Kelly West AMERICAN-STATESMAN Baylor track head coach Todd Harbour hugs Brittany Brockman after her 6K run at the Big 12 Conference cross country meet Friday, October 31, 2003 at Barton Creek Lakeside Country Club in Spicewood, Texas. Brockman placed 8th individually, and Baylor women placed 2nd as a team.
By JIM IRISH
Special to the PRESS
Todd Harbour is thriving in Port Isabel, the small community on the Texas Gulf Coast where he spent his formative years and jump started what would become a remarkable international track career.
Harbour, Baylor University’s former director of track and field and cross-country coach, returned to his roots in the summer of 2021.
He actually lives on South Padre Island with his wife, Cindy, and crosses the 2.4-mile Queen Isabella Causeway each day to teach junior high American History and coach track and field at the Class 4A school.
After a 25-year career at Baylor, Harbour explained to Bears athletic director Mack Rhoades that he desired to return to South Texas because Cindy’s parents were in their mid-80s.
“We needed to get home,” he says. “We’d been in the (Waco area) for 40 years. I wanted to get her close to her family.”
Harbour had a couple of years remaining on his Baylor contract when he retired at age 61.
“I was happy at Baylor,” he says. “Nobody was forcing me or pushing me to think about resigning. It was the right time for me to step down.”
One of his most thrilling moments at Baylor was coaching Aaliyah Miller to the NCAA indoor title in the 800-meter run at Albuquerque, N.M. in Harbour’s final season. Miller’s time of 2 minutes, 00.69 seconds set a meet record.
“She was one of our all-time greats,” says Harbour about Miller, currently a professional runner training in Colorado. “That was amazing. That was a great memory for me. We’re still close to this day.”
Harbour created many athletic memories himself at then-Class 3A Port Isabel in the 1970s. After moving from Kansas to South Padre with his family at 10 years old, he spent many hours swimming in the surf and running barefoot along the sandy beach, where he developed his aerobic capacity.
In high school, he competed as a 5-foot-10, 130-pound receiver in football, the point guard on the basketball team, and middle-distance runner in track. During the summer, he played baseball, his favorite sport.
Harbour says with certainty that he would have played baseball and not run track at Port Isabel, but the school had no baseball team at the time.
“I would never have run track,” he says. “I ran because it was what we did after basketball.”
Harbour inherited genetic ability in track from his father, Elmer, a star quarter miler at Pittsburg State University in Kansas in the 1950s.
He required little time to assert himself as one of the top 880-yard runners in Texas. He finished second in the event as a sophomore at the state meet, but he and the first-place finisher were both disqualified for accidentally “tangling up their arms” at the finish line.
As a junior, he won and broke the Class 3A state record in the half mile.
“By that time, I knew where my future was,” he says. “It wasn’t until then because I was still playing baseball.”
He repeated as state champion as a senior in 1977 and owns the state half-mile record of 1:51.14 to this day.
Invited to the prestigious Golden West Invitational in Sacramento, Calif., which attracted the best track athletes in the nation, Harbour came from behind in the two-lap event to win in 1:50.1 (1:49.4 in meters), the fastest time in the nation that year.
“I wasn’t expected to win,” he says. “I remember bringing them back. My dad (Harbour’s coach) jumped the fence and gave me a big ol’ hug.”
Before the race, Harbour was so nervous that he vomited. He had a self-talk after the race.
“If I ever do that again, I’m not running,” he remembers saying to himself. “I don’t want this to not be fun. From that point, I never got that nervous.”
Recruited persistently by then-Baylor track coach Clyde Hart, Harbour accepted a full scholarship offer following the regional meet in his senior year. Hart even visited South Texas to watch Harbour compete.
After high school graduation that summer, he made what he considers the most important decision of his life. He and a couple of classmates had bought a six pack of beer and planned to drink it in his pickup truck.
They heard a public service announcement on the radio about a Christian crusade with evangelist James Robison at the football stadium in nearby Harlingen.
“What have we got to lose,” Harbour said to his friends.
At the crusade, he realized he was a sinner and needed a Savior. When Robison gave an invitation, Harbour moved quickly forward and accepted Jesus Christ’s offer of salvation.
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