Bethlehem Catholic tennis coach George Harmanos is also a die-hard numbers guy, so when the Lady Hawks tennis program tallied its 500th win on Sept.8, Harmanos had to reset that counter, at least for himself.

“A few weeks ago, the girls team won their 500th match, but for me, it was 498,” Coach Harmanos said at the time. “The match against Southern Lehigh was 500 for the girls program, and 500 for me was the match against Pocono Mountain West.”

Before Coach George Harmanos there was Coach Sister Clare de Chantal, and in her first year as girls tennis coach, the Lady Hawks won zero matches. In her second year, they won two matches.

Harmanos explained, “She came to me one day and she said, ‘George, you have to take over the girls.’ And I said, ‘Sister, I never coached girls. I don’t really want to coach the girls.’ And she said, ‘You’re good with the boys. You’ll enjoy it.’ So she convinced me.”

Harmanos’s first season with the girls team was in 1977 after having been coaching the boys team since 1973.

“It was a real challenge,” said Harmanos. “I always tell the story, there was one girl, one of the first matches we played, so it was early in the fall and still hot, and we were only allowed to coach after a set was over. So she comes over to the fence at the end of the first set, and I was going to tell her to hit to her backhand or whatever, and the first thing she says to me is ‘Coach, I’m sweaty,’ and I didn’t know what to say to her.”

Harmanos was the first to admit things weren’t going well and even tried to switch sports for the fall.

“I started getting into some road racing and running, and the cross country job was open, so I thought, I’ll switch to cross country,” he said. “Well, the girls got wind of it, and they were all sad, so I said OK, I’ll do it one more year. But then what happened is that the girls who began playing tennis were the girls who played soccer when they were little, so they were better athletically.”

Coach Harmanos and the Lady Hawks have now qualified for the district team tournament for the 24th season in a row. In 18 of those years, including 2021, the girls teams have advanced to the district final. And both Coach and Lady Hawks have now surpassed 500 wins.

It would have made for great drama, though, if Harmanos’s 500th win was the 4-3 Southern Lehigh match, a match that came down to number one doubles. Instead, his was a quiet 7-0 victory at Pocono Mountain West on Sept. 14.