Women's Rowing
- Title:
- Assistant Coach
- Email:
- kah036@bucknell.edu
- Phone:
- 570-577-3243
Kelly Harris begins her third year as the head novice coach and recruiting coordinator of the Bison women’s rowing team in 2024-25.
Harris was promoted from volunteer assistant to her current position in the fall of 2022. As a volunteer in the 2021-22 season, Harris provided invaluable support and assistance to seven-time Patriot League champion head coach Steve Kish regarding all aspects of developing the top-end speed in the program. The season proved to be most notable with a historic V8+ win over Harvard-Radcliffe, as well as an open-water victory in the V8+ at the Patriot League Championships, which catapulted the team to their third consecutive runner-up finish. With this win, the V8+ was named Patriot League Boat of the Year for the first time in 10 years. The Bucknell V8 rowed to a near-seven-second victory over runner-up Boston University and a nine-second margin over third-place Navy, which was the six-time defending champion. It was the largest margin of victory in a V8+ final since 2008 and the third-largest in league history. The 2021-22 team also saw 33 athletes placed on the Patriot League Academic Honor Roll with a strong combined grade-point average of 3.42.
No stranger to Bucknell, Harris spent three years as an assistant coach with the Bison women's rowing program from 2013-16 and served a year in the inaugural role of Student-Athlete Development Assistant in 2016-17. Program highlights included first-ever wins for the V8+ against Dartmouth, Minnesota and Tennessee, as well as four Dad Vail silver medals and a runner-up team finish at the 2015 Patriot League Championship. Most notably, in the spring of 2016, Harris led the 2V8+ to the program’s first Patriot League Championship gold medal since 2011.
With 27 years of diverse involvement in the sport as a former Division I scholar-athlete along with Division I and Division III assistant and head coaching experience, Harris leads the novice women’s rowing program and all on- and off-campus recruiting efforts for the Bison.
“Kelly is a very strong role model for the young athletes on our team,” Kish said. “We are fortunate to have her on staff, not only because of the positive impact her diverse experiences will have on the program, but because of her intense drive, integrity, and desire to build women-warriors on and off the water.”
Prior to her return to Bucknell, Harris served as the assistant women’s rowing coach and recruiting coordinator for Dartmouth College in the 2017-18 season, while then stepping into the acting head coach role in the spring of 2019 and serving as interim head coach in 2019-20. Harris successfully led and managed all aspects of recruiting the classes of 2023 and 2024 for the Big Green, resulting in two of the strongest classes in recent program history. Upon being appointed acting head coach in April 2019, Harris confidently directed the program through the remaining six weeks of the championship season, including a sixth-place team finish at the Ivy League Championship for the second consecutive year. As interim head coach in the fall of 2019, Harris' crews achieved a ninth-place finish in the Championship 4+ event at the Head of the Charles and a top place finish in the Novice 8+ event at the Foot of the Charles before the 2020 spring season was canceled due to COVID-19.
Before her initial arrival at Bucknell in the summer of 2013, Harris served as the head women’s rowing coach at Marietta College for six years. Under Harris’ leadership, the Pioneer Varsity 8+ won back-to-back Mid-Atlantic Rowing Conference (MARC) Championships. The V8+ win in 2011 afforded the crew its first at-large bid in 12 years to the NCAA DIII National Rowing Championships held in Sacramento, CA. In 2012, the Pioneers won their first team championship at the MARC and a historic first-ever team bid to the NCAA Championships, where the V8+ finished fifth in the nation and the team finished sixth overall. The Marietta women also won back-to-back gold medals at the 2011 and 2012 Dad Vail Regatta in the DIII Varsity 8+ event. Eighteen CRCA National Scholar-Athlete titles were awarded from 2007-2013 while Harris led the Pioneers, and two of her rowers were named to the Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association (CRCA) Pocock All-America team, one of whom was a two-time first team selection. Named three-time Mid-Atlantic Rowing Conference Coach of the Year, Harris developed the Pioneers’ team motto of O.A.R.S. (Ownership, Accountability, Responsibility and Self-integrity), the qualities the women strived to demonstrate in their daily lives, on the water, and in the classroom.
Prior to Marietta, Harris spent two years at Division I Marist College as the head women’s rowing coach, where she oversaw all aspects of the freshman and varsity programs. The two-time Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) Coach of the Year led the Red Foxes to back-to-back MAAC championships in 2006 and 2007. Marist's Varsity Lightweight 8+ and Varsity 4+ finished runners-up at the 2006 ECAC Metro Regatta.
Harris began her full-time coaching career as the assistant men’s and women’s rowing coach at Vassar College from 2002-2005, following a one-year assistantship at her alma mater. During that post-grad year in New Hampshire, Harris also worked for the Durham Boat Company constructing carbon fiber boat seats and coached two seasons of scholastic rowing at Phillips Exeter Academy. This opportunity afforded Harris the invitation to become the first director of the rowing program for the Phillips Exeter Academy Summer School in its inaugural year in 2003, while also serving as an associate dean until 2013.
A 2001 graduate of the University of New Hampshire with a degree in Wildlife Management, Harris was a four-year member and two-year co-captain of UNH’s Division I women’s rowing team. Rowing to a gold in the Varsity 8+ at the 1999 New England Championships, Harris helped the Wildcats win the Women's Points Trophy at the ECAC Regatta and a bid to the IRA Regatta that same year. Harris was selected to participate in the 2001 East Coast Lightweight National Team Development Camp at Riverside Boat Club in Boston, MA, winning gold in the Intermediate LW4x and the Intermediate LW2x with partner Hannah Moore-Godfrey at the 2001 USRowing Club Nationals. In 2000, Harris attended the Mid-West Lightweight Development Camp at the University of Wisconsin where she partnered with former Wisconsin Lightweight Women’s Head Coach, Dusty Darley-Mattison, in the LW2x. Harris won the bronze medal in the collegiate lightweight category at the 2001 CRASH-B Indoor Rowing Championships and was also named an All-American Athlete in 2001 by the National Strength and Conditioning Association. A 1997 graduate of F.D. Roosevelt High School in Hyde Park, NY, Harris got her start in the sport as a coxswain in eighth grade. She coxed for three years before beginning to row her junior year under the leadership of Coach Mike Vertullo, where she won the bronze medal in the Junior 8+ event at the Stotesbury Cup Regatta in Philadelphia.
In addition to her passion for the sport of rowing, Harris loves the outdoors and is an accomplished trail runner and ultramarathon distance runner. Harris placed eighth among all USATF female finishers at the 2016 Tussey Mountainback 50M Ultra, achieved a first female and fifth overall finish at the 2017 Laurel Highlands 50K, and first overall finisher at the 2017 Montour Endurance Runs, running a distance of 69.8 miles in the overnight 12-hour race from 7PM to 7AM. In 2023, Harris completed the Worlds End 100K and the Black Forest Ultra, a 66-mile trail race with a midnight start time. Harris and her long-time partner Steve, the head women’s rowing coach at Bucknell, live in downtown Lewisburg.
