Ajeenah Miles reached for the remote as Syracuse faced Liberty on the television screen in front of her. Something in the last frame had caught her eye. The game broadcast transitioned into a commercial break, but Miles pressed the rewind button.
Her son, SU receiver Taj Harris, sat at the corner of the bench — eyes directed toward the camera, orange gloves wrapped around his hands — and flipped his middle finger upright. Harris’ frustrations from Syracuse’s three losses of 2020 were displayed with two minutes left in the fourth quarter — all in one gesture.
After the Liberty game, Miles’ phone rang. “I’m sorry mom, I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” Harris said. But it wasn’t an embarrassment in Miles’ eyes. She knew her son was emotional at times, especially in sports. “Everybody makes mistakes,” she told Harris and checked if he apologized to his coaches and teammates, something he already did.
“You live and you learn. It’s a lesson,” Miles said. “The road isn’t always smooth.”
Miles knows that an incident like last year’s could repeat this season since Harris gets frustrated easily. But the biggest lesson he learned from his mom was determination to succeed, even “when your back is against the wall,” Harris said. That’s why Harris came back for one more year, after what was supposed to be his breakout year last season evolved into a speed bump.
Harris returned for another season with the Orange so that one day he could give his mom — who he considers his “everything” — a better life. Her name, Ajeenah, is the first thing he had permanently tattooed onto his body, in black ink on his left forearm. He can’t remember a time in his life when Miles, specializing in private care, wasn’t going to work every day.
“Watching me every day and seeing me go to work to take care of them,” Miles said. “He’s got that get up and go, do what you have to do mentality.”
Shannon Kirkpatrick | Presentation Director
Miles knows that an incident like last year’s could repeat this season since Harris gets frustrated easily. But the biggest lesson he learned from his mom was determination to succeed, even “when your back is against the wall,” Harris said. That’s why Harris came back for one more year, after what was supposed to be his breakout year last season evolved into a speed bump.
Harris returned for another season with the Orange so that one day he could give his mom — who he considers his “everything” — a better life. Her name, Ajeenah, is the first thing he had permanently tattooed onto his body, in black ink on his left forearm. He can’t remember a time in his life when Miles, specializing in private care, wasn’t going to work every day.
“Watching me every day and seeing me go to work to take care of them,” Miles said. “He’s got that get up and go, do what you have to do mentality.”
Miles can’t remember a time when Harris didn’t have a ball in his hand. The competitive advice that Miles passed down to her kids first manifested in sports, specifically basketball for Harris. Miles remembers Harris finding empty crates around the neighborhood and cutting out the bottoms to make baskets.
He walked to neighbors’ houses, asking the parents of his friends if he could help their kids get better. Then, he would challenge them on his makeshift basketball court, making marks on the ground with chalk and trading shots with the other kids.
Harris quickly moved from his neighborhood to a nearby Pop Warner team in first grade. But it meant he and some of his friends needed transportation. Miles made sure to keep a “good running car,” a black Chevy Tahoe, for practices and games. She moved around her schedule to cope with Harris’ everchanging seasons. Whether it was basketball, football or even track and field, Miles tried to make every event, even if it meant she would have to return to work after the final whistle.
Miles’ Tahoe took Harris to basketball practice since Harris’ middle school didn’t have a football team for him to play on. He dominated on the court, even catching the eye of Jack Geisel — the head coach of the high school he would soon attend.
“He could dunk a basketball when he was in seventh grade,” Geisel said. “I never saw him play football, just heard about it.”
But in his first summer tryout for Palmyra (New Jersey) High School’s basketball team, Harris ran into a roadblock. He missed one of his dunks before leaving practice to attend his mom’s cousin’s funeral and was crying on his way to the church.
“He said, ‘Mom, I missed it. Mom, I missed it.’ I thought he was saying, ‘Mom I miss him. Mom I miss him,’” Miles said. “That hurt his heart. That was the first and the last time that he missed anything.”
Miles comforted Harris, encouraging him to continue on with his athletic pursuits in high school. Harris made the basketball team and starred on its roster for the rest of high school, averaging 25.2 points as a senior. After his freshman season, Geisel asked Harris to join the varsity football team in his sophomore year.
But Harris had only played Pop Warner football, where his athletic talent separated him from the other kids. In high school he needed to develop technical skills for the game — practice he lost because of his time playing basketball.
Luckily for Harris, PHS’ varsity team at the time was led by two rising seniors, quarterback Max Smyth and receiver Kelvin Harmon — a future wide receiver at NC State and in the NFL as a free agent. Harris started to spend time with the duo after school at their houses. Then, the trio would travel to the field next to Harris’ house, with Smyth throwing passes to Harmon and Harris.
While Miles was inside the house, she saw Harris work with Smyth and Harmon on the field where he first started playing sports. He ran routes, working on his timing and awareness while “perfecting his craft”, Symth said, along with him and Harmon. The trio still practice at Legion Field every offseason, Smyth said.
But in the classroom Harris had a “television personality,” Geisel said, and he would get in trouble for disrupting class. Miles would go to school during some of these missteps, making sure that Harris kept his spot on the team.
“She would get in there and take care of him, come be his rock and get him back on that right path,” Geisel said. “That relationship he has with her is just tremendous for him.”
Shannon Kirkpatrick | Presentation Director
Other parents approached Miles in the bleachers to say how talented her son was. That year, Geisel said teams started to realize that they didn’t have to just stop Harmon — their scouting reports had to revolve around Harris, too.
PHS trailed 34-14 during the 2015 state semifinals, as Harris returned the opening kickoff for the third quarter. Geisel knew the other team was worried about Harris, but the opposition were unaware that Harris was in the middle of the field for the kickoff, sending the ball short. He scooped the ball and scored. Harris later added a touchdown after a field goal block later in the game, too. His two special teams touchdowns — and a third receiving one on a slant pass by Smyth — gave PHS a 35-34 lead that it wouldn’t relinquish.
“His ability to make people miss is a gift that you don’t see very often,” PHS athletic director Mike Papenberg said. “You kind of recognize he’s a special gifted athlete in order to make big athletic football players miss him on the field.”
As a sophomore, Harris recorded 51 catches for 1,101 yards and 13 touchdowns. But for the next two seasons, without Smyth and Harmon on his team, Harris didn’t have anyone to throw the ball to him. He continued to work out at Legion Field, now practicing at what used to be Smyth’s position. He fell out of the top-100 receivers in his class, even the top-20 in his state.
After head coach Dino Babers impressed his mom during the recruiting process by promising that SU would serve as an alternate family, Harris accepted an offer from Syracuse. Miles cried while dropping off Harris at Syracuse, nervous about how the move would affect her son.
“Just adapting to the school and being away from home and learning how to trust people, everyone out there,” Miles said. “It’s been a lot (for him).”
When he arrived in Syracuse, Harris wasn’t on the second wide receiver unit. He moved in early, desperate to change his spot on the depth chart and challenge the best cornerbacks on the team in practice.
Harris spent the entire summer in Syracuse lifting, running and catching passes, trying to build chemistry with the quarterbacks like he did with Smyth as a sophomore in high school.
Similar to his sophomore year in high school, Harris mastered simple routes that were a staple in Babers’ playbook, like slants and hitches, earning his first start eight games into the season.
He was “skinny,” former Syracuse quarterback Eric Dungey said, but he relentlessly hit the weight room for the first time in his career, becoming a blocking threat as well as a vertical receiving one.
Harris broke the all-time Syracuse freshmen records in receptions and receiving yards with 40 and 565 yards, respectively. Miles took her Tahoe up to Syracuse at the end of the year to see Harris’ record-breaking 40th catch and 565th yard against Florida State. She was emotional again, like her son.
“I’m at the game crying,” Miles said. “He does a lot of stuff that makes me proud.”
Harris was set to take over as Syracuse’s No. 1 offensive option after leading receiver Jamal Custis graduated in 2018, but over the next two seasons, Syracuse only won six games. In 2020, SU’s offense was the third-worst in the country, according to the NCAA.
This was the first time in Harris’ life when he wasn’t “winning championships,” Miles said. Geisel said Harris would show if he wasn’t happy as a high school player, something that Geisel said was apparent throughout the 2020 season. He began to miss catches and would often wave his arms after failed plays or fall to the ground pounding his first in the turf.
Harris felt like he had a lot of “room for improvement” this offseason, he said. He knew he had to increase his weight to help him fight off defenders and enlisted the help of his mother and put on 10 to 15 pounds with a “mountain” of food everyday while he was home for the summer, Miles said.
Miles looks back at photos and can’t believe how her “skinny” son put on so much weight in the last few seasons. She even started working out more herself, using the same habits that her son utilized after seeing her work for his entire lifetime.
Usually, Miles cries while dropping off Harris to training camp every season, nervous about what’s to come for her youngest son. This year, she didn’t. Miles isn’t nervous anymore, as she knows that Harris is ready for redemption.
“We all grew together and inspire each other,” Miles said. “This is his dream. I’m just supporting him.”
Published on September 1, 2021 at 11:41 pm
Contact Anish: asvasude@syr.edu | @anish_vasu
