Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Coach Of The Year
JOEL WELLS
SCHOOL Harrison
THE SCOOP Wells, who just completed his fourth season at Harrison, led a Goblins team that finished 12-1, won the 5A-West Conference championship and reached the Class 5A state semifinals before suffering its only loss to Pulaski Academy. … The 12-win season was the most for Harrison since the Goblins went 14-0 and won the Class 4A state title in 1999, and it was the first time Harrison had enjoyed a perfect regular season since 2003. … The Goblins averaged 44.8 points per game and allowed just 98 points through 12 games before giving up 75 to Pulaski Academy.
DID YOU KNOW? Wells began his coaching career in basketball and worked in that sport at some level for 13 years. He solely coached basketball in 1989-90 before he switched to football, where he has been a head coach ever since.
QUOTABLE “It was definitely special. We have a lot of special young men playing. They’re a bunch of great kids, good students, good citizens. They’re very fun to coach, and we’ll have a lot of them back for next year. We knew this would be a special group, and they lived up to the billing.
“It had been quite a while since Harrison had been in that position of winning a share of the conference title, but it made our kids hungry to win an outright conference championship. We knew we had to go to Greenbrier, to Morrilton and to Alma, so to win that conference championship, we had to earn it.”