Raina Harmon lands at her north star Florida Gulf Coast

“As I was an assistant coach, I would always actually say, ’I have no desire to become a head coach,” Iowa’s former assistant coach told The IX Basketball. “As an assistant, I loved for the kids to be able to come into my office, and we just talked about their problems, their fears, their goals. We might watch a TV show that had nothing to do with basketball. You just have that relationship. But as I was watching my supervisors go through the process, they were making decisions, they were meeting with upper management, they were talking to the media, and so it was just like, ‘I don’t want those things.’

But as Iowa made its run to two straight Final Fours and national championship game appearances in 2023 and 2024, Harmon’s mindset began to shift as she watched her supervisors and gained interest from other schools. 

“About three years ago, when I had a conversation with myself, I said, ‘Well, what will stop me? It seems like the next progression,’” she said.

Now in her first season as Florida Gulf Coast’s head coach, she realizes it was fear of the unknown that was holding her back. 

“I think now that I’m on the other side of it…I was fearful,” she said. “I told myself it was because ‘you’re not ready for leadership positions, you’ve never had to hold the clipboard. It’s because you never had to command a room.’ What if I just changed my mode of thinking and say, ‘What if I learn those skills?’”

She had a conversation with then-Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder about her aspirations and began to take steps to prepare for the next level. 

“I got the director of recruiting tag and had my own position group, and could maybe drop some stuff in practice, in a timeout..I was able to lead from where I sat,” Harmon said. “I think that was the game changer for me. Once I said, ‘OK, well, these are the qualities I’m missing. How can I get some reps in that I knew that I could be ready.”

When Bluder retired after the 2023-24 season and longtime assistant Jan Jensen was named the Hawkeyes’ head coach, Harmon was able to see a clearer path for her own career. 

“I didn’t know that I was ready until last year, having the opportunity for the first time in my career to work for a first-year head coach in Jan Jensen and to be able to see her walk that walk every single day,” Harmon said.  “Last year for me, it became very evident that I was ready to take the next step. I wasn’t sure when, wasn’t sure where, and I wasn’t going to rush it, because I didn’t need to leave Iowa. I love the place that I was at and the people that I was with, so I knew that it was going to be something truly special to get me out of the University of Iowa.”

She retained an agent after fielding calls during the Final Four in 2023. 

“The first year we went to the Final Four, my name had started flying in rooms, and I started to get some phone calls from some search firms and some ADs and deputy ADs,” she said. “And this is while we’re still playing. And I’m like, ‘I can’t. I mean I have the LSU scout. I can’t be focused on this.’”

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She took interviews – even with some places she wasn’t interested in – to get acquainted with the process. As she narrowed down the regions, conferences and schools, Florida Gulf Coast rose to the top.  

“In fact, there were some other schools that I kept saying, ‘You know, I think that we could probably get this place to be like the Florida Gulf Coast of said region.’ It kind of became my north star, looking in hindsight.”

Although Harmon is a proud native of Detroit, she now has more family ties to Florida than her hometown.

“My mom lived in Tampa. She’s a widow and I’m an only child,” she said. “The Michigan area wasn’t really a draw for me at all.” 

Ironically, Harmon got a chance to see FGC in the first round of the 2025 NCAA Tournament in Norman, Okla, where the Eagles lost 81-58 to No. 3 seed Oklahoma. The Hawkeyes’ season ended a few days later in the second round with a 96-62 loss to Oklahoma. 

FGC was coached by Chelsea Lyles, a former player and longtime assistant who took over the program shortly after the 2024-25 season started when the program’s founding coach, Karl Smesko, left for the WNBA. In a move that surprised Harmon, Lyles left FGC to join Smesko as assistant coach of the Atlanta Dream.  

“I just had a chance to see them play under Chelsea in Oklahoma,” Harmon recalls. “And then two days later after they left, we lost to Oklahoma. And as we’re on the bus ride going to our plane, I saw a ‘Thank You, Chelsea’ post. I texted my agent the post, and I said ‘go’ and I had an interview the next week.”

A job that was meant to be 

Harmon was named Florida Gulf Coast’s third coach on April 4, 2025, the same week she interviewed for the job. 

“Harmon’s energy, passion and commitment to student-athletes combined with her coaching experience will champion the continued growth and success for the FGCU women’s basketball program,” FGCU Director of Athletics Colin Hargis said in the release announcing Harmon’s hiring.

While Harmon credits Iowa’s success on the court as a factor in her rising to the top of the crop, she also points to Iowa’s culture.

“We were a program that prided ourselves on doing things the right way,” she said. ”We didn’t have a ton of transfers coming in and out.”

As a program that vaulted to national – and even worldwide – prominence with superstar guard Caitlin Clark, Iowa gave Harmon an opportunity to shine.  

“I want to say I was in a unique opportunity more than some other assistant coaches at the time, because I was on so many podcasts, I had the opportunity to be in local Iowa media,” Harmon said. “So when you Google me, there was a lot of information out about me, and you could see me speak to the public and how I would carry myself with the media as we talked about our program. I was very fortunate that we had that many eyes and that many requests, that Jan said, ‘Hey, you take this.’ Or Lisa said, ‘Hey, I need you to take that.’”

But she believes her strongest trait is her energy and ability to motivate players. 

“I think probably the biggest separator was something that you can’t teach, and that’s just my energy from what I heard, the way that I present when I do speak to people…People kind of want to run through a wall, because I just present with  this aura, this energy about me,” she said. 

When she arrived in Fort Myers, Fla., last spring, she faced the tall task of gaining the trust of a program that only had two other head coaches in its history. Several players entered the transfer portal upon the disruption in the coaching staff.

“There were a couple people in the transfer portal that I had to recruit back. And so for me, it was just sharing the vision of the program,” she said. 

One of the players she recruited back is Cerina Rolle, a redshirt senior guard who started all 34 games for FGC last season. 

“The first thing she showed me initially was energy,” Rolle told The IX Basketball. “I wanted to make sure I go to an institution that had a lot of energy. I liked her plan, liked what she wanted to do, and I liked that she wanted to keep the FGCU culture. And knowing how big her community is, that was a big thing as well – how she puts people in front of basketball itself.”

“When she asked me about how I am doing mentally,” Rolle added. “That was where she stood apart with other coaches and other institutions, where I was like, OK, she cares about me as a person, and that was a really big thing that a lot of coaches nowadays don’t think about.” 

Senior guard Jordan Campbell agrees that Harmon’s concern of the players as people was a large selling point. 

“She really wanted to keep the FGCU tradition and also like a family tradition,” Campbell told The IX Basketball. “One of the first few things she said to me was ‘we’re going to make a family here with you guys.’ I thought that was something really special that you don’t often hear from a coach’s standpoint.”

Former Iowa guard Molly Davis, who recently was promoted to assistant coach at Evansville, credits Harmon for the progression of her entire basketball career. 

Harmon, who was a coach at Central Michigan when Davis was being recruited at H.H. Dow High School in Midland, Michigan, helped Davis land at Iowa when she entered the transfer portal after her sophomore year at Central Michigan. Harmon also contacted her connections at Evansville when Davis’ career at Iowa was coming to an end and she wanted to enter coaching.

“I think I owe my whole career to Coach Raina. I wouldn’t be here at Iowa if it wasn’t for her, and I wouldn’t be here at Evansville with an amazing opportunity without her,” Davis told The IX Basketball after Evansville played Iowa on Nov. 9, 2025, in Iowa City. ”I’m so appreciative for her and everything that she’s done for me. She believed in me and believed that I would fit the role that they needed when I entered the transfer portal. And then again, helping me out.”

Harmon says being a role model and mentor to young women is what motivates her as a coach.

“At some point, the ball stops bouncing, and I care about them as people, and I want to help them,” she said. “I know based on my own college experience, what I wish I would have had, and I needed a mentor and somebody that can help guide me, shape me, give me future obstacles, pour into me, help me find success. I strive to be that for the young women that I coach.”

Still learning the ropes

With a new coaching staff and many faces on the roster, Harmon is still getting her feet wet at the head of the bench. After a 58-54 win over Austin Peay on Thursday night, FGC stands at 7-7 overall and 3-0 in the Atlantic Sun Conference.

“I think the thing that most first-year head coaches and first-year teams go through is just figuring out different people’s roles in different settings,” she said. “It’s easy to have a role in practice when you hit adversity, but what happens in a game when you’re not playing your best?”

A challenging non-conference schedule, which was set before she took the job, has helped set the tone for her new team. 

While she faced one her role models, Dawn Staley of South Carolina, twice as an assistant at Iowa, it was a new experience to face her as a head coach Dec. 20, 2025, when the Gamecocks came to Alico Arena and handed the Eagles a 105-43 drubbing. 

“To be standing across from somebody that you idolize, for me, I’m not standing there watching her in awe,” Harmon said. “ I’m trying to still win a game and coach a team, but also getting my players to understand that we are playing against the standard. Our standards have to be raised after playing a game like this, because you’re seeing it in real time. You’re seeing how they communicate, you’re seeing how they pass the ball. You’re seeing just how much attention they have to detail.”

Staley told reporters after the game what she said to Harmon as she continues her journey as a first-year head coach.

“I did tell her after the game that I’m here to help. There’s a lot of young women who are first-time head coaches, and it’s difficult moving 12 inches over. When you’re an assistant coach, and you move 12 inches over, a lot comes at you. You’re really not prepared until you actually have to go through it,” Staley said. “It will come. There will be frustrating days. It’s normal. I still have frustrating days. It’s how you handle them.” 

Lessons learned at Iowa

Harmon admits her experience at Iowa under the intense spotlight – and scrutiny – during the Caitlin Clark years has given her a unique perspective as a first-time head coach. 

“You have experiences that other head coaches in my position aren’t able to say,” she said. “The whole world had something to say about those [Iowa] teams. Good, bad or indifferent. All eyes were on us. How can we maintain our sense of identity in the midst of the storm that’s happening outside? Those experiences have helped me get in front of a lot of things that maybe I would miss as a first-year head coach.”

Although her background and coaching style differ greatly from Bluder’s, Harmon learned valuable life lessons from the legendary coach. 

“Lisa is not only one of the best coaches that I’ve been around, she’s one of the best people that I’ve been around, and for me, I try to emulate that every day,” Harmon said. “Just be a good person. Care about the person first. The rest of it will kind of take care of itself.”

“Some things you can’t control,” she added. “And so I just watched how she treated everybody in the building, whether it was the custodial staff or whether it was [Iowa athletic director] Beth [Goetz] or [Iowa former Iowa athletic director] Gary [Barta]. She treated everybody the same.”

Harmon also watched closely how Bluder treated her players in different situations. 

“When do I need to ramp it up, hold people accountable and use the ‘voice,’ and when do I need to instill confidence? I thought she was a master at that,” Harmon said. “Learning when the team needed a strong kick in the butt, and also now they’re still making mistakes when the confidence needed to be instilled. Just kind of watching her work through those moments and having a pulse on what the team needed at that moment was huge for me in my growth and development.”

Bluder also gave her assistant coaches a lot of autonomy and didn’t micromanage, Harmon said.

“She told us what she needed, she told us what she wanted, and then she gave us the freedom to do so,” she said. “We’re matching energy and practice, but we’re very different, and she doesn’t want my energy to be like hers. For me, that’s been very helpful when forming my own staff and kind of determining what type of energy I want in our circle.”

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While Harmon only worked under Jensen for one season, she also learned from her over her eight-year span at Iowa. 

“The thing I learned the most from Jan was there was a curiosity about her. She was always asking questions,” Harmon said. “Because as a leader, it could be your way, and you can just roll with that, and everybody’s going to fit into my system, and that’s going to be the end of it. But she’s always just curious as to the pulse of the team, and how the team is feeling, how the staff is feeling.”

As a Black lesbian raised in Detroit, Harmon wasn’t sure what to expect when she moved to Iowa in 2017. 

“I didn’t have much trouble with the community. Now, I will say I had to find my own community when I first got to Iowa, because there wasn’t a ton of people that look like me there,” she said. “But I’ve always been one that you don’t have to look like me to think like me…It wasn’t Atlanta by any stretch but I didn’t run into any racial or anti-LGBTQ issues while I was in Iowa.” 

As women’s basketball has gained a larger audience, chatter has also intensified, especially stereotypes. 

“When I looked at social media and who people thought we were, I was like, ‘that’s not my experience whatsoever.’ I mean, we listen to rap music. I have my wife and my son, and we’re both black, so there’s not any issues there. I wore my Black Lives Matter shirts and nobody cared,” she said. 

“Now there are some people – and this is going to be anywhere in the world – that just weren’t very kind or very nice,” she added. “But I don’t know if that was particular to the state of Iowa. I mean, I’m also here in the state of Florida, and I think some people would say they run into the same things here. Or even growing up in Michigan, depending on the region that you were in, run into those same things.”

Although she doesn’t put too much stock in social media discourse, she does take issue with personal comments about players. 

“What did bother me was some of the comments that were directed towards some of our black student athletes, because I thought it was very unfair,” she said.

But the team and coaches dealt with the issues head-on, making them even closer. 

“We were vulnerable with each other in the locker room,” Harmon added. “We didn’t shy away from conversations about race, religion; we didn’t shy away from any of those conversations in the locker room. And I think that’s what made us really strong. Because while everybody on the outside assumed, we all knew, because we actually talked about it.”

Jenn Hatfield of The IX Basketball contributed to this story.