GUNNISON, Colo. --- The Western Colorado women's basketball team waited with bated breath March 8 to see if the program was going to receive its first NCAA Tournament berth in program history.
 
The NCAA online show went through the South Central Region bracket and was down to the last matchup – the No. 3 versus the No. 6 seed – still without the

Mountaineers' name called. The No. 3 seed was announced as West Texas A&M as the nerves tightened in the room before being released with an explosive yell and several leaps in the air as "Western Colorado" came across the bracket.
 
Fittingly, this bit of WCU history took place in not only the room named after the woman that made it possible for that moment to happen, but the exact space where her office once stood – Virginia Harris.
 
The Virginia Harris Sports and Education room was dedicated to Harris – often referred to as the "Pioneer of Western Colorado University Women's Athletics" – prior to a Mountaineer game against Chadron State on Dec. 13. The room – to be used for film study for women's basketball, men's basketball, volleyball and women's soccer along with other uses – was filled with those who have in one way or another have been impacted by Harris.
 
"For those that are going to use this room, its namesake Virginia Harris has spent her career raising expectations for all in education and in sport," said friend, former player and current WCU honors program consultant Dr. Jody Coleman. "If women like her had not sought out equality for women athletes during the 1970s, young women today wouldn't have the opportunities they have."
 
Harris, originally from Minnesota and a graduate of Winona State, arrived in Gunnison in 1972 and quickly made her mark at WCU as part of her contract was to bring women's sports at Western into the competitive collegiate arena. She was there to build the women's basketball program from the ground up in 1973 as she had seven players and used old WCU men's basketball uniforms that first year.
 
Harris – who was inducted into the Mountaineer Sports Hall of Fame in 2007 – coached the volleyball team from its inception until 1985 where early on before lines were put on the Paul Wright Gym floor they used to tape the lines and remove them before and after each match. She also coached the WCU softball team – keeping Harris busy with coaching duties all year long.
 
"Within my own mother's generation, women weren't able to compete in athletics," WCU women's head basketball coach Lora Westling said. "It's because of women like Virginia Harris that I'm able to coach, my student-athletes get to play and we get to dedicate this (room) to her."
 
Mind you, Harris along with coaching three teams was also taking on a full-time teaching load in the department now known as Exercise and Sport Science and Recreation, was advising students – including developing strong relationships with the local school district to place student teachers of physical education – and created an evening intramural athletic program, keeping her at work late into the evening.
 
"Her life here at Western generated fairness in the athletic and academic arenas," Coleman said.  "… Her intent in education was to raise expectations that P.E. was more than just rolling out the ball. She and many others provided the impetus to raise the status of physical education to a science. …
 
"Ms. Harris worked with grace and integrity. She was even-tempered and she worked toward fairness for all: Student, athlete and college – men and women."
 
Harris stopped coaching in 1986, but continued her work at WCU as a professor before retiring in 2000.
 
In the 1990s, Harris' selflessness and desire to help others again shined as she was one of the first volunteers for the university's new hospice program where she visited and sat with terminally ill patients for hours – reading to them, rubbing out their aches and pains and listening to their yearnings for their own families to come visit.
 
"Ms. Harris and those others that volunteered are cut from a rare cloth," Coleman said. "They are people who have been granted a gift of a silent strength, having the compassion and a deep ease to get to know someone with a terminal illness and be there for months as their life slips away."
 
On the Dec. 13 day the Virginia Harris Sports and Education Room was dedicated, the small in stature and soft-spoken Harris stood in the front of the room – and commanded it, of course, while showing nothing but grace and thankfulness.
 
"This is unreal," Harris said. "… When they told me (about the room), all I could say was 'Oh no, oh no!' … I can't even tell you – this is beyond words. I'm not a people person. I like one person at a time. But I do appreciate all of this so much. I know I have a mother and dad who looking down on this. But I also have two sisters and nieces and nephews – and from all of us, thank you."