Hall of Fame
Shirley Reale Damiano ’57 – Class of 2002
Keeping Faith…
It is said that when Bishop Walter Foery invited the Society of Jesus to establish a college in Syracuse, he observed that half his flock was female, and asked that the institution admit women. And so, Le Moyne became the first Jesuit College to be founded as a coeducational institution. Keeping faith with the Bishop’s requirement would have to extend beyond the classroom to the fields and courts of intercollegiate competition.
A young woman who entered Le Moyne in the Fall of 1953, Shirley Damiano shepherded this transformation at the college. As a young girl she could hurl a baseball fast and far, and shoot a basketball with great accuracy. She was recruited to play on a boy’s baseball team. At 15, she played softball with college-age teammates. Her mother had to correct guests who saw the family’s trophy collection and observed that her son must be quite an athlete. Her son was talented, Mrs. Real would tell them; but most of the trophies belonged to her daughter.
Tennis was one sport fully open to women. At Le Moyne, Shirley became a student of the game and quickly excelled at it. Graduation, marriage, children, and her husband Carmen’s untimely passing would intervene, but the tennis program at Le Moyne would ultimately become her greatest contribution to her alma mater.
For a quarter-century she brought a steady hand and stability to tennis on the Heights. Shirley began as coach of the men’s team and later the women’s mentor. With generations of students, she spent countless hours working on the game’s fine points, and logged untold miles behind the wheels of cars and vans. She enticed promising high school players to enroll at Le Moyne and took care that once they were in the tennis program they developed in the classroom as well as on the court.
Her love of tennis, mastery of its subtleties, and personal integrity is manifest in another way. Shirley has become one of the most respected and sought-after officials in the sport, regularly surveying the lines at the most prestigious tournaments.
Though she lavished times and attention on her charges at Le Moyne and steadily built her skills and reputation as an official, her focus on her children never wavered. Three young people matured with character, grace and a sense of responsibility befitting their parents.
A person who has always kept faith with her responsibilities to Le Moyne, her sport and her family and who helped to extend Bishop Foery’s co-educational mandate to its athletic program,
Shirley Reale Damiano ’57 belongs in the
Le Moyne College Athletic Hall of Fame
February 2, 2002
