By Rick Pedone
Sports Editor

Just as Osceola County’s faculty members and students are settling into the routine of a new school year, one of the county’s most respected coaches and educators ­– Mal Harpell – is wrapping up a 30-year career in Kissimmee.

Harpell, who coached cross country, track and basketball and served as the athletic director at Osceola and Poinciana high schools, retired Friday.

“It’s time. I’m ready,” Harpell, 55, said.

The Binghamton, N.Y, native coached three years at Windsor High, near Binghamton, before joining the OHS coaching staff in 1982.

After a decade at OHS, where he was the athletic director for five years and won district championships in girls basketball and boys track, he joined the fledging coaching staff at Poinciana High when that school opened in 1991. Harpell led the OHS boys cross country team to a sixth-place finish at the 1990 state meet, and he had even greater success at Poinciana, where the boys cross country program there was dominant through much of the 1990s and early 2000s. His 2004 Eagles track team won the district championship.

In all, Harpell owns 11 Orange Belt Conference, five district and two regional championships in three sports. He also coached four state qualifiers and one champion, Eagle pole vaulter Nathan Hamman in 1995.

He received the Dean Cherry Award as Osceola County’s Coach of the Year in 1996 and 2000. He was an OBC Coach of the Year 14 times. Osceola School District Athletics Coordinator Ryan Adams presented Harpell with a plaque in recogniton of his service to county athletics at the Coach of the Year awards ceremony in June, shortly after Harpell stepped down as the Eagles’ athletic director. Former Celebration AD John Bangley has replaced Harpell.

What his peers say about Harpell has as much to do with his jovial cordiality as it does his coaching excellence.

“Not only was he an outstanding coach, but as an athletic director he was a class act,” Harmony Baseball Coach Mike Fields, the former athletic director at St. Cloud High, said.

Fields is the only active head coach in the county with more years of experience (40, 34 in Osceola County) than Harpell.

“Mal was highly respected and earned the admiration from coaches throughout the state of Florida,” Fields said. “His name is synonymous with integrity and he always had the best interest of his student-athletes at heart.”

St. Cloud tennis coach Tim McMullen, who has earned 35 Orange Belt Conference championships coaching cross country, track, basketball and tennis for the Bulldogs since 1985, said he enjoyed  a good-natured rivalry with Harpell for nearly three decades.

“One of the good guys, a coach you could trust even if you were his rival. Always competitive, always taking athletes to races out of state during the holidays, my son Eddie (Avant) one of them,” McMullen said. “After the hurrahs are over with it’s the relationships that count in sports, and I am glad I was lucky enough to have this one.”

In addition to his duties at the high schools, Harpell became an important member of the state’s track community and helped run the state meets for many years. He often served as the P.A. announcer.

Harpell became recognized at the state and national levels as an assistant meet director at the Footlocker national cross country meets at Disney and later in San Diego. He served as the Florida Athletic Coaches Association track and field chairman for five years and was on the FHSAA track and field advisory committee for five years.

He recalled a harrowing experience while serving as a member of the field staff at the 1986 Junior Pan Am Games in Orlando, where he was retrieving javelins.

“Some kid from Cuba threw one over our heads,” he said. “We thought we were a safe distance away, and the kid throws it over our head.”

There also was an ill-fated trip to Atlanta for the 1996 Olympics, when Harpell chaperoned a group of county athletes who were supposed to work for a vendor at the Games. When the vendor pulled out, the students were stranded.

“(Former school superintendent) Chris Colombo sent a bus for us, even though it wasn’t a school trip,” he said. “I guess you could say that was one Olympics experience that we could have passed on.”

One of his greatest thrills was meeting his idol, three-time Olympics miler Jim Ryun, when Harpell received the Hartwell Conklin Award and was inducted into the Golden South Track Classic Hall of Fame.

“They kind of turned that around on me. They told me that (former PHS track coach) Rusty (Gould) was getting an award and would I present it, and then when I get up there I find out that I’m the one receiving the award,” he said. “When I saw that Jim Ryun was going to make the presentation, I was like, ‘Holy cow, Jim Ryun!’ I couldn’t believe it. He was the guy who got me interested in track when I was in middle school. I didn’t know what to say. He autographed the back of the plaque for me.”

Harpell was named the 2011 Non-Rotarian of the Year by Rotary Club of Kissimmee West for 25 years of involvement with the Osceola County Scholarship Bowl football game.

Harpell said many, many events and individuals are memorable from his 33 years of coaching experience.

He recently enjoyed watching Sonja Richards-Ross win the Olympics 400 meters gold medal for the U.S. in London.

She still wears a necklace that Harpell once held for her when she competed about 10 years ago for Fort Lauderdale St. Thomas Aquinas High School in a regional track meet at Poinciana High.

“She gave it to me to hold for her during the race. It was a pendant with a silver bullet on it that her mother gave her when she was in middle school,” he said. “They did a feature on that pendant during the Olympics, and I got a kick out of that. I was thinking, ‘Wow, I held that pendant, and there she is with it today.’ I thought that was pretty neat.”

Poinciana won consecutive conference, district and regional boys cross country championships over a three-year span from 1998-2000 and the school won four straight OBC titles starting in 1995.

Names like Brandon Delpriore, Wencher Maurice, Norman Watson, Justin Patterson, Wayne Linscott, Chris Alexander and Steven Martinez from those dominant Eagles teams flow off of Harpell’s tongue like he was still coaching them today.

“Chris Alexander was one of those guys who had a clock in his head,” Harpell said. “You’d tell him what to do, and he was right there every time. He was uncanny.”

Harpell’s 1990 cross country team at OHS had Bryan McLoughlin, the current Eagles cross country coach, on it, along with Mike Frensley and Jace Stuckey.

“Those guys went 1-2-3 at a lot of meets,” Harpell said. “That was a real good team.”

McLoughlin said he is one of thousands of Osceola County students who benefitted from knowing Harpell.

“He helped me and others at OHS and Poinciana by pushing us academically and in running. He helped me find inner confidence,” McLoughlin, who earned a cross country scholarship to Southern Mississippi, said. “He has been helping all kids in Osceola County, no matter what high school they attended. He always put kids first. He sacrificed so much of his life to help kids succeed in life and the playing fields. He will be dearly missed by me and and all of the others at Poinciana and Osceola County.”

Harpell coached three sports during his first 17 years in Osceola County, sometimes in addition to being the athletic director, before he dropped basketball in the mid-1990s. He later gave up cross country and finally track.

He led the Poinciana athletic department through the aftermath of Hurricane Charley in 2004, when the storm destroyed the roof of the gym and forced Harpell to find facilities to temporarily house several teams. At the same time, Harpell and his wife, Mary Anne, an elementary school teacher, lived in an RV for much of the year while their home was repaired.

Harpell said no individual can be successful without a lot of help. His assistants were invaluable, he said.

“Guys like Joe Martin, Mike Fletcher, Pete Hodges, Rusty, Bryan … there are so many people who have contributed through the years,” he said. “And, you can’t leave out my wife, Mary Anne. She has been there for the long hours and the road trips over the years and she never complains.”

McLoughlin said Mary Anne Harpell, like her husband, is making a huge contribution to Osceola County students and athletes.

“Everyone who ever ran or played under Coach Harpell calls her mom,” McLoughlin said. “She was my fourth grade teacher and she is an integral part of his success. From the beginning, they made you feel like you were part of family in school and sports.”

Harpell, who was hospitalized after contracting the MRSA virus last year, does not plan to coach again.

“Nope, the only thing on the agenda is to help with Mary Anne’s second grade class a couple of times a week at Kissimmee Elementary,” he said. “Other than that, it’s an open slate right now. We’ll see what happens.”