Las Vegas last season. From her seat in the stands behind the bench, Kim yelled advice to the players.

At some point, Harris tuned her in, liked what she was saying and said, “Kim, come down here and sit with me. I need your help.”

She’d been waiting since the fourth grade to hear those words.

“I wish I could have helped before,” Kim said.

Actually, Kim had been an Ocean View coach before. After two years at El Toro, including one season on the girls’ varsity, she decided to transfer to Ocean View to be closer to her father. She spent a season on the junior varsity, fulfilling Southern Section eligibility requirements, then decided she wanted to pass up her senior season to coach the junior varsity instead.

The CIF had to grant special approval because in the history of California no other high school student had ever been a high school coach.

“The state didn’t recommend it, but they didn’t say no,” Kim said.

Her father was behind her.

“I knew she could do it,” he said.

She wound up coaching the JVs five seasons, then became head coach at Santa Margarita for three seasons before moving into a teaching position at Liberty Christian. Somehow she found time to graduate from UC Irvine with degrees in English and comparative literature.

Harris has coached All-County, All-Southern Section and All-American players over the years. None have been as much fun to watch as his son, a 6-foot junior guard who averages 17.6 points and an Orange County-leading 9.2 assists.

“I wanted him to come (to Ocean View) so bad,” Harris said.

One day when her son was in junior high, Sandi asked him his plans.

“Are you kidding?” Jim asked. “I’ve been waiting all my life to play for my dad.”

When Harris got home from school and Sandi told him the story, they broke down and cried together.

“I was told a long time ago that about 11 years of high school coaching is the breaking point,” Harris said. “Most people move on to a college job, or stop and go into something else. I don’t know if that would have happened to me, but Jim’s coming here has rejuvenated my coaching interest. It’s become as important as when I first started here.”

No story about the Harris family is complete without mention of Ricky and Desi.

There are many members of the Harris extended family--former players and coaches--but no one is as close as Ricky Butler and Desi Hazely. So much joy, and so much suffering came as a result of their short stay with the Harrises.

The boys grew up on the mean streets of Lynwood, but not long before entering high school, each left his parents’ home under the care of a guardian named Laurant Brown.

With the permission of their parents, Brown moved the boys and his own son into the Ocean View attendance area in the fall of 1983. By the end of the school year, Brown decided to move to La Crescenta. Butler and Hazely wanted to continue to play at Ocean View, and turned to Harris for help.

Harris did what he thought was right, inviting the boys to move into his Huntington Beach home.

On Feb. 18, 1985, The Times ran a story about the unusual arrangement and by that afternoon, the Harrises’ world began to change dramatically.

The Southern Section called it undue influence and imposed sanctions, forcing Ocean View to forfeit 24 victories and its 5-A runner-up plaque, and banned the Seahawks from the playoffs for the 1985-86 season. Harris was fired, and later reinstated following, among other things, a student walkout to support him, and a concession by the CIF that he had violated its rules unknowingly.

Six years later, the waters have finally calmed, but Harris said he will always remember all that happened.

“I don’t want to forget those days even if I had the ability to change them,” he said. “It was a great blow to my family, but we all learned some great lessons. It made us stronger.”

The Harrises remain close to Butler and Hazely. Butler now plays professional basketball in Israel, and for a while he was calling at all hours to keep up with the latest news. Hazely has a business in Huntington Beach and stays in close touch.

At Christmas there are ornaments for Jim and Sandi, and each of the children, and one each for Butler and Hazely.

“It’s a tradition,” Kim said, “that each one of us puts their own ornament on the tree.”

It sounds like a special day.

“Every day is a special day,” Harris said. “There’s a saying that you only get back what you put into coaching. You’re lucky if you put in a lot and get just a little back. I’ve been overwhelmed.”

In the Harris family, it’s difficult not to be.