It’s funny how things come up in conversation. When I called Harris County’s men’s basketball coach Patavius Sorrell in late October, I expected a fairly standard interview – an average or above average high school or college player who wanted to stay close to the game he loved, so he went into coaching. I didn’t look for any twists or turns in the story, just a typical path from high school to college to coaching. I had my set order of questions, and when I asked if Coach Sorrell played basketball at Kendrick High School, his alma mater, I figured I already knew the answer. As such, I was getting ready to ask my next question. That’s when Coach Sorrell gave one of the most surprising answers to any question I’ve heard in eight years of writing for In the Game.
“No, I didn’t play basketball,” he says, rather calmly given the subject matter. “I suffered a spinal cord injury in 1996. It caused a blood clot on my spinal cord, and I was paralyzed for a year. I was supposed to be paralyzed forever, but I ended up pulling out of it.”
What?
I asked him to repeat himself. He obliged. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Coach Sorrell elaborated. The year before he was paralyzed, he fell hard during a basketball game. He injured his back when he fell, and that injury lingered until it ballooned into full-blown paralysis.
“I finished the game, but my back problems persisted,” he says. “I couldn’t walk very well, but I did start getting better.”
The fall effectively ended Sorrell’s basketball career. A year after the fall, he was at his grandmother’s house. He woke up in the morning and couldn’t feel his feet. He tried to get out of bed and fell to the floor. His family rushed him to the hospital where doctors found the blood clot. They removed it, but Sorrell was left paralyzed from the waist down.
Despite the ominous prognosis, Sorrell refused to give up.
“What helped me with my recovery? Faith,” he says. “My pastor visited me over and over. He tried to help me with my homework, but he couldn’t. So he helped me with the faith part. My physical therapist challenged me every day.”
After a year of immobility, Sorrell finally moved a toe. From there, the process grew. Five years later, he was able to walk and run unassisted.
Sorrell’s recovery was nothing short of miraculous. But it left him with some serious questions to answer.
“Like any kid, I wanted to play in high school, then college, then the NBA,” he says. “I always wanted to get back on the court. But when I was in the ninth grade, I realized that playing basketball wouldn’t be in my future. I didn’t want to coach. I wanted to play. I considered doing a lot of different things, from being an aeronautical engineer to being a physical therapist.”
Eventually, however, he fell into coaching.
Sorrell attended Columbus State University and began doing a little coaching while he was there. He earned a degree in secondary education history. He did his student teaching at Shaw High School, where he also served as a community coach. Shaw hired him to teach, and he joined the basketball staff full-time. Sorrell was an assistant basketball coach, head ninth grade coach, and he also handled the scheduling for freshman basketball countywide.
After six years at Shaw, he had the opportunity to take over the embattled Harris County program. Harris County took a chance on a relatively untested young coach in Sorrell. It ended up being the best move the Tigers could have made.
Harris County wasn’t very good when Sorrell arrived on campus. The year before he arrived, the Tigers were 7-20. There wasn’t a lot of pressure to win. Expectations were low. However, Coach Sorrell wouldn’t settle for anything but the best.
Last season was his first at Harris. The Tigers got out to a slow start. A few weeks into the season, though, the lights came on.
“One day, everything clicked,” he says. “You could see it. They started trusting each other. We went on several good runs, and we were able to sneak up on a lot of teams. Once people started respecting us, we had to see what we were made of.”
The Tigers ended up with a 17-10 mark, and they played for a region championship. They finished second in the region to LaGrange but still hosted a home playoff game for the first time in quite a while. Harris County lost by two points in the first round to a very good Jones County team. The kids left the court with that sickening feeling that only comes from having a big game slip through your fingers. At the same time, they were more determined than ever to keep getting better.
This year, Sorrell’s second as Harris County head coach, the Tigers want to win the region and make a deep playoff run. They have eight kids back from last year’s team, and all of those players have tasted success.
“The guys just bought into our system, and it worked for them,” he says. “We felt like we could have won the region a few times. We made a lot of mistakes last year. Our goal this year is to minimize our mistakes, win the region, and go farther than we did in 2015.”
It would be easy to sit back and enjoy a winning season and a trip to the playoffs. But that’s not what Coach Sorrell and his players want. The little bit of success they found last year has only made them hungry for more. They had a blast a year ago, but they feel a little beaten down after the season ended so abruptly in the first round. They are ready to pick themselves up and achieve even more. And those players are in just the right place. For if there’s one thing Coach Sorrell knows how to do, it’s to get up and move forward, even when it looks impossible.
Coach’s Corner/Columbus Valley/December 2015
Patavius Sorrell
Harris County High School
Hamilton, Ga.
by: Robert Preston Jr.
Photographer: Jerry Christenson
New coach, new result for the Tigers
