{"id":24135,"date":"2019-12-09T08:22:40","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T16:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/athletics\/?p=24135"},"modified":"2019-12-09T08:26:33","modified_gmt":"2019-12-09T16:26:33","slug":"jim-harryman-bellevues-first-baseball-coach-and-athletic-director-passes-away-at-age-of-86","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/athletics\/2019\/12\/09\/jim-harryman-bellevues-first-baseball-coach-and-athletic-director-passes-away-at-age-of-86\/","title":{"rendered":"Jim Harryman, Bellevue’s First Baseball Coach and Athletic Director Passes Away"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"1970
The inaugural baseball team at Bellevue College in 1970 coached by Jim Harryman (pictured upper left corner). Photo by BC Athletics archives<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bellevue College\u2019s first baseball coach and athletic director, Jim Harryman passed away on Thursday December 5, 2019 at the age of 86. The legacy that Harryman started on the baseball diamond is still alive today, as the baseball program is celebrating it\u2019s 50th<\/sup> anniversary this spring that Harryman started from scratch in 1970.<\/p>\n

Right out of the gate, Harryman fielded a squad that not only went 15-2 in league play en route to a North Region title, but also finished third at the state tournament and produced Bellevue\u2019s first professional baseball player in Gene Moser who was drafted by the New York Yankees. Moser would be the first of many Harryman-led players who turned pro as a total of 19 in his five years as Head Coach signed professionally with Major League Baseball teams. All of these inaugural campaign accomplishments were done without a field, as the squad traveled daily for practices and games at Hidden Valley Sports Park in downtown Bellevue.<\/p>\n

Harryman\u2019s Helmsmen baseball squads would go on to capture three more division titles in 1971, 1973, and 1974. In his five years, Harryman not only built a program from scratch, but also brought home four division titles, an NWAC\u00a0 title (1973), and an overall record of 82-13 in division play and 125-52 overall. His 71% win percentage remains the highest amongst all of the baseball coaches in Bellevue\u2019s 50-year history.<\/p>\n

In the middle of this five-year stretch as Baseball Coach and Athletic Director, Harryman\u2019s tenacity that he showed on the baseball diamond also carried over in the growth of the department. Harryman\u2019s dream field became a reality through his hard work as he was able to venture a joint partnership with the City of Bellevue to get a baseball field constructed on campus in 1972. The field, now known as Courter Field, is the same used by this year\u2019s squad.<\/p>\n

Long after his tenure as Bellevue College\u2019s baseball coach and athletic director, Harryman\u2019s contributions for the baseball program were evident as he spearheaded the funding for both the permanent bleacher project in 1985 and the LED scoreboard in 2001. It was the first ever LED inning-by-inning scoreboard in the entire Pacific Northwest.<\/p>\n

Much of the success of Bellevue\u2019s baseball program is built around the stability of the baseball program that all started with Harryman. There have been only six head coaches in the program\u2019s history and the field that Harryman built is the epitome of the game in it\u2019s purest sense, with a 100% natural playing field surface; the same way Harryman planned it 50 years ago.<\/p>\n

Due to buildup over the years, the facility is undergoing a massive renovation project by this year\u2019s team. Ironically, in the year of the program\u2019s anniversary and the year of Jim\u2019s passing, the field is being lowered 13 inches down to the original layer that Harryman coached on. \u201cThe exposure to all of the different dirt layers added throughout the decades was like a time capsule revealing the history of the program,\u201d says current Head Coach Mark Yoshino.\u00a0 \u201cThis spring as we step foot onto the original level of Jim\u2019s dream field, we\u2019ll have an everyday reminder of the program tradition that Jim built. We\u2019re going to do whatever it takes to bring home a title for Jim and all of the other alumni of this program,\u201d added Yoshino.<\/p>\n

A special ceremony honoring Harryman\u2019s baseball contributions to Bellevue College will be later in the spring before the team\u2019s final home games. All friends of BC baseball under the Harryman era and beyond are encouraged to contact Yoshino at mark.yoshino@bellevuecollege.edu<\/a> to receive updates on the event.<\/p>\n

\"1973
1973 NWAC Champion team coached by Jim Harryman (pictured upper left corner). Photo by BC Athletics archives.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The inaugural baseball team at Bellevue College in 1970 coached by Jim Harryman (pictured upper left corner). Photo by BC Athletics archives   Bellevue College\u2019s first baseball coach and athletic director, Jim Harryman passed away on Thursday December 5, 2019 at the age of 86. The legacy that Harryman started on the baseball diamond is ...more about Jim Harryman, Bellevue’s First Baseball Coach and Athletic Director Passes Away<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5,32,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball","category-featured","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/athletics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/athletics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/athletics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/athletics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/athletics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24135"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/athletics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24141,"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/athletics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24135\/revisions\/24141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/athletics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/athletics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bellevuecollege.edu\/athletics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}