Leistikow: Meet Iowa women's basketball's Raina Harmon, who became the coach she once needed
7/31/2024
Leistikow: Meet Iowa women's basketball's Raina Harmon, who became the coach she once needed
By Chad Leistikow
Read article on the Des Moines Register
Leistikow: Meet Iowa women's basketball's Raina Harmon, who became the coach she once needed
By Chad Leistikow
Read article on the Des Moines Register
IOWA CITY - Thirty years ago, in the passenger seat of her mother’s car, Raina Harmon stared straight ahead in silence. Upon returning home, she strode into her bedroom, locked the door ... and refused to open it.
Eventually, Charlotte Harmon finally resorted to calling the police. It was the only way to get her ninth-grade daughter to come out of her room.
After getting a “C” grade in an accelerated class, Raina convinced herself that she wasn’t smart enough for her new school. She was dealing with sadness from arriving mid-semester and not yet fitting in with her new basketball teammates at Detroit’s all-Black Martin Luther King Jr. High School.
Growing up as an only child with a single mom, Raina has always been fiercely passionate, independent and determined. She cares deeply. She loves deeply. Those are generally positive qualities, but they can turn into negatives without the proper perspective.
For her mom, the locked bedroom door emphasized that important growing phase of her daughter's journey that has accomplished so much and touched so many lives along the way.
“She can be hard on herself,” Charlotte said. “When she does that, it crushes me. She doesn’t get depressed or anything like that. But she says, ‘I could’ve done it better.’”
That brief glimpse into Raina Harmon’s childhood offers a window into the assistant coach that she is today for the University of Iowa women’s basketball team. Over time, she has learned to combine personal adversity with her natural, outgoing personality to create life-changing relationships.
Harmon brings a combination of straight talk with a charismatic smile that lights up a room (or gym). Upon entering a conversation with Harmon, you’ll inevitably exit feeling better and probably more knowledgeable and passionate about what's to come.
“When I think of the kind of coach I want to be or the impact I want to have one day,” former Hawkeye and current WNBA rookie Kate Martin said, “I definitely think of her.”
Charita Martin, Harmon’s wife of four years and partner for the last 16, said simply: “She is without a doubt the most intriguing person I’ve ever met. … If she can dream it, she can do it.”
Iowa assistant coach Raina Harmon is the definition of a players' coach ... somebody who keeps it real but develops individual relationships. “She is who she is, unapologetically. I definitely credit her with a lot of the success I’ve had in college," former Hawkeye Kate Martin said.
More:Leistikow: 5 thoughts on what to expect from the Iowa women's basketball's 5 freshmen
Four years of personal shock, growth
Raina Harmon's path in life has been marked by moments in time that, looking back, hardly seem accidental.
One such moment was a game during Harmon’s senior year of high school. Even though she didn't crack the starting five for her powerhouse team, her vertical jump as an undersized (5-foot-9) wing was so dynamic that she could grab the rim. An ACL tear as a junior, though, had slowed her recruitment and college basketball was increasingly unlikely. Her mind began to drift to a potential career in music. But in this one game, Harmon produced the best performance of her high school career. Twenty or so points, double-digit rebounds.
Why so impactful?
“Central Michigan just happened to be at that game,” Harmon said.
Because she was surrounded by Division I-bound teammates, Harmon’s breakout night, combined with her athleticism, created intrigue. And that potential helped land a scholarship offer from the Mid-American Conference program in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, about 150 miles northwest of Detroit.
The timing was perfect. With her mother battling Graves’ disease (an autoimmune disorder that affects the thyroid), Harmon embraced the opportunity to get a paid college education while staying close to home.
However ...
“I was in for the shock of my life,” Harmon said. “I went from 'Good Times' and 'The Jeffersons' to 'The Beverly Hillbillies' and 'The Brady Bunch.' I’m like, ‘What is this?’ I’m only two hours up the road and all the demographics are flipped completely.”
Harmon went from a life surrounded by those with the same skin color as her to a place where almost everyone looked different.
Raina Harmon throws a pass to Jada Gyamfi during a recent Iowa summer practice. This is Harmon's eighth season in Iowa City as a Hawkeye assistant after five years at Central Michigan.
Her assigned, white roommates (two soccer players, one softball player) took bets on what ethnicity “Raina” would be. (They guessed Jewish, which Harmon still finds amusing.) And on just her second day in Mount Pleasant, Harmon experienced an eye-opening reality.
While at a K-Mart to pick up freshman-year toiletries, she noticed an employee following her aisle by aisle, tracking her every move. She had heard of profiling, but this was the first time she had experienced it. She thought, “I’m not the person you think I am” and wondered what about her triggered that response.
“It was the first time in my life that I became aware of my Blackness,” she said, “and what that looks like.”
For most of the next two years, she would present herself as “a safe Black girl.” Instead of wearing clothes from Nike and Timberland, she would wear Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister like her roommates did. Instead of listening to Lil Wayne, she would cue up Dave Matthews Band to find common ground with her white peers.
A new head coach, Eileen Kleinfelter, arrived for Harmon's sophomore year at Central Michigan, and things got more uncomfortable. Harmon felt she had to cover her tattoos and was made to feel self-conscious about her hair. A love-hate relationship with basketball had arrived.
“Now I’m going to this practice every day,” she said. “I’m not really accepted. I’m also not playing. But this is my way to get my degree. So ... I have to stay.”
Entering her junior year, thanks to friends she made on the football and men's basketball teams, Harmon was introduced to the school’s Black Student Union. After one gathering, for the first time at Central Michigan, she felt at home.
“We’re playing spades. We’re listening to whatever,” Harmon said. “It just felt comfortable. … That’s when I realized, ‘Wait a minute. Who are you? Who do you want to be?’”
Yet the more Harmon allowed her true self to show, the more she became an outcast with her head coach. Her playing time diminished to 7.4 minutes per game as a senior. That only fanned her determined flames, and she learned to find solace in consistently outplaying other girls at her position during practices.
The team that did take the court was, understandably, a disaster. The Chippewas went 5-23 in Harmon's senior year, 1-15 in the MAC. Kleinfelter was fired three years later.
The basketball piece of Harmon's college journey was disappointing. But the Raina Harmon that thrives today – the true Raina, who brings big smiles and emphasizes the importance of supportive, meaningful relationships – was born out of the Central Michigan turbulence.
“I coach right now,” she said, “to be the coach that I needed.”
Harmon's winding path to Iowa women's basketball
Thirteen years passed from the end of Harmon’s playing career (spring 2004) to getting hired by Lisa Bluder as an Iowa assistant coach (May 2017).
As the first in her family to attend college, Harmon was focused on being a professional success. One of her first jobs was as a substitute teacher in Detroit, which led to her becoming a health and physical education instructor. Everyone around her quickly realized she was great with kids.
“The troubled boys, in particular, would always be sent to my classroom,” Harmon said. “Because I was the only one they’d want to talk to.”
Raina Harmon's first basketball coaching gig was for a middle-school boys team in Detroit ... and she led them to a championship-trophy moment.
Her first basketball coaching opportunity followed, as a middle school boys assistant coach. The head coach had to abruptly leave midseason, so Harmon took over … and led the team to a local championship. “I didn’t know what I was doing,” she joked, “but I was able to inspire them to play hard.”
That led to an AAU girls coaching role, where she eventually took calls about prospects from college coaches, many of them Black. She would use those conversations to ask how she could crack into the coaching profession. They suggested that she attend graduate school, so she did – at Wayne State in Detroit. Meanwhile, she had taken a job overseeing Detroit inner-city youth sports for the non-profit Police Athletic League – where her mom worked and where she spent a ton of her childhood. It was there that she met Charita Martin, who became the love of her life.
This was in 2008. Martin was PAL's cheerleading coach at the time. One day, Martin's 4-year-old son from a prior relationship, Ja’Quez, gravitated toward Raina. They shot baskets for 2½ hours straight. When it was time to go home, Ja’Quez cried.
Charita Martin, left, and Iowa women's basketball coach Raina Harmon are shown at the summer 2020 wedding in Florida.
“I was like, ‘What? You don’t even know her.’ I was thinking, what kind of spell did you put on my child?” Martin said. “(Raina) was like, ‘It’s OK, I love kids. Bring him over.’”
They began dating shortly thereafter. Ja’Quez, now 20, jokingly takes credit for bringing them together. The couple was married in Florida in the summer of 2020, after Harmon’s meticulously planned proposal in New York City’s Times Square.
While that family-of-three dynamic grew, Harmon’s AAU networking paid off. In 2010, she was hired as director of operations for Michigan women’s basketball. After two years of Big Ten Conference experience, Harmon got a full-time assistant-coach opportunity back at Central Michigan – under Sue Guevara, who was turning the Chippewas into a consistent winner. The roster and town had become more diverse in the eight years since Harmon left, and she felt more comfortable in Mount Pleasant. She stayed there for five years and was part of four 20-win seasons.
In Harmon’s final year at Central Michigan, the 2016-17 season, she felt challenged by a hot-button story. San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick rattled the nation by taking a knee during the national anthem before games to protest police violence against the Black community.
Harmon was fully ready to support any Central Michigan players who decided to take a knee by joining them.
But, her mother recommended a more calculated approach.
“I had to tell her, 'If you don’t have a plan after that, you’re going to be blackballed in your industry',” Charlotte Harmon said, a reality that played out for Kaepernick's NFL career. “But she was adamant about doing something. And I was adamant about, ‘You’re not going about this the right way.’”
Raina Harmon, right, is shown with her mother Charlotte, who now lives in Tampa and has become a huge Hawkeye basketball fan.
Instead, Harmon channeled her energy into self-education. She dove into books and documentaries about racial injustice and social advocacy. Instead of automatically kneeling, she challenged her team to learn WHY they would be taking a knee, because they would have to one day defend that decision.
Flash forward to that spring, when Harmon found herself on a Zoom call with Bluder and Jan Jensen to interview for an assistant coach vacancy at Iowa, opened by Lacey Goldwire’s departure. Harmon was fully comfortable being her authentic self. Asked what books she was reading, she shared her passion for social justice. She shared that she was in a relationship with a woman and that they were raising a son together.
"To hear Jan say, ‘That’s not a problem here. Let me tell you my story,’” Harmon said of Jensen, who was Iowa's associate head coach at the time. “I’m like, ‘I can be Black, gay and be fine. In Iowa? OK!’”
She was further encouraged by then-Central Michigan men’s basketball coaches Keno Davis (son of former Iowa men’s basketball coach Tom Davis) and Kevin Gamble (whose overtime 3-pointer vs. Oklahoma sent Iowa into the NCAA Tournament Elite Eight in 1987). They told her if she got the job offer, “You need to do it."
After her in-person interview in Iowa City, Harmon noticed a huge mural over the entrance to the women’s basketball office. It was an overview shot of Carver-Hawkeye Arena from a 2012 Iowa-Michigan game. Harmon looked closer and saw herself, clear as could be, seated on the Michigan sideline. She quickly wrote a message on a Post-it note and stuck it on the wall.
With an arrow pointing to Harmon, the note read, "You should hire her."
Iowa did.
Iowa guard Gabbie Marshall, left, and Raina Harmon share a hug at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, the day after Iowa defeated UConn to reach the national championship game.
From Kate Martin to Gabbie Marshall to Iowa football, her impact reverberates
Understanding Harmon’s back story helps to fully grasp why her impact has resonated so deeply over seven years in Iowa City.
Remember how she learned the importance of embracing the personalities and cultures of all players?
Early at Iowa, Harmon noticed the Hawkeyes’ Black women’s players would repeatedly ask for group photos with her – and only her. She sensed a group seeking deeper community. So, she called some of her Black former Central Michigan players and asked: If we had gotten together once a month for conversations about “stuff that reminded us of our culture” – like race, voting, hair products, movies, soul food – how would you have felt?
“They all said emphatically, we would have loved that,” Harmon said. “That summer, I (decided) I’m going to go into Coach Bluder’s office and be told it’s a great idea ... or get fired for trying to segregate the team.”
Bluder loved the idea, thanked Harmon for doing that … and those group meetings have continued.
Those sessions included Gabbie Marshall, a beloved recent former Hawkeye. Even though Harmon coaches the forwards and Marshall was a guard, they grew close.
“Over these past two or three years, we’ve texted almost every day about basketball things, about my mental health,” Marshall said. “I kind of call her my second mom now. … There’s so much trust between us. I literally would trust her with my life. That speaks to who she is and her character.”
There were days in the past two years, Marshall said, she would go into Harmon’s office and just cry. Shooting slumps and accompanying negativity affected Marshall. She recalled telling herself, “I suck. I’m not a good shooter.” Harmon brought a listening ear and support, encouraging her to focus on the things she could control – like her defense, which famously saved Iowa in the final seconds of its Final Four win against UConn.
Late last season, as the Hawkeyes hit their stretch run, Marshall had made just five of 24 attempts from 3-point range over six games. Out of the blue, Harmon told her, “24 (her jersey number), I need four today” – as in four 3-pointers.
That game, she made four 3-pointers. The next one, four more 3-pointers. The next, four more.
“I just got chills actually, just saying that out loud,” said Marshall, whose shooting was on point during Iowa's 2023 and 2024 postseason runs and who is now in grad school at North Carolina. “… She’s a coach first but at the end of the day she wants to build those relationships that will last over time, and I think that’s what we have.”
Remember that self-education from the Kaepernick aftermath?
Well, Harmon was positioned to assist all sports programs at Iowa – especially football – in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020. That June, a racial bias outcry (largely targeted toward ousted strength coach Chris Doyle) occurred within the Hawkeye football program. Iowa special teams coordinator LeVar Woods remembers Harmon lending her unifying voice amid an explosive time that threatened to tear down Hawkeye football. Four summers later, Iowa's football culture might be as healthy as it's ever been under Kirk Ferentz.
“She’s a friend to all and willing to help anybody,” Woods said. “To me, that’s one of the best qualities anybody can have. During that time specifically, it was just good to have her voice, her experience. Just being a calming voice and supportive voice.”
In the women's basketball 2020-21 season, Harmon would wear a different mask each game day that articulated meaningful mantras or traumatic elements of Black history - like "No Justice No Peace," "Bloody Sunday" and "Sandra Bland" - and present on those topics during shootarounds. Those helped to humanize injustices against Black people and stirred conversations about why so many chose to take a knee.
"She’s one of the most open-minded people ever," Kate Martin said. "She doesn’t see the world through one lens."
Remember how Harmon needed someone to believe in and extract her ability on the court?
Martin and Sydney Affolter, two of her "Big Dawgs" (which she calls her forwards), are great examples of Harmon being the coach now that she needed as a player. Martin recalls scoffing at Harmon's assertion that she could one day play in the WNBA.
Raina Harmon, center, is shown with Kate Martin and Caitlin Clark after a Big Ten regular-season title clinching win over Michigan on Feb. 27, 2022.
“I looked at her like she had six heads,” Martin recalled with a laugh. “Like, what? Are we thinking of the same person? The fact that she believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself is a credit to who she is. … Pretty cool she thought that, back when I felt like I was doing nothing for the team. Now, here I am.”
Martin has in recent months become one of the most popular players in the WNBA for the two-time defending champion Las Vegas Aces.
Affolter frustratingly wondered for years why her hard work didn’t translate into more playing time. But over smoothie-bowl meet-ups with Harmon, she felt enough reassurance to stick it out at Iowa, where she'll now be a key senior leader for the post-Caitlin Clark Hawkeyes.
“There's definitely been some butting heads a little bit,” Affolter said. “But she's always been there for me and had my back. She was like, ‘I got you. I know this sucks right now, but just wait. Trust the process.’”
Affolter finally got her chance to shine late in her junior season. She made the All-Big Ten Tournament team. She drove for the critical bucket to help Iowa push past West Virginia into the Sweet 16, where Affolter made the all-regional team in Albany.
Remember that stubborn closed-door moment 30 years ago?
Harmon’s inability to let things go healthily surfaced in Iowa's Elite Eight matchup against LSU. She felt she let the team down a year earlier when Iowa lost to Kim Mulkey’s Tigers in the NCAA title game. She was again charged with the LSU scouting report in this rematch watched by 12.3 million people on ESPN. The Caitlin Clark vs. Angel Reese showdown for a spot in the Final Four was, in large part, decided by Harmon’s game plan to outrun an up-tempo team. Iowa successfully wore down LSU in a 94-87 win.
Now going into her eighth season at Iowa, Harmon’s coaching impact is only increasing. With Jensen in the top spot now, Harmon has been tapped to lead Iowa's efforts in recruiting and on defense.
She and her wife have loved their time in Iowa City. Fans naturally engage Harmon and beg her not to leave. Someday, she probably will. Jensen has said she hopes that Harmon sticks with her for a few years, and then launches into a head-coaching career. Without wanting to reveal the school, Harmon confirmed that she has already turned down one intriguing Division I head-coaching opportunity.
“My desire to be at a place I love with people I care about is greater than my desire to be a head coach. But I do desire to be a head coach,” Harmon said. “I don’t lead with that.”
Especially since her early days at Central Michigan, that’s become clear.
Harmon is who she truly is. And the world is a better place for it.
Hawkeyes columnist Chad Leistikow has served for 29 years with The Des Moines Register and USA TODAY Sports Network. Chad is the 2023 INA Iowa Sports Columnist of the Year and NSMA Co-Sportswriter of the Year in Iowa. Join Chad's text-message group (free for subscribers) at HawkCentral.com/HawkeyesTexts. Follow @ChadLeistikow on Twitter.
