Enrique Ortega is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Central High School for AZPreps365.com

During any of Central High School's girls volleyball games, with the constant sounds coming from the players and the chants from the fans, the coach, Kristin Harris, is the loudest one in the room.

Harris is easy to spot on the sidelines as she stands at 6 feet, 2 inches, and is one of the few white people in the gym.

Central is a part of the Phoenix Union High School district. The district's website describes its demographics as 96.1% minority. Central, itself, has a minority enrollment rate of 93.2% according to U.S.News. 

Central’s varsity volleyball team does not have any white players. 

“It's tough for the girls to not have a leader that doesn't necessarily look like them,” Harris said. “So being here at Central, I just tried to make sure that I'm culturally sensitive to lots of people. I feel like we have a very diverse group, which is awesome. I want to make sure that we feel honored to be so diverse.”

Harris is from a rural town in Michigan and went to college in New York City where she went on to eventually start her teaching career at A. Philip Randolph Campus High School in Harlem. 

“​​It was in the heart of Harlem,” said Harris’ husband, Ruon Harris, who is black. “So a lot of her students [were] from different backgrounds. She was definitely around different groups of kids from different walks of life and I think the experience she gained from just talking to them and learning more about them has helped her understand more.”

After teaching in New York, Kristin Harris moved to Phoenix where she continued teaching and coaching at predominantly minority schools. 

Her previous experience before moving to Central was at Madison Highland Prep. Harris recalled how her former team used to travel outside of Phoenix to various rural towns in Arizona. 

“These are inner city kids,” Harris recalled about an incident an administrator at a school outside of Phoenix said about her team. “We need to make sure we lock everything and we're not going to let them in the locker room because they'll take our stuff.”

She did not let that comment go without a chance to step up and protect her players. 

“I had to defend my team,” Harris said. “And approaching that person as another white person and saying, ‘Hey, that's not OK. You don't speak about my players that way.’”

Harris asked the administrator, at the time, to apologize to the entire team.

“It wasn't received well, but the administrator did apologize,” Harris said. “The team didn't deserve that and it was difficult to overcome right before we were supposed to play a game. That made me even more protective of my team.”

At Central, Harris has continued to defend her team's different cultural backgrounds and even fought back last year against an Arizona Interscholastic Association regulation against wearing beads in the hair. 

“We had a student on the [boys] JV team wearing beads in his hair,” assistant coach Yu Chieh Chang said, “and the ref kind of was like, ‘Hey, you should take that off.’ And [Harris] was like, ‘No, he's allowed to wear whatever he wants on his head. You're not allowed to give us a yellow card for something that is targeting one specific race.’” 

Chang said that if it is not her then it is Harris who will be the first one to defend her team. 

“If we're both there, then we kind of shut it down,” Chang said.

The idea of anyone “being colorblind” does not sit well with Harris.

“​​I kind of hate when people say ‘I don't see color,’” Harris said. “I think a lot of white people say that and it's almost disrespectful. You want to treat everybody equally and you want to make sure that they're getting the same opportunities. But to say that you don't see color is actually disrespectful because you should celebrate that color.”

Harris has been teaching and coaching at Central for two years. Whenever she is on the sidelines, winning or losing, she is always the first to celebrate her team. 

“I would say that I definitely want to celebrate the diversity we have here and to hopefully give [the team] a good female leader to look up to whether I'm white or not,” Harris said.