The 55th Curbstone Coaches Hall of Fame banquet, sponsored by Briarfield Health Care Centers and Ed and Diane Reese, is set for Sunday, May 5 with 12 new members set for enshrinement during ceremonies at Mr. Anthony’s Banquet Center in Boardman.
Former NFL official and current national network television rules analyst, Gene Steratore, will serve as guest speaker.
Harmon is a 1975 graduate of Canfield High School, earning four letters in basketball where she was a four-year starter for the Cardinals’ hoop team.
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Despite the school not having a girl’s tennis team in the 1970’s, she played No. 2 on the boys team and upon graduation earned a tennis a scholarship to the University of Colorado-Boulder.
A basketball walk-on, she earned two letters for the Buffaloes but returned home after her sophomore year when her mother fell ill.
She transferred to Youngstown State University and continued her sports career on the diamond, becoming one of the Penguins’ most prolific twirlers.
An accomplished pitcher, she helped lead YSU to three consecutive OAISW (Ohio Association of Intercollegiate Sports for Women) state softball crowns, compiling a 38-11 overall mark by helping YSU to the 1978 and 1979 slo-pitch titles, and 1980 fast-pitch state crown, the first time that fast-pitch replaced slo-pitch as a varsity sport.
In slo-pitch, YSU posted a 24-5 overall mark during their two championship runs while going 38-11 overall during her three seasons on the hill for the Penguins.
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Because her mound presence, the Penguins were one of the most feared softball teams in the state of Ohio at that time.
In her final season with the Penguins (fast-pitch), the team was 14-6 overall as she posted a sparkling 0.92 earned run average (allowing just two earned runs in 79 2/3rds innings of work), tossed a no-hitter on April 9, 1980, and established the mark for the lowest E.R.A. posted by a Lady Penguin twirler in a single season.
It is also the best in a career despite playing one season in the fast-pitch ranks.
She had the luxury of playing with the best slo-pitch and fast-pitch teams YSU fielded, posting a 12-2 overall mark (a sparkling .857 winning percentage) which was tops in the slo-pitch ranks and still remains the best mark ever posted by any Lady Penguin softball team while the teams’ 14-6 mark in the first season of fast-pitch play (a .700 winning percentage) still remains the best overall.
Upon graduation from YSU – she earned her BS in advertising-public relations in 1981 – she continued to play softball until an injury curtailed her competitive diamond career, gravitating to golf where she has been a mainstay at the area’s yearly Greatest Golfer of the Mahoning Valley event.
She obtained her PGA pro-teacher card, one of the lifetime goals she set out to accomplish.
A former production manager for Adcraft, she left that business in 1993 to work at Exal in Youngstown then in 1998, branched out to purchase her own printing business, InstaCopy, in nearby Salem.
In 2019, she retired from the printing business and now spends her time between Canfield and Pinehurst, North Carolina.
She recently recorded her ninth hole-in-one.
