North Crowley ISD Hires DC DeMarcus Harris as Next Head Football Coach

The Panthers promote their defensive coordinator to lead the program following Ray Gates’ departure for the University of North Texas

Fort Worth North Crowley hired DeMarcus Harris as the new football coach at a Jan. 8 meeting. / Michael Horbovetz

North Crowley is staying in-house for its next head football coach.

During a board meeting on Thursday, Jan. 8, the North Crowley ISD board of trustees approved the hiring of DeMarcus Harris as the new football coach to replace Ray Gates. He has been the defensive coordinator for the past two years.

Newly promoted North Crowley head coach DeMarcus Harris:

"I wake up with my tank full, and I’m trying to empty the tank every day. And what a blessing. I lost my mom a couple of years ago. I know she is smiling down from heaven, watching her son take this job.” #TXHSFB

— Charles Baggarly (@swaggarly) January 9, 2026

Like Gates, he has ties to the Cedar Hill football program.

Harris has over 20 years of coaching experience, including as an assistant coach, defensive coordinator, and head coach. He joined North Crowley in the spring of 2024 after being the head coach at Mesquite High School.

He was part of Cedar Hill’s coaching staff that was a state runner-up in 2020 and guided Mesquite to the playoffs in his first year.

He was 13-19 in three years as the Skeeters’ head coach.

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Looking ahead

He inherits a roster that still has some key pieces and reached the regional final this year, before bowing out to Allen.

North Crowley was 12-2 this year and opened the year No. 1 in the High School on SI/SB Live Texas Top 25 poll. The team lost 37-35 to Rockwall before rebounding to go 6-0 in 3-6A play to win another district title.

North Crowley beat Keller, Midland Lee and Coppell before losing to then-unbeaten Allen.

Allen lost the next game to Duncanville in the state semifinals.

The Panthers will lose some Division 1 talent from this year’s team again, but the cupboard is far from bare. That could’ve been said before John Meredith III, the No. 1 recruit in the state in the Class of 2027, announced he has transferred there from Euless Trinity on Jan. 7.

RELATED: No. 1-ranked CB in 2027 Class Transfers to New School in Texas

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Harris' background

Harris started this coaching journey in 2007 at Dallas Hillcrest as the special teams coordinator, strength and conditioning coach and track coach. He was a defensive coordinator at Little Elm and co-defensive coordinator at Arlington Juan Seguin.

He joined Cedar Hill as assistant head coach and defensive coordinator in 2017. Mesquite hired him as the head coach in 2021.

North Crowley announced his hiring on June 28, 2024.

His tenure at Cedar Hill overlapped with that of Gates, who as there from 2017 to 2022. Gates left to become North Crowley’s head coach in 2023 and won the Class 6A Division 1 title in 2024.

Gates recently left for a job at North Texas, where he will be a defensive line coach and special assistant to new head coach Neal Brown.

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What to know

Harris is a 2001 graduate of Pittsburg High School and later played football at Austin College in Sherman. He was a linebacker for the Kangaroos.

His journey through childhood and schooling included more than a few hurdles. CBS-affiliated KTVT profiled Harris in a 2021 piece where he talked growing up with a father in prison, a mother with substance abuse issues, a brother who died in a gas leak explosion and sleeping wherever he could at one age.