Above: Before coming to Lampasas, Scott Harrelson won the Atlantic 10 Conference Coach of the Year Award while head coach of the West Virginia University women’s basketball program. Left: With the Badgers, Harrelson coached Heath Hopson, the most prolific scorer in school history. By his account, Scott Harrelson has done something basketball related virtually every day of his life since he was six years old.

Soon, the streak will end.

The seven-year Lampasas head basketball coach announced he is retiring from the game that means so much to him.

After 30 years as a coach, the one factor most responsible for prying him away from his passion on the court is his passion off the court.

“It is one of the hardest decisions of my life,” Harrelson said. “Starting next year without basketball will be difficult, but I barely got to see my daughter play tennis this year, and I haven’t been around my family for a long time.

PHOTOS BY RICHARD AKRIDGE “It just seems right. Everything fell into place, and it just seems right that I can be with my family.”

The father of five, including three stepchildren, and grandfather of two with another on the way plans to remain in the Lampasas school district with an interest in moving into administration. He has applied for a local position.

While making his career-altering decision, Harrelson spoke with LISD Superintendent Randal Hoyer -- a former basketball coach -- about determining when is the right time to give up the game.

“That also helped me to focus on what was important to me and what I needed to do to make myself marketable as an administrator,” Harrelson said. “I don’t know if administration will work out for me in the future, but if I didn’t make the move now at my age I never would.”

Scott Harrelson, right, poses with the last varsity team he coached before ending his professional relationship with the game of basketball. PHOTO BY MICHAEL KUEHNE Harrelson, however, will continue to teach at Lampasas and will assume the full-time assistant tennis coach responsibilities -- a position he currently holds during the fall team tennis season -- if the administrative job does not pan out.

Derek Cain serves as assistant tennis coach during the spring season, but he has announced plans to leave Lampasas at the end of the school year.

“I got a total vote of confidence from [LHS Athletic Director Joey McQueen],” Harrelson said. “When I told him I wanted to be the assistant tennis coach, he was not happy with me, and he said, ‘No, I don’t want you to do that. I want you as basketball coach.’

“I guess he honored me by allowing me to [have the assistant tennis coach position]. It shows he appreciated the job I did and supported me.”

Such a move would allow Harrelson to see more than just his daughter’s tennis matches, it also would allow him to see all her practices. Harrelson’s daughter Katie Shaw is a sophomore on the Lady Badgers varsity tennis team.

Regardless of the path Harrelson finds himself on, this would not be the first time the coach sacrificed for his children.

“It’s time,” he said. “It’s time for me to give a little bit more back to my family.

“I made a decision like this once before where I took a major pay cut to follow my son and be with my son during his career. I left the college level to come to the high school level for my daughter. Family is very important.”

Nobody can blame Harrelson for stepping away from the game to be with his loved ones.

After all, for the past three decades, he has dedicated much time and energy toward his extended family -- his players.

Harrelson began his professional coaching career in 1979 as an assistant at Aldine MacArthur before taking the head coaching reins at Huffman Hargrave two years later.

Following a two-year stint with the Army’s 3rd Infantry Regiment -- The Old Guard -- in Washington D.C. where he became a graduate assistant, Harrelson jumped to the college ranks and spent 10 years with the West Virginia women’s basketball program, including three as head coach (1993-95).

He went on to win a pair of district championships as head coach at Sonora before claiming a bidistrict championship during his three-year stay at Wichita Falls Rider.

Two years before joining Lampasas, Harrelson served as an assistant at Wayland Baptist University, where his son Ty Harrelson -- the school’s first 1st team NAIA All-American -- led the Pioneers to a pair of NAIA tournament appearances. Ty Harrelson has since become a professional basketball player in Germany.

While the ultra competitive, extremely exacting Harrelson’s winning percentage at Lampasas has been less than stellar of late, including a combined 1-19 district record over the last two seasons, the coach refuses to be defined simply by wins and losses.

“I just got a letter from a young man who is in Army basic training, and he said, ‘I couldn’t have made it through this without your [highly disciplined] program,’ ” the coach said. “I had another player go through basic training in the Navy, and he said the same thing. I have a professional football player who said I’ve made a difference in his life, and a national-champion track runner who told me I was very special in what he did and that I even motivated him.

“I just hope the people of Lampasas will grade me and my program on the successes [my former players] have now.”

Some critics disagree with the coach’s style, claiming he is overly demanding and guilty of setting the bar at unreasonable heights for his players.

In fact, they are right.

“[With] every punishment and every praise, I have never faltered from the idea that I treat everyone with the same love, caring and intensity as I did my own children,” Harrelson said. “My expectations have always been extremely high and hard to live up to, but my belief that they could accomplish them never wavered, even to the last minute of the last game or to the last breath they take.

“I will never give up on them, and I will always be telling them something they can do to improve. I hope to continue that in all my endeavors.”

For the time being, however, Harrelson’s future and that of the vacant head coaching position are up in the air.

Perhaps it is fitting for someone who has spent so many years teaching young people to shoot a ball into a hoop.