NASCAR 01

Former Central Florida football player adapts to new life on NASCAR pit crew. Kevin Harris played for Winter Springs and Seminole High, and Wake Forest.

First at Winter Springs and Seminole high schools, then at Wake Forest, Kevin Harris was a battering ram of a fullback.

The battering ram gave out.
"Football is way too big, way too tough, way too hard on the body,'' Harris said. "By the end of college, I think I was pretty much done.''

So he did the only thing he thought was right. He walked away.
Video of Tim Tebow and Urban Meyer playing flag football with kids
Harris was 24.
That realization came while Harris was in training camp last fall with the Florida Tuskers of the United Football League.
The pounding became too much, but unlike a vast number of players who give up football, Harris — a double major in communications and sociology — had other options.

Harris was offered the opportunity during Tuskers camp to try out for a NASCAR pit crew with Hendrick Motorsports, arguably the top team in the sport.

"I said, 'Sign me up, brother,' '' Harris said.

He will be in the pits for the first time in a NASCAR Sprint Cup race Sunday at the Kobalt Tools 400 in Las Vegas.
"I'm not nervous in the way you might think,'' Harris said. "It's more like a nervousness to perform. It's not a nervous, 'Oh my god, what's going to happen to me? Am I going to get hit by a car?' ''

Didn't grow up a racing fan
Harris got introduced to the pits early.
His friend, Kevin Comerer, was celebrating his 10th or 11th birthday at the then-Daytona USA theme park, and both boys were chosen as volunteer pit-crew members.

"Our stop ended up being 19 seconds, which was one side of the car,'' Comerer said. "Now they probably do the whole car in 13 seconds.''

Other than that, Harris did not grow up a NASCAR fan. He attended race-watching parties at the Comerers' house, but he was more interested in the hooplah than the horsepower.

"We're kind of a NASCAR-deficient family,'' said Mick Harris, Kevin's father and his high school football coach. "We're getting introduced to it.''
Kevin had not been to a Sprint Cup race until last year in Concord, N.C. Sunday's race will be his fourth — but from a decidely different vantage point.
He worked in the pits for ARCA and Nationwide Series races during Speedweeks and Daytona. He mainly has pitted during Nationwide races as a rear tire carrier, including for Donnie Neuenberger during Saturday's Sam's Town 300.


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