Sam Harris had a critical choice to make in his senior year of high school. He could either take the safe route and compete with Mahtomedi High School for one more year of varsity hockey in his home state of Minnesota or he could make the jump up into junior hockey and compete with the St. Cloud Norsemen of the North American Hockey League (NAHL), which could bring lots of exposure and critical development to his game as a prospect or it could lead to a lifetime of regret on missing out on his final year of varsity hockey with some of his longtime friends. 

Harris, a 6-foot defenseman, had already competed in three seasons of high school hockey up through that point in his life. The Zephyrs won the Class A state title in epic double-overtime fashion in his sophomore season and had made state tournament appearances in his freshman and junior years as well, so the Mahtomedi native had already accomplished quite a bit in the ranks of varsity hockey. In addition to that, Harris wore the ‘C’ for the squad as a junior and was also the top-scoring blueliner on the roster, so the decision to stay in high school or to forgo his final year of varsity eligibility was not a choice that came easily. 

The Minnesota defenseman had skated with a few teams in the NAHL after the conclusion of his junior year of high school hockey to get his feet wet a little bit at the next level. He eventually found the St. Cloud Norsemen, conveniently located just over an hour away from home, and clicked with the coaching staff and the overall atmosphere that was found there. Harris wound up getting drafted by the Norsemen in the third round, 91st overall, in the NAHL Entry Draft that summer, so the team clearly felt the same way and saw the potential in the young, left-shot defender. 

Harris started out the 2024-25 season with his new junior team, as many other high school athletes do prior to the start of the varsity hockey season, and was originally planning on returning to Mahtomedi for his final year of eligibility with the Zephyrs. After playing in a handful of games with the Norsemen, Harris had to have some tough conversations with those around him, including his advisor, his parents, his high school coaches and junior coaches, and came to the decision that - even though he’d love to return to Mahtomedi - it would be best for his development to stay in the NAHL for his senior year. It was simply an opportunity at the next level that he couldn’t pass up. 

The 2024-25 season then brought quite a few changes as Harris had to live with a billet family up in the St. Cloud area to compete with the Norsemen, and he enrolled in PSEO (post-secondary education option) classes to complete his high school degree, but he was eager to accept the new challenges that came his way despite being one of the youngest skaters on the entire roster. 

Harris’s rookie season in the NAHL saw him post a goal and nine assists through 50 games played. There were some ups and downs throughout the year, as there always are in any athlete’s first year up at the next level, but Harris appreciated his time in St. Cloud. He now looks back fondly on the many road trips he had with his teammates, where the team bus would always comically break down at unfortunate moments, but Harris learned a lot and was able to compete against guys that were much older and stronger than the level of competition that he would’ve seen in the ranks of Minnesota High School hockey. 

It wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows, though, deciding to join the NAHL, and there was a time when Harris thought that maybe his choice was the wrong one. 

“There was a time when I thought I had made a wrong decision. After the USHL draft, when I didn’t get drafted, it was pretty hard, and I thought maybe I regretted it,” Harris thought originally after a full year in the NAHL and still getting passed up in the USHL draft in the summer that followed. “But I just had to put my head down and realize that the decision was worth it, and I found a good camp to go to with my advisor, which was with Green Bay, and then had a good camp and rolled from there.”

Although it was disappointing not to get chosen in the USHL draft that summer, Harris kept working at his goal and knew that he’d have to go to a few USHL camps to get a team to take a chance on him through that route. He knew that it was unlikely for teams to take on many undrafted prospects to their official rosters, but that it was certainly a possibility. 

The very first camp he attended was for the Green Bay Gamblers. Harris’s mindset was to go in, perform his best, and just see what happens. He ended up playing quite well and made the cut to attend the training camp for the squad. He then impressed in the preseason and made it through the final rounds of cuts to officially make the roster for the 2025-26 season. So, even though it seemed like his decision to spend his senior year in the NAHL may have originally been a mistake, he realized that it was actually the correct choice all along, as it truly prepared him to play at the next level. 

“I kind of started off at the bottom of the totem pole [at the beginning of the season in 2025-26] and then just kept working my way up and then at the end of the season I was playing upwards of 20/over 20 minutes a night,” Harris told APX Hockey in a phone call interview in late May. 

It took some adjusting to get used to the speed and skill of the USHL this past season after advancing up from the NAHL, but the biggest thing for Harris was just simplifying his game at first to earn the trust of the coaching staff and then slowly adding more elements and dimensions to his game from there as the year went on. The defenseman from Mahtomedi wound up registering a goal and 10 assists through 58 games with a strong Green Bay squad that finished in third place in the USHL Eastern Conference standings. 

Throughout the past few years of the Minnesotan’s hockey career, he had started to watch his friends and colleagues earn their college commitments and started to wonder when his moment would come. He knew that it would come eventually if he kept his head down and worked hard for that opportunity, and one day, that opportunity came calling. 

“It was slow until it wasn’t,” said Harris about the college recruiting process. “My plan was fully to go back to Green Bay next year [in the fall of 2026] until Bemidji State just came in and started asking about what my plan was for next year. They said they needed another guy, and so I went up and visited and in the span of like a week or so went up and visited, loved the campus, loved the coaching staff, and just loved the opportunity that was going to be there and decided it was too good to turn down.” 

Harris took an official visit to the college campus in Northern Minnesota in May and wound up announcing his commitment to the program shortly after on May 20, 2026.

“Beyond grateful to announce my commitment to play Division I hockey for Bemidji State University. Huge thank you to everyone who helped me get to this point,” Harris posted to his personal social media pages. 

As someone who has been a part of the APX training program since 2023, the APX staff describes Harris as a versatile defender who plays a 200-foot game and will do whatever it takes to win. He was a high-impact offensive threat in high school, but has become more tactical with his offense at the puck in juniors and has leaned into his awareness and processing as a passer, and has become a sharp decision maker. He’s a tenacious competitor and takes a lot of pride in his defense and enjoys bringing a physical edge to the ice as well. 

“It’s just so fun to remember that first year [in 2023, back when he joined the APX family],” said APX Director of Player Development Wes Jirovec. “It’s really great to see a young kid who’s very talented, like he’d been playing varsity hockey before we met him, but he put in a lot of work to establish his habits, and going - ‘hey, here’s what I need to do to be successful and I have to be more detail-oriented, I need to do this day in and day out’ and he had a humility and will to learn and listen and he has always been really, really open and hungry for feedback. His runway is so clear, and it’s just so easy for him to keep getting better and keep improving, and you can see how much he’s soaked in the experience and teachings that he’s gotten from his different spots in junior hockey.” 

Harris self-describes the strengths in his game as his skating, his physicality, and the way that he thinks the game. 

“He’s always had a really high-level gamesmanship, he’s always been a gamer, which is why he’s always great in those state tournaments and in big games, and in his last year of high school he was always up for the big moments, and that translated really well towards pressure scenarios at juniors camps and then obviously when you’re establishing yourself on new teams too because every night it’s like your Game 7,” added Jirovec. 

Harris is currently on track to join Bemidji State’s roster this upcoming fall. He might not declare a major right away, but is considering something such as Economics. He doesn’t really know any of his future Beaver teammates well at the moment but there will plenty of other skaters from the state of hockey out on the ice with him in the fall such as current rostered players in Luke Roelofs (Minnetrista / Holy Family) and Tory Lund (Sartell), among other incoming freshman as well such as Eddie Revenig (Edina) and Isaac Johnson (Fergus Falls) and transfer Joe Gramer (Moorhead / Nebraska Omaha). One of Harris’s favorite parts of junior hockey was getting to meet new teammates that will end up becoming lifelong friends, so he doesn’t shy away from joining new teams and getting to meet new people.

Harris’s career in hockey may be taking him to Bemidji this fall, which is located just under four hours away from his hometown, but it all started in Mahtomedi. Harris, the middle child in his family with both an older and a younger brother, started playing hockey through the Mahtomedi youth organization and then played with the Zephyrs all the way up through his junior year of high school. He has fond memories of watching the high school team play when he was a young skater, including watching the 2020 Mahtomedi squad win its first state title when he was in middle school, so when he was finally able to join the varsity squad as a freshman, it was an exciting time. 

The defenseman’s first year on varsity came in 2021-22, where he posted 10 assists through 31 games played. The Zephyrs made an appearance at the Class A state tournament and beat Mankato East in the quarterfinals, 4-1, before eventually losing to Warroad in overtime, 5-4, in the semifinals. The squad eventually won the third-place title with a 4-2 win over Alexandria that season. Overall, Mahtomedi posted an 18-12-1 record. 

“It was hard, it was definitely a big jump up from Bantams, but thankfully the group of guys was great, and they were really good at helping me out and showing me the ropes, but on the ice it was definitely a bit of a struggle and a bit of a learning curve,” Harris said about his freshman season. He also felt bad at the end of that season after taking a penalty in the state semifinal overtime period that eventually led to Warroad’s game-winning goal - but oh well, there’s nothing you can do about that after that fact besides focus on the next game and the next season. 

Going from Year 1 to Year 2 was big for Harris. As he entered his sophomore season, he became more of a staple on the defensive core for the Zephyrs and started to play more and more in critical situations. Mahtomedi posted an overall 23-8 record that season, and Harris registered a goal and 19 assists through 31 games played. 

“I definitely had more confidence, but at the same time there was a lot of pressure to perform after already being on the team for a year, but it was a good year again, and I loved that group of guys, and I have no complaints about my first two years. We had a lot of fun,” he said. “I always think that we thought we had a good group because there were so many seniors and they were all great guys, so we definitely had a feeling that we could do something special as a team, and obviously we did, so it was a great year.”

Mahtomedi was feeling confident heading into sections and into the state tournament as the team went on a 12-game winning streak to end the year, which included beating Alexandria, 6-3, in the state quarterfinals before an impressive 2-1 semifinal victory over Hermantown in the state semifinals. Defeating the Hawks, who are consistently a powerhouse team in Class A, made the whole squad feel confident after the team had lost in the semifinal round for multiple seasons over the past 10 years or so. The only time that Mahtomedi had won the semifinal round led to their first state title in 2020, so Harris and company were excited about the chance to do it again in 2023. 

It wasn’t easy in the state title game that year, though, as Warroad and Mahtomedi went to double overtime in the championship match before Johnny Grove scored the game-winning goal against a star-studded Warriors squad in a victory that shocked the masses. Mahtomedi had to come back from being down a goal or two multiple times in the game, and they faced plenty of bad luck and bad bounces, but nevertheless, they persevered to greatness. Chaos ensued after the game as Zephyrs fans went crazy in the arena at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul (now recently renamed the Grand Casino Arena). 

“I remember I had just changed, so I came back to the bench, and it was right off of the face-off, in the offensive zone, and it was some stupid name for a play we had like ‘lava cake’ or something, because some kid on my team loved lava cakes, and it just worked out,” joked Harris about the victory. “Then we were all celebrating, and I saw this kid out on the ice and was like ‘hey I know that guy!’ and was like ‘what are you doing down here? How did you even get on the ice?’, and our captain (Charlie Drage - who led ACHA II Univ. of Texas in scoring this season) also jumped into the glass celebrating and chipped his two front teeth and they were totally messed up in all the celebration pictures, which was pretty funny.”

Mahtomedi’s victory had crazy moments in the celebration to follow, which included a student fan jumping over the glass to be on the ice with the team following the win (which is what Harris described in the aforementioned quote). The game will go down as one of the most fun and crazy Class A championships that have happened over the past decade, and as one of the most chaotic games in Class A title match history.

“That game was insane, and it’s just a testament to the leadership on our team and the coaching staff,” said Harris. 

Harris then went on to captain the Mahtomedi squad as a junior in 2023-24 and took his game to the next level that season, posting 8G-25A through 33GP. He was the top-scoring defenseman and was trusted in all situations. 

“It was nice to be named captain and to have a chance to be a leader my junior year,” said Harris. “It didn’t start off right. We started pretty slow, but we had some conversations with our coaches and figured some things out, and it just kind of exploded from there.”

The Zephyrs again made it to the state tournament that year and won their quarterfinal game against Orono before eventually losing in overtime to Hermantown, 7-6, despite an early 4-0 deficit in the first period. Harris had an impressive end to his junior season, scoring 18 points through the final nine games of the year, which included scoring the overtime game-winner in the section final and a four-point game in the state semifinal against Hermantown. 

“Everyone thought that game was over [against Hermantown] but we just stuck with it, that’s kind of Mahtomedi’s thing, we don’t really give up and we’re a pretty battle-ready team because we play a great schedule, so we found a way to get back in that game and it didn’t go the way we wanted but our coaches have been there so much and our schedule caters to harder teams and a lot of double-A teams and really good single-A teams so we play great competition all year, so I think that definitely helps with our success,” he said about the end of his junior year, which wound up being his final game of varsity hockey before joining the NAHL full time the year after. 

Harris achieved plenty of things at Mahtomedi during his three seasons there and will always be a big part of the 2023 state championship squad. He’ll bring his leadership and defensive skills out on the ice to Bemidji this fall in 2026, where his work ethic, athleticism, and 200-foot game are sure to earn the respect of Beavers fans from all over.

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