Bishop Carroll softball coach nearly died. Then came a title he almost missed
Steve Harshberger did not think first about the trophy.
Not right away.
There was joy in winning another softball state championship Saturday afternoon at Wilkins Stadium. There was pride in watching Bishop Carroll finish off a 28-3 season with a 3-2 win over St. Thomas Aquinas in the Class 5A title game. There was satisfaction in adding another chapter to one of the most dominant softball dynasties Kansas has seen, as Carroll claimed its eighth state championship in the last 15 years and Harshberger won his fifth as the program’s head coach.
But when it was over, when the celebration had spilled across the infield on Wichita State’s campus and the championship trophy was finally in his hands, Harshberger found himself thinking less about softball history and more about the two little faces that came running toward him.
His grandchildren wanted a picture with Grandpa and the trophy.
That was the moment that stuck.
Not the final strikeout. Not the celebration. Not even the realization that Carroll had climbed back on top of Class 5A.
It was the photo he nearly never got to take.
“This one I felt like I shouldn’t be here,” Harshberger said. “There was a real possibility that I wasn’t going to be here to see us win it. There are a lot of things that I look back at and think, ‘Man, I can’t believe I almost missed this.’”
Last summer, Harshberger was on the same family trip that has become an annual tradition. He and his son-in-law, Tyler Nordman, drive from Wichita to Connecticut while the rest of the family flies. The drive gives the two men a chance to spend time together and sneak in rounds of golf along the way.
On a Saturday morning in Indiana, Harshberger and Nordman stopped at Purgatory Golf Club.
The name of the golf course felt like a cruel punchline only in hindsight.
On the third hole, a par 3, the longtime Carroll coach began having trouble breathing as he walked toward the green. The moment came so fast that Harshberger remembers walking one second, then Nordman standing over him the next.
“The next thing I know, he’s giving me CPR,” Harshberger said. “My son-in-law saved my life.”
It just so happened that Nordman had spent 12 years working in athletic departments, including time as athletic director at Highland Community College and later as an associate athletic director at Butler Community College. Because of those jobs, he had been required to renew his CPR certification every year. It had always seemed like one of those routine trainings that came with the job.
Then his father-in-law collapsed in front of him.
“You never think something like that is going to happen,” Nordman said. “But it did and I’m so glad that they made us do that every year.”
Nordman could not get a response from Harshberger. Another member of the group ran back to call 911. Nordman kept doing chest compressions until Harshberger regained consciousness.
For a few terrifying minutes, Nordman did not know if he would.
“When he was down on that ground, all I could think about was my wife and my kids,” Nordman said. “That’s dad and grandpa.”
When Harshberger came to, he was alert. He knew who Nordman was. He knew where they were golfing.
But then he heard the sirens.
That is when the severity of what had happened settled in.
Harshberger was taken to a hospital around Indianapolis and spent weeks there as doctors sorted through what had happened. He had suffered a heart attack and eventually underwent triple bypass surgery. He celebrated his 65th birthday in the hospital.
The doctor’s message was simple: Start walking more. Eat healthier. Take better care of yourself.
So Harshberger listened.
He was told to walk at least 30 minutes every day. Now he is up to nearly an hour. He walks around his neighborhood. He walks the indoor track inside the gymnasium at Wichita North, where he works as a special education teacher. He walks because it is good for his heart, but also because it has become good for his mind.
He does not want to sit around anymore.
He wants to get up and live.
“It made me take some things a little more serious,” Harshberger said. “And some things not as serious. That’s always kind of been me anyway.”
That has always been Harshberger’s way. He is not the kind of coach who screams, stomps around or turns every tense moment into something bigger than it needs to be.
He is steady. Mellow. Even-keeled.
That demeanor has become part of Carroll’s identity.
When chaos finds the Golden Eagles, they can look into the dugout and see Harshberger exactly where he has always been: calm, cool and collected.
That mattered again Saturday.
Aquinas struck first in the final with a leadoff home run in the top of the second inning, putting Carroll in a 1-0 hole in the state championship game. But the Golden Eagles never looked rattled.
Paige Stroot made sure the game changed in the fourth inning.
Stroot tracked a pitch she could drive and launched a no-doubt, two-run home run, her 10th of the season, over the left-field fence to give Carroll a 2-1 lead.
“It was such a surreal moment,” Stroot said. “I knew something needed to happen, so I was just looking for a gap shot and she threw it fat and I took it yard.”
Carroll added what became the decisive insurance run in the fifth after Natalie Thimmesch and Keira Stripling opened the inning with back-to-back hits. Thimmesch scored on Addy Orth’s fly out, pushing the lead to 3-1.
That run mattered.
Aquinas scratched across a run in the sixth and threatened for more, putting the tying and go-ahead runs on base. But Emerson Hiebert entered and froze the hitter for an inning-ending strikeout, one of the biggest outs of the day.
Then the ball went back to Orth.
There was no more fitting way for Carroll’s season to end.
Orth, an Army volleyball signee and standout setter for Carroll, spent the final week of her softball career giving everything she had left. She threw 265 pitches in three straight starts at the state tournament. She beat Spring Hill in the quarterfinals, the same team that knocked Carroll out in the first round last year. She came back Saturday morning to finish a complete-game win over Basehor-Linwood after the semifinal was suspended Friday.
Then, in the title game, she started and finished the win.
Orth threw the first three innings, gave way to Stripling and Hiebert, then returned for the seventh with Carroll clinging to a one-run lead. She struck out eight in all, including the final batter of the season.
It capped a senior year in which Orth hit .512 with 40 runs and 31 RBIs while going 9-1 in the circle with a 0.66 ERA and 83 strikeouts in 53 innings.
“We won because of the leadership of Ally Orth, as far as I’m concerned,” Harshberger said.
But Saturday was not really a story about statistics.
It was about a coach who almost was not there to watch them happen.
Harshberger had told his players a little bit about his health scare last summer. Then he mostly put it away. He did not want the season to become about him. He did not want his players carrying emotional weight that was not theirs.
“I didn’t want them to be weighed down by something that happened to me,” Harshberger said. “But at the same time, I wanted them to get to living. Don’t take anything for granted.”
That is what Stroot thought about after the final out.
“We could have lost him last summer,” Stroot said. “That would have changed all of our lives. I’m just really glad that we got to play for him today and win this for him because he deserves it. I wouldn’t want to do it with anybody else.”
Harshberger would never frame it that way himself.
He has always deflected credit for Carroll’s success. He likes to call himself the big-idea person on staff while pointing to assistants Lauren Quintana, Kelsey Unruh and Jennifer Unrein as the detail-oriented coaches who handle so much of the instruction that has helped Carroll keep winning year after year.
That humility did not arrive after the health scare. It was already part of him.
But what happened last summer sharpened it. It made Harshberger think even less about trophies as something that belonged to him and more about the people he still gets to share them with.
That is the part Nordman understands now, too.
“Life gets busy for everyone and it’s hard not to take things for granted,” Nordman said. “After something like that, it definitely makes you want to spend more time with family. Because you never know what could happen. Life could change on hole 3 on a Saturday.”
That is why Harshberger does not believe God kept him alive simply so he could win another softball title.
Softball matters to him. Coaching matters to him. Helping young people realize what they are capable of matters deeply to him. But wins and losses have never defined him. He would have slept the same Saturday night whether Carroll won or lost.
But what mattered most Saturday came after the final out, after the trophy presentation, after Carroll had added another championship to its dynasty.
It came when his two grandchildren walked over to pose for a picture with him and the Class 5A championship trophy.
That was the moment he almost missed. Not just another state title, but another chance to be there. Another chance to be Grandpa. Another chance to stand with the people he loves and understand, in a way he never had before, how precious that really was.
“I guess God wanted me around for a reason,” Harshberger said.
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