UFL Championship Head Coach Shannon Harris returns to his roots at Stone High School

A homecoming took place Wednesday morning at Stone High School where a local legend walked the halls reflecting on where his football journey began. From a tri-sport Tomcat athlete to now a UFL champion as the interim head coach, get to know Stone High’s very own Shannon Harris!

“This has kind of been the foundation of where it all started for me. I was one of those kids where football really found me,” said DC Defenders Interim Head Coach Shannon Harris. “I was a little water boy running around here in the seventh grade, then Coach Easterling and those guys saw me throwing a ball for a little bit and it kind of took off from there.”

It took off to say the least, leading the Tomcats as their quarterback and even winning a basketball State Championship to go along with it. He would then continue his signal caller career at Tennessee State University. Harris didn’t have a desire to go from the pocket to the sidelines as a coach, but life has a funny way of working out.

“They asked me one day after I was playing arena ball if I wanted to come back and coach, so I thought I’d give it a try. I fell in love with it and have never worked a day in my life. Football is so much fun,” Harris said. “You get a chance to pour into kids and now grown men. You’re still teaching those same things and same traits that it’s all about what you do in life after football.”

One person that demonstrated that coaching style to Harris years ago was Larry Easterling. Known as Coach Easterling to Harris, he led the Stone High football program for 10 years, including Harris’s playing years.

“The good Lord blessed me to have a lot of jewels, and this is one that I had that was just a great all around athlete,” said Larry Easterling. “He wanted to learn everything and you can tell that’s paid off for him because he just did a great job for us, and you couldn’t ask for a better teammate than this one. He never put himself first. It was always the team, and I was blessed to coach him.”

Harris then took what he learned from Easterling and his college coaches and went to work himself, holding several different collegiate coaching roles for 18 seasons. All of those seasons prepared him to take on the quarterback coach role for the DC Defenders in 2023. After two seasons in the UFL, Harris then found out five days before season three that he’d be their interim head coach.

“You didn’t have time to think because we were already in the midst of it, so we just took everything. The players rallied behind me and the support staff rallied behind me,” said Harris. “Our motto is us, we and ours. I tell those guys this is not just a one man show. We all do this collectively and we all win collectively and that’s how we went about it.”

The way the red and white went about it was spot on, taking home the 2025 UFL Championship, resulting in Harris becoming the UFL Coach of the Year. From the City of Wiggins to Washington DC, what a legacy Shannon Harris has created and continues to write.