Punch Line
October 03, 2002 04:34 PM | General
By John Antonik for
MSNsportsNET.com
October 4, 2002
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia University senior safety Arthur Harrison is used to rolling with the punches.
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| Senior Arthur Harrison has worked his way into a prominent role in the West Virginia secondary. |
After all, a good portion of his football training came in the boxing gym.
Boxing gym?
Yes, you read that correctly.
Before making college football his current vocation, Harrison grew up boxing in Syracuse, N.Y. He started at age 10 and won a couple of Sliver Gloves national titles in 1993 and 1994 for the 13-16-year-old age group.
Once he became a Golden Gloves boxer at 16, he advanced to the national semifinals and had his sights set on earning a spot on the national team for the 2000 Olympics before a broken jaw finished his career in 1997.
"That’s when I really started concentrating on football when the doctors told me I couldn’t box anymore," said Harrison.
In the meantime, Arthur was also a pretty good high school football player at Bishop Ludden High School in Syracuse. He got some token interest from the hometown Orangemen before signing to play at Penn State.
However, his SAT scores weren’t high enough to get into Penn State and he wound up traveling down to Keyser, W.Va., to play football at Potomac State.
"My high school coach knew the coach at Potomac State and he made a call as a last-minute thing so I just tried to make the best of the situation."
Nestled deep in the eastern mountains of West Virginia, Potomac State isn’t the place football players usually go to advance their careers. In fact, Potomac State no longer fields a football team.
For Harrison to get noticed he was going to have to do something pretty extraordinary.
His extraordinary performance came in one junior college game late in 1999 when he says he recorded 24 tackles, two sacks and two interceptions. Then-West Virginia defensive coordinator Steve Dunlap happened to be in the stands watching, and he decided to hop back in his car and drive I-68 the following morning to talk to Harrison in person.
"Would you like to play for the Mountaineers?" Dunlap asked Harrison in the Potomac State football coaches office.
"Yes, I’d love to play for the Mountaineers," Harrison answered.
The defensive back had followed West Virginia some while growing up in Syracuse. He was familiar with quarterback Major Harris watching WVU on television and knew that West Virginia and Syracuse were big rivals.
Those things all factored into his decision. What put the Mountaineers over the top were their helmets.
"I always liked West Virginia’s helmets and I just thought it would be cool to play for West Virginia," he said.
So Harrison came to West Virginia in the fall of 2000 and sat out the season as a redshirt. He saw his first collegiate action last year and produced 20 tackles in six games. Harrison’s time increased late in the season once strong safety Angel Estrada was lost for the year with a broken leg against Syracuse. Harrison made five tackles in the 2001 season finale against Pitt.
"Arthur is a very conscientious kid and he wants to learn," said secondary coach Tony Gibson. "He just keeps getting better and better."
Harrison’s development continued during spring practice, making eight tackles in the spring game. Coming into fall camp, Harrison began at the spur safety position but was switched to bandit in the middle of August when sophomore Jahmile Addae was sidelined with a concussion.
"Coach Gibson came up to me during two-a-days and asked me what I thought about moving to bandit," said Harrison. "I told him I’ll play there."
According to Harrison, one of the big differences between the two positions is that the spur lines up on the tight end side. A little bigger player like Jermaine Thaxton is more suited to play that position. Harrison, by comparison, stands just 5-feet-8 and weighs 185 pounds.
During Harrison’s first practice playing bandit, he ran all the way across the field to intercept a Rasheed Marshall pass. From that point he found his home.
Harrison earned his first career start at Cincinnati and has now become a fixture in the secondary.
"I’m getting real comfortable back there," he said.
According to Gibson, Harrison played his best game last weekend against East Carolina with three tackles, a tackle for a loss and a fumble recovery. For the season he has accumulated 21 tackles and two tackles for losses.
Production like that will certainly keep him in the line up.
