Ravens’ coach John Harbaugh surprised St. Aloysius students, delivers online morning announcements

Earlier this morning I received an email from a school parent with the subject line “Story idea: Coach John Harbaugh Does Online Morning Announcments for Childhood School”

In the email, this parent contacted Jack Harbaugh, asking if his sons both Jim and John Harbaugh, former students of St. Aloysius, would deliver the morning announcements for the online learning environment. Both graciously agreed.

As Ravens’ fans know, head coach John Harbaugh speaks often of faith, care, compassion and camaraderie. And wouldn’t you know it, he delivers those same words from down on the practice field to game day to his former school of St. Aloysius as he delivered the school’s morning online announcements.

And those characteristics which define John Harbaugh are obviously delivered by his brother and head coach of the Michigan Wolverines, Jim Harbaugh.

In classic Jim fashion, the excitement and enthusiasm he delivered is on par with what football fans all know and love about Jim.

I interviewed Principal Andrea Puhl after watching the videos and she said it was great to have them join for the morning announcements, though she’s had to reschedule different days to teachers after the addition of the Harbaugh’s.

“I keep having to bump teachers off their morning announcement days but they’re happy to be bumped for such illustrious former students,” Puhl said. “They forgave me pretty quickly when I told them why they were getting bumped.”

Puhl also said both parents and students were receptive to their videos.

“I was really impressed,” Puhl said. “Our parents made a lot of nice comments on our Facebook page. Whether or not they’re fans of those particular teams. They said it meant so much to their kids who are missing sports so much right now. To get these kinds of positive comments and this encouragement from two such well known coaches—It’s been fun.”

We also discussed the positivity this small gesture means.

“Our kids are working so hard like all kids around the world right now under these very unusual circumstances and I just love that we can put a smile on their face and give them a positive message. We try to do that every morning with the announcements but it’s nice when they hear it from somebody other than us and I think they felt very special because of it.”

Puhl, who so clearly cares about her students of St. Aloysius, always reverted her answers back to the students, but after a couple of attempts I got her to talk about what this meant to her personally.

“It makes me wish I spent more time on my videos,” Puhl joked. “They’ve gotten a lot more attention! But it makes me feel proud. I feel proud of our school and its’ history and it makes me happy to get that out of more people.”

We ended the interview with Principal Puhl asking those to like and follow their Facebook page because there just may be some more surprise guests in the future!