Wake Forest Athletics
Gold Rush Feature: Back to School
2/7/2011 12:00:00 AM | Women's Golf
This article was originally published in the Jan. 15 edition of Gold Rush.
Memory lane was a frequent address for Stephanie Neill Harner in 2010.
The 1995 graduate and women's golfer got to swing a club on campus again. She even got to live the dormitory life again for a few days this summer.
But perhaps the biggest reminder of her stellar college career came on Dec. 7, when she was inducted into the National Golf Coaches Association Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Las Vegas.
Neill Harner earned the honor with her play as a Deacon -- four times an All-American, top women's amateur in the nation as a senior, leader of a team that finished third in the NCAA tournament. She's already a member of the Wake Forest Sports Hall of Fame. That's all in the past for Neill Harner, a Latin teacher and mother of two in Charlotte, but she still enjoys thinking of those times.
"It means so much to be remembered at this point," she said. "I'm a mom living sort of a domestic life, so to get a phone call out of the blue -- 'Somebody's still thinking about your college golf!' -- means more to me now than it would have, to be deemed worthy by my peers."
Neill Harner is in her second year as a full-time teacher at Charlotte Country Day School. She had done some substitute teaching and taken on an interim position before the birth of her second child in 2005 and went back to that after spending some time raising Sarah Blair, 6, and David, 5.
"I started teaching back when I was playing more tournament golf," Neill Harner said. "My middle school Latin teacher asked me to substitute for her, which was fortuitous. It was something I could do in the winter months to prepare for a career after Rob and I started a family, and then it grew from there. For me, it's a great way to have a career and still feel like a full-time parent."
It was that career that brought her back to Wake Forest this summer for a Latin teachers' conference called the American Classical League. She might not have gone, except that she got to spend four days living in Davis Residence Hall on the Quad.
"I was a new teacher, but once people figured out I knew where I was going, I was very popular that week," Neill Harner said.
She also visited campus for the dedication of the Dianne Dailey Golf Complex, and hit a few balls while she was there.
"I just thought, 'Dude, I could stay here for hours!' I wish we had this long ago," she said.
Neill Harner doesn't play rounds often anymore, but she still coaches the girls varsity team at Charlotte Country Day, passing on the lessons that Dailey taught her at WFU.
"I like to tap into those memories of playing well for Wake Forest, for my coach and my teammates," she said. "It's a real boost to think of those times."
