WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. – A central figure in the development of Lycoming College's women's athletic programs, Deb Holmes was included in the 2022 Middle Atlantic Conference Hall of Fame class, the conference office in Annville, Pa., announced on Tuesday, May 31.

"Deb Holmes impacted a countless number of women's lives as a basketball and tennis coach at Lycoming in her decades-long career," Lebanon Valley head women's tennis coach Joy Graeff '97 said. "Personally, she taught me how to never give up, laugh at myself, and how to truly be there for others.  She genuinely valued each player, which was evident in her actions and words. I recall crying on her should more than once and Deb always found something uplifting to say to help me work through situations on and off the court. After college, I gained more admiration for Deb when I became a fellow coach in the MAC. Coach Holmes was respected by her peers because of her fairness, compassion and calm demeanor.  I can't think of anyone more deserving of being inducted to the MAC Hall of Fame because she was a great coach and even better person."
 
After serving as the social director at Pocono Manor Inn, Holmes returned to her hometown, Williamsport, in 1976 when she was hired as an instructor of physical education at Lycoming College. She also immediately picked up a new title as the women's tennis coach, a position she held for the next 34 years.
 
By November of that year, she was also tasked with starting a women's basketball team. With just little Hilltop Gymnasium and wrestling and men's basketball already practicing in the gym, court time was a logistical issue for the team in its early years. By 1978, she had helped elevate the team to varsity status and worked with Director of Athletics Dutch Burch to gain the cooperation of the existing sports programs to use the gym for the women's basketball team.
 
At the time, she said, "I think this will be a great program because the college is displaying a sufficient interest in women. Lycoming is supporting Title IX – equal rights for women with regards to education and sports – which will greatly facilitate women's basketball as well as other competitive sports."
 
The opening of Lamade Gym in 1980, complete with a wrestling room, helped alleviate the women's basketball program's issues with finding space and time to practice.
 
During the team's first season, it won just one game, a 60-54 triumph over Williamsport Area Community College on Jan. 22, 1978. After the game, Holmes' comments to the school newspaper, The Spectator, were similar to ones she gave after any of her team's accomplishments. "It was the best game they've all played, and they all blended together well. It was a tremendous job because everyone gave 200 percent."
 
Just two years later, Holmes women's basketball team was playing nearly twice as many games as it had during its first year and it was enjoying its first of two straight .500 or better finishes. Always a coach that stressed the importance of team efforts, she told the Sun-Gazette of her 1980-81 team, "I always tell my players that we have five scoring threats and five defensive threats on the court at all times."
 
While the women's basketball team began to develop, so too did the women's tennis program, which won just two matches in Holmes' first two seasons. By 1981, the team had finished 4-0 in the MAC Northern Division and reached the conference title match, coming during a run of five .500 or better seasons in six years.
 
In 1987, she became the chair of the physical education department, a position that she held until her retirement from the College in 2013. In that role, she also served as an academic advisor for hundreds of students in the ensuing parts of four decades. A noted historian for the athletic department, her master's thesis at Penn State was a history of the men's athletic programs at Lycoming College.
 
In the mid-'90s, Holmes led the team through its most prosperous period in program history, as the 1993 team started a run of 10 straight winning seasons. The 1997, 1998 and 2000 teams won Freedom League regular-season titles, giving her a total of four in her career.
 
By the time she retired as the women's tennis coach in 2009, she had won a school-record 137 matches and made eight appearances in the Middle Atlantic Conference Championship, advancing to the conference's title match in 1982 and 1999. She also coached one MAC Individual Champion, Cricket Temple, in 1999.
 
The impact that Holmes left on her student-athletes was marked by much more than wins and losses, as noted by Rebecca (Reynolds) Brown '11. "She was an incredibly strong, genuine and selfless woman," she said. "You never left a match or practice feeling down. Even when you played your worst, she was always there to point out the silver linings, probably cracking a joke or two to lift you up."
 
Holmes also took pride in her student-athletes' successes in the classroom and helped the team achieve ITA All-Academic Team honors in four of her last five seasons and she also mentored 2006 MAC Scholar Athlete, Josemar Castillo '06.
 
Holmes was inducted into Lycoming's Athletics Hall of Fame in 2012. She passed away on May 1, 2020 after a valiant battle with cancer. Born on Sept. 19, 1950, she was nearly a lifelong resident of Lycoming county, growing up in South Williamsport and graduating from Williamsport High School, before attending Penn State, where she was a member of the softball team from 1969-71.
 
Holmes is Lycoming's 13^th inductee to the MAC Hall of Fame, which began in 2012, where she joins just two other former Lycoming coaches – Frank Girardi (football) and Budd Whitehill (wrestling). She is also Lycoming's third woman to earn the accolades, joining Denise (Zimmerman) Null (women's swimming, 2015) and Erica (Weaver) Wagner (women's basketball and softball, 1998).