New USC track coach reveals early plans for 5-star football recruit Nyckoles Harbor
Nyckoles Harbor has big dreams at South Carolina — not only as a freshman wide receiver for the football team, but as a record-setting track athlete with Olympic aspirations.
Tim Hall’s ready to help him achieve those goals.
So much, in fact, that South Carolina’s newly hired track and field and cross country coach was scheduled to check in with Harbor immediately after a Tuesday introductory news conference.
“I can’t wait,” Hall said. “Nyck is a tremendous dual-sport athlete that I just can’t wait to get the opportunity to work with. Can’t wait to speak with Coach (Shane) Beamer to kind of formulate a plan that’s going to be conducive for both sports. … The things that we do and the things they do on the gridiron, they’re gonna complement both.”
Harbor — a five-star recruit from Washington, D.C., and the top-ranked member of South Carolina’s 2023 signing class — was far from the only reason Hall took the USC job.
It was a chance to come home for both Hall, who grew up in Charlotte and ran at South Carolina State, and his wife, Adrean, who grew up in Gaffney.
It was the right fit and the right challenge for someone who’d spent five seasons as Kentucky’s associate head coach and turned down numerous head coaching opportunities over the years.
Above all else, it was a chance to revive a once-historic program that, according to Hall, had grown “dormant” over the past decade under longtime coach Curtis Frye but remained a “goldmine” in the SEC, far and away the nation’s top conference for track and cross country.
But the opportunity to coach Harbor — a 6-foot-5, 230-pound world-class sprinter who holds D.C. records for the 100- and 200-meter dashes and is already focused on competing in the 2024 Olympics in Paris — certainly didn’t hurt.
“Super excited about meeting him, putting a plan together for him and then actually on the track just trying to recruit and put some pieces together to help him meet his ultimate goals,” Hall said. “I understand he’s very ambitious about track and doing it at the next level. So it’s my job to put pieces around him to cultivate that and help him see his vision out.”
Track and field was a non-negotiable during Harbor’s recruiting process. He only considered schools who offered him a chance to compete in both sports, such as Oregon and South Carolina.
Frye, who retired earlier this month after coaching South Carolina’s track and field and cross country teams for 27 seasons, played an active role in Harbor’s USC recruitment.
Listed as the nation’s No. 1 athlete recruit and No. 19 overall recruit for his class, Harbor committed to playing both sports at South Carolina on National Signing Day this February. He was the top signee in the Gamecocks’ 2023 class, which ranked No. 16 nationally.
Speaking after Harbor’s commitment, Frye described him as a “generational” athlete and invoked the names of track legends such as Usain Bolt, Carl Lewis and Marion Jones.
“It took 30 years between Bolt and Carl Lewis,” Frye said in February. “It didn’t take 30 years to see this guy.”
Hall, a longtime sprints coach whose résumé includes coaching five Olympians, 11 NCAA champions, 14 SEC champions and over 125 All-Americans, sees Harbor in the same light.
He also has tangible experience working with high-profile dual-sport athletes at a previous stop: During Hall’s five-year run as a Clemson track and field assistant from 2008-13, he coached football stars and future NFL draft picks C.J. Spiller and Jacoby Ford.
“They were two phenomenal dual-sport athletes where, as I mentioned earlier, track helped them on the gridiron even,” Hall said. I know how to develop periodization (training methods) where it not only makes them faster, but it makes the transition back to football a lot easier.”
And that’s one of his top goals at South Carolina, where an exciting coaching opportunity and talented five-star football recruit await.
“I’m looking forward to putting a program in place for Nyck to cultivate that speed, cultivate that knowledge and cultivate that talent so it benefits him on the football field as well,” Hall said.
This story was originally published June 28, 2023 at 7:00 AM.
