Erik Teague left the game early. He had a good excuse — he has a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old — but Teague, the football coach at Reidsville (N.C.) High, learned the news via text message.
Kendre Harrison, the five-star tight end on the Reidsville football team, had dunked the ball so hard on a baseline drive that he shattered the backboard. With glass covering the floor and Reidsville leading Morehead by 20 points with just under five minutes to play, officials called the game early.
2026 Top-10 athlete Kendre Harrison called game and shattered the backboard last night🤯
(🎥: @SupremeDre8)https://t.co/7r4uuN0szR
— On3 Recruits (@On3Recruits) February 14, 2024
Harrison broke another rim last week in gym class.
Well @SupremeDre8 has done it again!! No more basketball in gym class moving forward!!😎👀@ReidsvilleHoops pic.twitter.com/2B0oLtUAN4
— Coach Ross (@RamsBballhoops) May 16, 2024
“That was definitely something that kind of blew up for him,” Teague said. “I think they’re gonna have to stop letting him dunk in PE class.”
That might be the case, but Harrison will not stop playing basketball — despite being one of the top football prospects in the Class of 2026.
In an era of specialization with top players focusing on just one sport, the 6-foot-7 Harrison is the rare athlete who wants to do the opposite.
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He’s a five-star on the football field, ranked No. 6 overall and the No. 1 tight end in his class. And he’s a four-star prospect on the basketball court as the nation’s No. 31 player and No. 4 power forward.
“I want to play both for at least one year and go from there and see how it goes,” Harrison said. “I definitely know I want to play both no matter where I go.”
Harrison’s recruitment in football has moved much faster than it has in basketball, partially because football is his stronger sport and partially due to the slower nature of basketball recruiting.
Teague said Harrison picked up his first football offer the summer before his freshman year when he attended a Wake Forest camp with a couple of Reidsville upperclassmen.
“I guess (Wake Forest) saw what he was probably going to turn into,” Teague said. “And that was really before we even worked with him as a high school staff. So they called one of our assistant coaches, Doug Marrs, just to ask about him, and we really didn’t have much information.
“That was definitely the first time for us that someone had gotten attention that early on.”
It’s only increased from there.
Harrison had a promising freshman year, especially as he started to get more comfortable with routes and concepts in the second half of the season. He finished the year with 17 catches for 263 yards and five touchdowns as the Rams played for a state championship.
“Just from what he was able to put on film and just that natural size and athletic ability, it just kind of blew up in the spring semester of his freshman year, which was last spring,” Teague said. “Every day somebody was calling or asking about him.”
Harrison more than tripled his production as a sophom*ore last fall, catching 62 passes for 940 yards and 16 touchdowns.
Kirby Smart from Georgia visited earlier this spring, as did James Franklin from Penn State, Mike Norvell from Florida State, all of the in-state head coaches in North Carolina and too many assistants to count.
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“Pretty much anybody you could think of sent somebody,” Teague said. “Maybe not necessarily their head coach, but … Florida, Auburn, Oregon (were) here, Notre Dame was here. It almost gets kind of overwhelming to even try to start naming them off.”
Harrison said earlier this month at the Under Armour Next Football Camp Series in Charlotte that he had already made plans to visit Tennessee in June and Oregon in July. He also mentioned USC, Texas, Penn State and Georgia as other schools he’s been talking to. Oklahoma, Notre Dame — which he said on social media was his “dream school” — Ole Miss, LSU, Kentucky, Miami and others have offered this spring.
On the basketball side, Harrison won a state championship with Reidsville this season as the Rams went a perfect 29-0. He averaged 19.4 points, 15.1 rebounds and 3.7 blocks per game as a sophom*ore. He has fielded basketball offers from NC State, Wake Forest, Florida State and Texas A&M.
The Tar Heels have yet to offer him a scholarship in basketball, but Harrison is no stranger to coach Hubert Davis and his staff. He’s made the one-hour trip to campus 15 times: 12 times for football and three times for basketball. He attended the UNC-Duke basketball game as a football recruit but is currently playing on the grassroots basketball circuit and said he played in front of North Carolina coaches at the John Wall Holiday Invitational in December.
“I grew up a Duke fan. I was always a Duke fan, and then I saw the inside of Carolina,” Harrison said of attending the Tar Heels-Blue Devils basketball game. “I never really got recruited by Duke; I always got recruited by Carolina football and basketball. So I just kind of changed my perception on UNC.
“I talk to Hubert Davis all the time. I talk to (assistant coach) (Jeff) Lebo. He was telling me how they love how I play on the court.”
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Harrison is hopeful the Tar Heels will offer him a basketball scholarship, but he knows UNC doesn’t typically offer sophom*ores. In the meantime, he’ll wait.
Harrison said he plans to talk to Oregon’s basketball staff when he flies out to visit with the football team this summer.
A decent number of athletes play football and baseball in college, but the timing — plus the wear and tear on the body — makes it far more difficult to play football and basketball. Charlie Ward won the Heisman Trophy at Florida State in 1993 and also played for the Seminoles basketball team before going on to play 11 years in the NBA. Tony Gonzalez, an NFL Hall of Fame tight end, was a standout in both sports at Cal in the mid-1990s. More recently, Jimmy Graham played tight end and forward for the Miami Hurricanes in the late 2000s.
To help him navigate his future, Harrison sought advice from one of the most successful dual-sport athletes — and a fellow North Carolina native.
“Julius Peppers, I’ve talked to him a couple times,” Harrison said. “He said it’s hard, but he definitely (said) it’s worth my time.
“People, when they compare me and him, it’s just how he played both and how I like to play both.”
Harrison said the quality of the basketball program will not play a big factor in his recruitment, as long as he gets the opportunity to play both sports.
Should he pull this off, he’d be in rare air.
“I think he definitely has the talent and the ability to (play both). It’s just (a matter of) not getting behind in one or the other,” Teague said. “The football side is a lot more — I would imagine is a lot more — mental, just knowing the plays, knowing where to line up, things like that. Basketball at the college level I’m sure is a little bit more than just, ‘Go out there and play.’ It’s just a lot being a part of two programs, especially at the level that he’s getting recruited at. I think there would be a lot of expectations from him at that level.
“But yes, he could do it. It wouldn’t be easy, but he definitely has the ability to kind of pick whichever one if it comes down to it.”
(Photo:Joe L. Hughes II / USA Today)
Grace Raynor is a staff writer for The Athletic covering recruiting and southeastern college football. A native of western North Carolina, she graduated from the University of North Carolina. Follow Grace on Twitter @gmraynor
