This is part of a series on the Class of 2021 of the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame. The induction ceremony is Oct. 13 at the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center. For tickets, visit gbshof.com.
Deborah Dourlain was alone in her classroom at Hutch-Tech last year when Greg Merkle, the president of the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame, called to tell the longtime teacher, coach, official and former All-America swimmer that she was being inducted in the Class of 2021.
“I was the only one in my room and I just yelled, ‘YES!’” Dourlain said. “I was so fired up. It’s hard to describe. It was a really neat feeling. I happened to be on the phone, on a Zoom call with the athletic department people, and I told them, ‘I just have to say something or else I’m going to burst.’ And I told them and they’re like, ‘Yay! That’s awesome.’”
Dourlain never imagined such an honor was possible when she moved from suburban Pittsburgh to Western New York the summer before her junior year at Orchard Park High School.
For starters, young women didn’t have anywhere near the athletic opportunities that exist today.
And the teen, who had competed at state tournaments in both swimming and track in Pennsylvania, understandably didn’t want to uproot her life. But her father, who worked in steel sales, had his job transferred and commuted for a year, getting stuck at a rest stop in the Blizzard of '77.
Much has changed in the nearly half century since.
“The fact that after this class is inducted – I’ve got the demographics on this – of 355 (GBSHOF) members, only 42 are women,” Dourlain said. “That’s including this class. Only 42 women. So that makes it even more special, because women have been so pushed down. They haven’t been able to excel until recently. Back when I was a kid, we had to fight for everything you really got. Until Title IX went through (in 1972), you had to really fight for everything that you got. And now the girls are able to shine.”
Dourlain said she quickly made friends while competing on the girls’ swim, basketball, softball and track teams at Orchard Park.
“Being involved in sports made making friends a lot easier,” she said.
Dourlain became an AIAW Division I All-American swimmer at Bowling Green, winning the MAC title in the 200 medley relay in 1980, and she qualified for nationals in the 50-yard freestyle, 100 freestyle, and the 200 medley relay.
Dourlain transferred to Rochester Institute of Technology after two years, and she earned 10 Division III All-American honors, set seven school records and won six New York State Women’s Collegiate Athletic Association titles in her last two seasons. She also played first base in softball, producing a .350 career batting average and .957 fielding mark before graduating in 1983.
“I stayed local because my parents were still here and I wanted to be close by them,” Dourlain said. “I was lucky enough to get a job coaching at Orchard Park through my former track coach, who at that point was the athletic director.”
She was inducted into the RIT Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Orchard Park Hall of Fame in 1999.
Dourlain remains involved in athletics, umpiring softball and coaching basketball.
For years, she also coached swimming, mostly at Orchard Park, but also at West Seneca East, St. Francis and McKinley.
“I can’t even put into words how ecstatic I am,” Dourlain said about her induction into the GBSHOF. “It’s difficult to explain how good it feels.”
