Sunday, April 17, 2016

Feature News

Rachel Harmon is above all a competitor, accomplished athlete and well respected individual in the sport of golf.  But she is also a wife to Curtis, a mother to Lily and Boston and also my college golf coach.  I first met Rachel Harmon during my sophomore year of college when she recruited me to be a part of the brand new Dixie State Women's Golf team.  She was all business with a hint of a playful and fun loving side that would occasionally surface; as I go to know her better through the years, that hint turned out to be a huge part of her personality and way of life.  She could outplay any of us, except when she was pregnant with Boston, and even then she kept up with us right into month 9 due to her fierce determination to compete and to win. 



Coach Harmon has a great sense of humor, loves to prank people, thrives on competition and knows pretty much all of the words to all of the old school hip-hop songs as well as anything on the radio, making car rides as a team quite entertaining.  She acts like us college girls except when she needs to be mature but she is great at being able to integrate herself in with us as players because she too was a college athlete.  She still gets mistaken as a player instead of being our coach.  She knows what it is like to balance school and academics.  She knows the amount of time and effort goes into being a student-athlete and she respects us for making the decision and commitment to strive after excellence in both areas.


Rachel has done incredible things in the short time she has been in charge of the women's golf program; she has been a good coach, a great example of a player to strive after and someone who helped make my goal and dream to play collegiate athletics possible.  She has juggled having kids and working another job with being our coach because she loves the game, pure and simple.  We are her children as she will call us sometimes, and we have grown into a tight-knit team due to the people involved with it.  As my time as a college athlete draws to a close, and she moves on with other aspects in life, there are two things I have learned in the last four years with her as my coach: to never give up no matter how bad it looks, and that there is nothing that hard work and determination and passion all together cannot overcome and conquer.  I've had the opportunity to enhance my abilities while being surrounded by an incredible team, and gotten to experience such wonderful, fun things while being a college athlete.  It was all due to Rachel sharing her knowledge and passion for the game of golf as well as helping us find our own ways of bettering ourselves and being an example to all of us.  

It's been a great four years coach, I wouldn't have missed this crazy and amazing journey for anything.


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