Brian Meggs has fond memories of Joe Harvey.
Like most coaches who lose seniors, Meggs hates he won’t have Harvey for another season as a member of the New Hope High School boys soccer team. Not only was Harvey a steady leader in the back, but he also was a versatile and talented leader who encouraged the Trojans always to be at their best.
“Joe is really one of those guys that if I had one of Joe Harvey playing every position we would win state every year,” Meggs said.
Mike Sullivan hopes Harvey brings those same intangibles with him to Fulton later this year. Last month, Harvey finalized an opportunity to play for Sullivan when he signed a scholarship to play for the Itawamba Community College men’s soccer team.
At 5-foot-9 1/2, 150 pounds, Sullivan knows Harvey isn’t one of his biggest recruits. But he has watched Harvey play enough soccer to know he is getting a player who makes up for what he lacks in size with an oversized knowledge and heart for the game.
“I have come to watch New Hope quite often in the past few years, and I have noticed he is a good defender in the back,” Sullivan said. “It is easy to tell he is one of the leaders on the field.
“I think he has a good head for the game already. When he gets a little further in the college game he is going to be a pretty good player for us.”
Harvey, who plays second base for the New Hope High baseball team, hoped to find an opportunity to play soccer and stay close to home. He said he has bulked up to 150 pounds thanks to weight training in soccer and in baseball. He knows he will have to get even stronger to compete against some of the state’s best players.
“I was hoping to play with them at one time, and I am glad I am,” Harvey said. “I had a feeling (I was going to get chance to play soccer in college). I didn’t know quite where, but I am glad it is going to be at ICC. Their campus felt like home to me.”
Harvey said he talked with Sullivan and then researched about ICC to see if it could be a good fit. He said he has several friends who go to ICC and that there are several soccer players he has competed against who go to the school. He said he hopes to fit in as a defender, likely on the flank, for the Indians.
Sullivan hopes to have eight defenders on the roster to start the season. He feels Harvey will compete for playing time as an outside defender and could work himself into the rotation at center back in his time at the school.
Lebo Davis, who played goalkeeper at New Hope and was a team captain with Harvey, believes Harvey will be able to take that next step. Davis watched Harvey control the field as a defender, and listened each match to pregame speeches or talks Harvey gave to the team before every match.
Davis, who will attend ICC in the fall, also walked the New Hope High field one final time with Harvey after the team returned home from a loss to Neshoba Central that ended the team’s season. He said they discussed their plans and what it was like to be teammates and to play for New Hope. Even though one season had just ended, Davis sensed Harvey was going to do everything he could to keep playing soccer.
“He was determined he was going to find a way to make it work,” Davis said. “Whether he was going to walk on or get a scholarship he going to do it.”
Davis recalls the first speech Harvey gave to the team before a match against Oxford. He said Harvey encouraged the team to have a positive attitude and to believe in itself. He said many of Harvey’s talks focused on effort, leadership, and sportsmanship
“I have known him a lot longer as a friend, and he is a great friend and an even better teammate,” Davis said. “He always would spend time with the younger ones. It could have been really easy as a good player to say, ‘I am better than you’ and not help them, but he always was a guy who would help everybody else, and he always did what the coaches needed him to do.”
Meggs agrees and said that neither he nor assistant coach Roger Shilling asked Harvey to talk to the team. He said the talks proved to him how much heart Harvey had in the game of soccer and how seriously he took his role as leader on the team.
“He is one of those guys because he is a hard-working kid that he probably is going to go somewhere and do something with his life,” Meggs said.
Harvey plans to take the first step on that journey at ICC. Even though he was a team MVP and an all-conference performer this season, he knows he will have to raise his performance and leadership skills to help create more fond memories.
“It is a great feeling,” Harvey said. “When I found out I was going to be a captain for my New Hope soccer team, that was a great feeling. This feels even better, knowing I can pursue my collegiate soccer career and, hopefully, progress from that.”
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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