This feature originally appeared in the 2025 Spring edition of the Cal Sports Quarterly. The Cal Athletics flagship magazine features long-form sports journalism at its finest and provides in-depth coverage of the scholar-athlete experience in Berkeley. Printed copies are mailed four times a year to Bear Backers who give annually at the Bear Club level (currently $600 or more). For more information on how you can receive a printed version of the Cal Sports Quarterly at home, send an email to CalAthleticsFund@berkeley.edu or call (510) 642-2427.
 

Portland, 1971.
 
A young boy, who would one day join Cal's track and field program as its sprints, hurdles and relays coach, stared spellbound up at a nightclub stage where legendary saxophonist Eddie Harris made his horn sing.
 
"Every note was so clear," Ronnye Harrison says. "He was a virtuoso, a genius."
 
Cradled in gentle hands, the notes the saxophone emitted were almost conversational –sound never meant to grab a crowd's attention by force but to offer a whisper of suggestion – Look here! Listen! – into its collective ear.
 
Harrison recalls turning to his mentor, renowned musician and educator Thara Memory, and asking, "Can you play the trumpet like that?" Upon hearing the answer – no – his decision was made: 12-year-old Ronnye Harrison would exchange his own trumpet for a saxophone.
 
As is the case with many childhood musicians, his dreams for the future stretched far. One was to play his new saxophone someday as a member of Earth, Wind & Fire. The other was to lead a band as its conductor, which he thought was "the coolest job in the world." This second goal was inspired by Memory himself, who ran a unique classical-jazz orchestra that enraptured Harrison.
 
Many years later, when Memory felt the urge to form another ensemble to serve Portland's at-risk youth, he called upon his former pupil to pick up a baton and join him. The two, along with fellow saxophonist and educator Greg McKelvey, soon led a 30-person group dubbed the Cultural Recreation Band, destined to grow over the next decade into the 200-strong Accelerated Music Program.
 
"If gangs give them shoes and guns, we'll give them instruments and education," was the directors' mindset. It only took Harrison a month to understand the true impact of the program.
 
"Many of the kids had some troubling situations at home, and band was a way to get away from that," he says. "Lots of them would just hang out after rehearsal and want to practice extra."
 
The ensemble's sound gradually came together. Soon, the little upstart band was offered a unique opportunity: to open for a visiting orchestra from Europe in a public concert. To Harrison's and his colleagues' dismay, however, the performance fell flat – the band just wasn't ready for that stage. This, they vowed afterward, would never happen again.
 
One year later, the same European orchestra visited and extended the invitation again – and the Cultural Recreation Band had been waiting. This time, the first sharp trumpet notes of Dmitri Shostakovich's "Festive Overture" sent an immediate message: Look! How do you like us now?
 
That's right, the horns agreed, as the low brass hummed and nodded below. The high woodwinds released jubilant runs of sound to dance through the air. This was more like it.
 
"I think the other orchestra regretted having us back," Harrison says cheerfully, his laugh a contagious heh-heh-heh. "We didn't make them look better anymore."
 
Time passed, and the band's reputation grew, catching the attention of publications like The Portland Observer on more than one occasion. Inspired by their success, Memory and Harrison collaborated again, launching a new summer program that would touch on the pursuits of music and sport.
 
Local parents were thrilled – here was a way to keep their kids learning and active when they were out of school. A piano teacher was brought in to teach the youngest ones, while the oldest students helped instruct the others before breaking away to practice themselves. In the afternoons, Harrison taught tennis lessons to those same students, who exchanged their instruments for rackets.
 
His efforts in the community did not go unnoticed. In 1998, Harrison received the Lowenstein Trust Award, which is presented each year to an individual who has "demonstrated the greatest contribution to assisting the poor and underprivileged" in the City of Portland. He was then named director of bands at his alma mater of Jefferson High School, where he had gained another beloved mentor in previous director Jim Little. Once more, Harrison's students followed him – even those who did not attend the school itself pushed to enroll in the ensemble.
 
It was at Jefferson where Harrison also took his first notable track & field coaching job, helping the boys 4x100m relay team to an OSAA 4A State title in 2000. He later went on to coach at Portland State, where he led the Vikings to 38 school records and their first NCAA-qualifying performances – and their first All-American – in program history, before moving on to Oklahoma and coaching two All-American relay squads. Harrison first joined the Golden Bears in the fall of 2021; after his first three-and-a-half seasons in Berkeley, his athletes had collected eight All-American nods and 12 school records.
 
Not everyone in his life takes this part of his professional life seriously, despite all of the successes in his career – "My mother always said I never got a real job," he says, while teacher-turned-friend Little keeps encouraging him to finish up this "track thing" and teach clinics with him in Palm Springs – but there's no denying that his sprinters have produced results over the years.
 
These days, it's easy to locate Cal's sprints coach: just follow the sharp tok-tok-tok of the metronome echoing across the track at Edwards Stadium. At its origin, you'll find Harrison, watching beneath his ever-present ballcap as his runners attempt to match the sound's insistent pattern with their strides.
 
"When you focus on the rhythm, you forget how tired you are," he says. "I'm always using metronomes for runners to learn to keep a steady pace."
 
It's just one of many ways that teaching music and track intersect for Harrison, who disagrees with the notion that the two fields are worlds apart.
 
"In music and in coaching, you make the same types of memories and face the same types of challenges," he says. "When teaching music, you struggle to bring band members together to work as one; when coaching a track team, you struggle to teach kids how important it is to be part of a whole, to show them that it's not just their individual events that matter."
 
Even during Cal's jam-packed slate of competition, Harrison ensures that he carves out time every day for his musical endeavors. He plays his saxophone, a beautiful black-lacquered Yanagasawa lovingly dubbed "Sharice," as often as he can. When he's away with the team, he packs scores of music to study on the plane. "I can never not do music," he says. "If I could, I'd have my horn with me all the time."
 
Ronnye Harrison may not have played with Earth, Wind & Fire (yet), but he considers himself a lucky man, nevertheless.
 
"One of the best things I could do in my life was to learn to do something very well and then teach somebody," he says. "It's never been about me in terms of music, track, tennis or any of the other things I've done."
 
So every time he hears a pupil play a note in tune, or his athlete's name called as they run a personal-best time, and knows that he's passed down what Thara Memory, Jim Little and so many others have done for him?
 
Why, it's the sweetest sound of all.