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WILKES-BARRE — Former Coughlin High School athletic director Annette Barbini would have celebrated her 76th birthday Friday. Barbini passed away one day shy of that birthday.

A resident of Bear Creek, Barbini died Thursday afternoon. According to friends, she had suffered a stroke about a month ago and never fully recovered.

Known as a pioneer in local women’s athletics, Barbini coached girls high school field hockey, basketball, volleyball and track and later officiated all those sports.

She was thee first female member of the PIAA District 2 Committee and would become the area’s first female athletic director.

Having grown up near Coughlin High School, she would later coach and serve as athletic director at that school. She was also a PIAA official.

Maureen Williams, a retired Wilkes-Barre Area elementary teacher, knew Barbini for 45 years.

“She was a true, loyal friend,” Williams said of Barbini. “She was a pioneer in girls’ athletics. Girls’ sports programs would not be what they are today without Annette advocating all those years on their behalf.”

Williams said Barbini got her involved in officiating in 1971 and taught and mentored many women involved in athletics.

“Annette had to be one of the strongest people I have ever come across in my life,” Williams said. “She taught me so much.”

Williams said Barbini’s family is making funeral arrangements. No details were known Friday evening.

Ruby Carmon, former head women’s basketball coach at Luzerne County Community College and a teacher there for 28 years, said Barbini’s contributions to women’s sports and officiating are immeasurable. Carmon met Barbini when both attended East Stroudsburg University.

“Annette has done so much,” Carmon said. “She was tough and she acted tough. Even when she was officiating, she scared everybody. She was set in her ways, but she sure did get things done.”

Wyoming Valley West High School athletic director Sandy MacKay said Barbini was always “very professional” and had a sincere love for kids.

“Annette was an AD to make sure athletes — boys and girls — had things to do, that they had sports to play,” MacKay said. “She always went by the rules. She made sure she was doing the right thing always.”

MacKay said, as an athletic director and as a PIAA official, Barbini “did things the right way” — by the book and she never cut corners. He said she had a deep love for the youth of Coughlin High School and its sports programs.

Dorie Saracino, who was instrumental in starting women’s athletic programs at Wilkes University in 1960, said she and Barbini were good friends.

Saracino said Barbini was “a super coach” and she became an excellent athletic director and official.

“She was a tough official,” she said. “When you worked a game with her, she would tell you if you made a bad call. Annette was tough in everything she did.”

Saracino always had a lot of respect for Barbini.

“She always told it the way it was,” Saracino said. “And you betcha, she was a very ethical person.”

According to a story in the Times Leader in 1987, Barbini showed just how tough and determined she could be. After having been passed over for the athletic director’s position at GAR High School, she sued the school district.

Barbini won the lawsuit, based on the landmark 1972 federal law known as Title IX that required equal educational opportunities for women attending schools that receive federal funding.

In athletics, Title IX requires equitable access to facilities, travel and accommodations, meals and equipment and equal coaches’ salaries.

That goal is nearly reached in the Wyoming Valley Conference, a 21-school league that consists of teams from Luzerne, Wyoming and Columbia counties.

In its ruling, federal investigators said Barbini should be appointed to the next athletic director’s position or the Wilkes-Barre Area School District could lose federal funding. Barbini was named Coughlin athletic director in September 1982.

Annette Barbini
https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/web1_Annette-Barbini.jpeg.optimal.jpegAnnette Barbini Times Leader File Photo

By Bill O’Boyle

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Reach Bill O’Boyle at 570-991-6118 or on Twitter @TLBillOBoyle.