Separated by More Than a Generation, Two Athletes United Into One Class

Two athletes, one school—and 30 years apart.

One grew up in Guilford, the son of a lawyer. The other grew up in Mt. Washington, the son of a surgeon.

Both were three-sport stars, though one played football and the other soccer.  Both were basketball guards. Both were prolific lacrosse scorers and went on to excel in the sport at the college level.

One is a local businessman who continues to live in North Baltimore. The other is based in Los Angeles, though primarily travels the nation and world to promote his sport. Both remain active in sport.

And though separated by three decades, they are now in the same class.

Bruce Preston, class of 1971, and Kyle Harrison, class of 2001, were among 23 players, two coaches and three teams inducted into the Friends School Athletic Hall of Fame on April 28.

“I was extremely happy,” Preston said when he received notification that he would enter the school’s Hall of Fame. “Going in with my buddy Bryan [Matthews] and Liz [Price] is very special to me. They are hugely deserving as well.” Matthews and Price are also members of the class of 1971.

“It’s an incredible honor,” said Harrison, who at age 28 is the first inducted member of his class. “It’s human nature—it’s always nice to be recognized for something you’ve done,” he said, even though he placed an emphasis on teamwork over individual honors throughout his career.

Each athlete talked about his high school experience —and life since then—in separate interviews days ahead of the induction ceremony held on the North Charles Street campus.

Two Different Fall Sports

Preston, who was a football quarterback, basketball point guard and lacrosse attackman, said football, where he won awards his junior and senior years, was his best sport in high school.

There were 50 graduating seniors in his class at the coed school, so half of those were girls. Consequently, Friends was fielding teams against schools that had much larger groups of students from which to select players.

One football moment stands out for Preston.

“Our last game was a night game down on the Eastern Shore—a great big public school called Colonel Richardson,” Preston said. “And even though it was the last game of the season, it was their homecoming. We were scheduled for a lot of homecomings.

“I remember walking out of the locker room and seeing a marching band.  Whenever we played a school with a marching band, that was always a bad sign,” he said. “You know, their tuba section is bigger than my offensive line.”

Preston, who is now 58, recalled it was a cold night with a little rain falling, and the team was trailing by five points, with the ball around midfield and about a minute left to play.

“I’ll never forget the play we called—it was a ‘no motion all race’—which meant everybody go deep,” he said. “I threw a pass to [fellow classmate] Greg Brown—hit him right in the hands crossing the goal line—and he dropped the ball.

“Then two plays later, just seconds left on the clock, the coach called the exact same play, and this time Greg caught the ball in the end zone for the game-winning score.”

It was a catch Preston did not see because he was hit as soon as he threw the ball.

“That was just a pretty neat way for seniors to end their football career,” Preston said.

* * * * *

Harrison’s fall sport was soccer, a sport he initially played better than lacrosse.

“If you were to ask my coaches back in high school, I bet they would have said that soccer—for the first half of my high school career—was my best sport,” he said.

And Harrison credits the sport, which he described as very methodical and tactical, with making him a better lacrosse player.

“My best asset as an athlete is I’m very athletic. A sport like lacrosse where you have to have great stick skills, and basketball where you have to be able to handle the ball real well—that takes some development, that takes a little time,” he said.

“I was a center midfielder. Mentally I was able to develop that mind-set of playing defense, playing offense. I did the exact same thing on the lacrosse field.”

Looking back on his soccer career, one of Harrison’s favorite memories was defeating St. Paul’s School for Boys in the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) B conference championship in his junior year.

“You don’t go out on the field to win player of the year, to be all-metro. You go out because you want to show Gilman, or St. Paul’s, or one of these schools that think they’re the best school ever. You want to show them that you’re right there with them,” he said.

“That was one of the best feelings I’ve had as an athlete, that was like, you guys been talking all this trash—you’re St. Paul’s, the whole deal, [playing a] poor little Quaker school—and we just beat you in the championship.”

Both Played Guard at Basketball

The winter season meant basketball for both players.

Although a starter for the basketball team, Preston said the sport was a tough one for him.

“I always say that I was a starter by default, because if you’re at Friends and you’re the quarterback on the football team, that pretty much means you’re going to be a three-sport starter,” he said.

He recalled the team winning a junior varsity championship in the C conference of the old Maryland Scholastic Association (MSA).

Yet it was a game as a senior against John Carroll where Preston has some vivid recollections.

“We were at our place and they had a guy on the team named Al Neville. He was all-state in basketball.

“Before the game, we’re in the locker room and [head coach] Eddie Morse comes in to talk to us. I’m listening to his speech, and he goes, ‘Well, I thought about this long and hard—what we’re going to do, we’re going to run a box and one.’

“So I’m thinking to myself, great, I’m basically going to have the night off.”

Preston assumed that Brown, who also developed into an extremely good basketball player, would be the one to match up one-on-one against Neville.

“So he [Morse] goes, ‘and we’re going to have Preston guard Neville.’”

The strategy was for Preston to force Neville into the corner, where a teammate would join him for a double team, and therefore force Neville to pass the ball out.

“I do exactly what Eddie told me and I drive him down into the corner, our forward comes out and we have him boxed in the corner, just like the coach drew up,” Preston said.

“And I go, oh, this is sweet, maybe we can do something about this.”

From the dead corner, Neville turned around and hit a soft jump shot—a perfect swish.

“He looks at me and goes, ‘Through for two!’  I knew it was going to be a long night—and it was.”

* * * * *

The Quakers of Harrison’s time, on the other hand, had more success on the court.

Playing in the MIAA B conference, the teams went to the championship game in all four of Harrison’s years, and twice won the title.

“Basketball is my first love, without a doubt,” Harrison said.  “I love it, I still play every day.”

Although the team did not play the top schools in the city, Harrison also sees basketball as contributing to his success as a lacrosse player.

“The leadership skills that I have now came from being a point guard,” Harrison said. “As a freshman having to try and lead seniors, and then as a sophomore having to try and lead seniors—I think those types of things help you develop character, help you develop the leadership that one day you will be able to use.”

He termed his freshman year as "hilarious" because, still on the high of starting on the soccer team as a freshman, he was a freshman starting on the varsity basketball team that won a championship.

“My senior year was great because we had a fun team and we were pretty athletic,” Harrison said. “I think we ended up winning the championship by 19, 20—something like that. That was fun because that was the culmination of everything—it was the last organized basketball game I’ve ever played—so that was pretty cool.”

Spring Means Lacrosse

Like it was—and remains to this day—spring at a North Baltimore school is synonymous with lacrosse. Preston played attack and Harrison was a center middie.

“It was special playing lacrosse at Friends because of the great history we had,” Preston recalled.

“One of the biggest regrets was that I never got to play on a Mr. Nick-coached team [longtime head coach and history teacher Robert A. Nicolls]. But he was still there and after every big win, he’d call up everybody and congratulate them, which I thought was pretty neat.”

Friends was playing MSA A conference lacrosse in Preston’s day, which is primarily the same schools that play in today’s MIAA A conference.

“We had our moments, too,” said Preston, who won the school’s 1971 lacrosse unsung hero award.

A big win against powerhouse Boys’ Latin stands out.

It was his junior year and he and teammate Carl Robbins, a senior, developed a play called the 90-over.

“We ran it quite a bit with a good deal of success, and we used that very successfully against Boys’ Latin,” Preston recalled.

Each would be on the left-hand side of the field, Preston behind goal with Robbins on the front. Robbins, a midfielder, would pass the ball to Preston, who would return the ball to Robbins.

“He would pass it back to me and I would run parallel to the end line behind the goal, and he would do the same in front,” Preston said. “As soon as I got to the far side of the goal, he would cut 90 degrees toward the goal, I’d feed him and he’d quick-stick it in.”

* * * * *

Lacrosse is the sport that defines Harrison—it is his identity.

He was on two MIAA B conference championship teams at Friends, went to two NCAA championship games while at the Johns Hopkins University, and played on the championship team his senior year.

At Friends, even though the team won championships his first two years, Harrison’s favorite memories were his junior and senior years, when the team was elevated to MISAA A conference.

“The first two, we were winning but we weren’t playing against great talent,” Harrison said. “I think if you look at our junior and senior years, we all got better because we were pushed on a daily basis by a Gilman, by a St. Paul’s, by a Calvert Hall—by these guys that are just incredible.”

In one game against Gilman, Harrison said the Quakers walked on the field to play a team that was loaded with talent.

“It was like 12 legit [college] Division I players—it was absurd the kind of people we were playing against—but that’s what pushes you to become better, and that’s what challenges you, and that’s what I love.”

As in his soccer memories, some of Harrison’s favorite lacrosse recollections were two victories against Calvert Hall his senior year and one against St. Mary’s.

“All we wanted to do in high school was to prove to the Calvert Halls, St. Paul’s, Gilmans of the world that we can hang with you—and we don’t have as many players as you do.”

The wins against Calvert Hall and St. Mary’s were three of just five the team won that year.

“We got beat up, but those five games, they will remember them. Twenty years from now, they will remember them.”

Beyond High School

When it came time for college, Preston chose Western Maryland, now McDaniel College, in Westminster. His parents went there, and the baseball field is named after his father. By the time he graduated, he was number two on the school’s all-time scoring list for lacrosse.

“Of course, I’ve been knocked way down, and was knocked down again by my son, who topped my scoring.”

Preston currently ranks 12th on the list, with 112 goals and 67 assists. His son Gibbs, who graduated from McDaniel in 2010, is tied at 10th with 206 points. He is one of a few players to top the 100 mark in both goals and assists.

Preston has spent his professional career in commercial real estate and he currently owns Preston Realty, LLC in Towson. He and his wife Patrice, who is a teacher at McDonogh, live in Guilford. In addition to Gibbs, they have a daughter, Sarah.

* * * * *

Harrison’s years at Hopkins produced the championship ring and several individual honors: he was three time All-American, won midfielder of the year (McLaughlin Award) his junior and senior years, and was named the national player of the year (Tewaaraton Trophy) his senior year.

Yet personal recognition was not the motivating factor.

“That’s always been irrelevant to me,” he said.

“My lacrosse goal was to reach my potential as a player so I could help my team win a national championship. It wasn’t to win player of the year, it wasn’t to be midfielder of the year.”

Since his 2005 graduation, he has played professionally—which he continues to do—has an equipment line through STX called K18, represents Nike in footwear and apparel, and has a company called Playmaker Lacrosse Camps.

And he works to build visibility of the sport.

“I think the one thing that changes when you’re a pro, you want to be in front of kids, you want to promote the sport.

“Your job is to grow the sport and hopefully get more kids involved.”

Harrison conducted more than 215 clinics last year. He takes the sport to an inner city or to places in mid-America where nobody plays. This year, in addition to numerous stops in the U.S., he has traveled to Finland and England to promote lacrosse. He plans to travel to Thailand later this year.

“Always in front of kids—got to be.”

Harrison remembers when Gary Gait—one of the best ever to play the sport—conducted a clinic at Friends, and did another at a lacrosse camp he attended.

“That stuff means something. I would have never thought I would be in a position to mean something to a kid, but I think I am—and I take that very seriously.”

Correction: Kyle Harrison's K18 equipment line was originally misidentified in this article.