A four-year standout student-athlete on the SUNY Cortland softball team in the 1970's, Deborah J. Pallozzi built the Ithaca College softball program into an NCAA Division III perennial powerhouse during the past 16 years as the head coach.
Pallozzi has guided her Ithaca teams into the NCAA Div. III playoffs an impressive 13 of her 16 years, including earning a bid to the last 11 consecutive post-season tournaments. In 2002, she coached the Bombers to the NCAA Div. III national championship. Her overall record of 418-224-1 ranks her 12th among all active Div. III softball coaches in the U.S.
Her squads advanced to the NCAA Div. III World Series in 1996, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002. Her teams won Empire 8 Conference titles in 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2004.
Pallozzi has coached the 2001 NCAA Div. III Player of the Year, Laura Remia, as well as the 1994, 1999 and 2000 ECAC Players of the Year and the 2002 and 2003 Empire 8 Rookies of the Year. She has directed 10 All-Americans.
She joined the Ithaca College faculty in 1988 and teaches both physical education and health education courses. She was assistant volleyball coach from 1988-95 for the two-time ECAC champion Bomber squads and helped guide the team to a 1995 NCAA Div. III Final Four appearance.
A native of Waterford, N.Y., Pallozzi attended Waterford-Halfmoon High. At SUNY Cortland, she started all four years for the softball squad. Her 7-0 mark as a freshman pitcher in 1976 remains the school record for single-season winning percentage. During her Cortland career, the Red Dragons won the 1977 New York State championship and appeared in the Eastern AIAW tournament.
Nominated for the 1978 Student-Teacher of the Year Award, Pallozzi was a member of Theta Phi Sorority. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in physical education in 1979. She earned a master’s degree in physical education from Ithaca College in 1993.
Pallozzi taught and coached at Columbia High in East Greenbush, N.Y., in 1979-80. The following year, she was assistant softball coach for the University of Missouri in Columbia squad that finished fifth nationally in the AIAW Tournament. As the pitching and infield coach at SUNY Albany in 1982-83, she helped to guide the team to its first-ever AIAW playoff appearance. She was head coach at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., before joining Ithaca College in 1987 as a graduate assistant working with softball.
In the 1970's and 1980's, Pallozzi played for two ASA Women’s Major Fastpitch teams, the JC Girls of Syracuse and the Jimmie Girls of Schenectady. She coached the latter in the Atlantic Coastal Conference in 1987-88. She has competed internationally in the British West Indies, Venezuela and Belize.
A highly sought-after softball clinician and speaker in the Northeast, she was a contributing author to The Softball Coaching Bible.
Pallozzi has served as chair of numerous committees for the NCAA, ECAC, Empire State Games, New York State Women’s Collegiate Athletic Association and the National Fast pitch Coaches Association (NFCA).
In 1987, she became the first female inducted into the Waterford-Halfmoon High School Athletic Hall of Fame. She was named the Ithaca Journal female Coach the Year in 2001 and 2002 and the Doris Kostrinsky Coach of the Year in 2002. She twice received both the New York State and the NFCA Div. III Northeast Coaching Staff of the Year Awards, while receiving the honor four times from the Empire 8 Conference.
In the community, her softball players have raised thousands of dollars through walk-a-thons for the Ithaca Breast Cancer Alliance.
