{"id":17255,"date":"2025-07-23T06:20:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T06:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/17255\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T06:20:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T06:20:15","slug":"northfield-groom-cordon-harris-taking-advantage-of-a-second-chance-u-s-trotting-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/17255\/","title":{"rendered":"Northfield groom Cordon Harris taking advantage of a second chance \u2013 U.S. Trotting News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Columbus, OH \u2013  Cordon Harris, a native of Green, OH, is a former football star who is getting a second chance at life working as a groom at MGM Northfield Park after spending four-and-a-half years in prison for crimes he committed at age 19.<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"340\" height=\"501\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/07-22-25-Cordon-Harris-Photo-provided-by-pressprosmagazine.com_.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-201185\"  \/>Cordon Harris is now a groom at MGM Northfield Park. Photo provided by pressprosmagazine.com.<\/p>\n<p>In his feature for pressprosmagazine.com, Harness Communicators Hall of Fame (2023) member Bob Roberts, a former long-time horse racing writer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, tells the story of how Harris \u201chad to leave behind a football scholarship to the University of Toledo, which he earned after a standout high school career as a defensive end and a linebacker at first Green High School and then Akron Archbishop Hoban\u201d to serve that sentence.<\/p>\n<p>According to Roberts\u2019 story, \u201cHarris was released in October of 2023, 18 months early. He carried with him the record of his misdeeds. All at the age of 22.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u2019Not too many people want to hire a guy with a record,\u2019 he (Harris) said. \u2018It was very difficult finding a job. Honestly, I couldn\u2019t get a job anywhere else because of my record.<\/p>\n<p>Roberts explains, \u201cA by-chance meeting with Caleigh Nichole Boyd in a club in Canton, Ohio not only led to a date, but to a companion and a career.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u2019I was grooming at Northfield Park, but I had two surgeries and I couldn\u2019t do stalls or any heavy lifting for a while,\u2019 said Boyd. \u2018I didn\u2019t want to quit, so I said, Here you go. Come with me and do my stuff. He learned fast, and now he loves it. He fits right in.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To read more about Harris\u2019 in Roberts\u2019 story on pressprosmagazine.com and on how he hopes one day to be a horse owner so that he can buy, sell and racehorses, click <a href=\"https:\/\/pressprosmagazine.com\/2025\/07\/18\/second-chance-puts-former-athlete-back-on-track\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Columbus, OH \u2013 Cordon Harris, a native of Green, OH, is a former football star who is getting&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-17255","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-racing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}