Back in 1976, Debra Stamm received an exemption to play ball with an adult softball team while still a Milstadt High School junior.  It marked the beginning of a career that would see Stamm win numerous all-tournament and MVP honors in two softball associations over the next 15 years.  

During summers off from playing volleyball and fast pitch for Southern Illinois and then Illinois State, Deb played slow pitch with Hecker-Miller Lite.  

Throughout the early and mid-1980s, Deb won numerous all-tournament and MVP honors.  In 1985, she joined Coors Light out of Campaign.  Playing shortstop and batting leadoff, Stamm, along with teammates Marion Bell at first base, pitcher Carol Stark, outfielder Vicky Winchester and power hitting Carol Moering, won the USSSA Women's Class A state title in 1985 and 1986.  Coors turned in final four finishes at the USSSA World in Springfield in 1985, and the 1986 World in Parma, Ohio.  

Along the way, Deb married Mark Germann, and by 1990,  new priorities -she was pregnant with daughter Amy- and age led Germann to hang up her spikes.  She's now a physical education teacher and helps runs Mark's construction business.  But while Germann has forgotten many of the details of her playing career, many who witnessed her athletic accomplishments have not.  

"She was the one everyone looked to for leadership and to come through in the clutch," says Marion Bell, her teammate on both Hecker and Coors.  

Fellow 2001 inductee Gloria Kolbusz, whose Chicagoans won the USSSA Class A titles, remembers Stamm's Coors teams as highly competitive and well coached and Debra as a force to be reckoned with at the plate, on the basepaths and in the field.  

"She was one of the best shortstops around," recalls Lassies manager Tom Burton.  "For as tall as she was, she had great range and quickness.  (At the plate) she had good power and was consistent."  

Recalls State USSSA director Brenda Paulson, "The first time I ever saw her play, at the Lassie NIT in St. Charles, she stroked a base hit to right and was standing on second before they got the ball in to the infield."  

Stamm is content with he life.  "It's a nice honor," says Germann.  "As I sat with Marion Bell, filling out the application form, we were laughing at all the memories that come up."  

"It was all about the teammates, the camaraderie," she said.