Friday Night Legend: Ed Bowles
Published 12:00 am Thursday, September 27, 2012
Back on Aug. 24, West Rowan and Davie County knocked heads in Mocksville in the sort of physical struggle that Ed Bowles relishes.
A lot of people think a lot of Bowles. Davie inducted him into its Hall of Fame that night at halftime. West presented him with the game ball after it won 14-7.
“That took me by surprise,” Bowles said. “I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t say nothing. I get emotional. I cried like a baby.”
Bowles, 68, has basically poured his life into football since he was 14.
He also was an All-NPC catcher for Davie’s baseball team in 1962, although his basketball career never got off the ground.
“I was tall for my age as a kid,” Bowles said. “They thought I’d be a real good basketball player, but I’d foul out every game. I liked contact too much.”
It was in football that liking contact served Bowles well. You could pound someone without hearing a whistle. So he forged his mother’s signature to try out for the Davie squad as a freshman in the fall of 1958.
Jack Ward and Bill Peeler were the Davie coaches, and Ward had a unique method of separating hitters from quitters. Bowles was a 118-pound hopeful at flanker when Ward tested his desire by having him pop pads with the linemen – minus his face mask.
“I was a small kid and I busted my nose pretty good,” Bowles said.
But he earned his face mask, and then his body changed.
“I was 5-foot-11 as a freshman and still 5-11 as a sophomore,” Bowles said. “But I’d gone from 119 to 180 and I started at tackle. My junior year I was 237. My senior year I was 270.”
Ward was tough. If he spotted you drinking a soda that meant a 5-mile run – every day for a week.
Davie was good in Bowles’ playing days – 7-3, 6-3-1, 5-4-1 – but not great.
Bowles’ final high school outing was the East-West All-Star Game in the summer of 1962. He was the second from Davie to play in the game. He saw action on both lines as the all-stars hammered one other in the only 0-0 draw in the game’s long history.
Bowles signed first with Wake Forest.
“I would’ve played with Brian Piccolo (the nation’s leading rusher in 1964), but I didn’t get in,” Bowles said. “Then I was going to go to UNC, but they said I needed another math class and I didn’t have the money for it.”
He had decided to enlist in the Marine Corps, but a marine recruiter drove him to a little town in the mountains – Cullowhee. It was at Western Carolina that Bowles’ football career would continue.
“Western gave me half a scholarship and said it would be three-quarters if I could make the first or second team,” Bowles said.
It wasn’t long before Bowles was on full scholarship with the Catamounts.
He liked everything about it, from the games in the Carolinas Conference against Appalachian State, Elon and Catawba to the marathon spring practices.
Spring practice would start in February and last until school ended. They practiced in sleet and snow. Ice hung from helmets until the weather warmed a little.
“They had me in what they called ‘Fat Man Detail’ when I first got up there,” Bowles said. “What that meant was after practice you’d stay and run for another 45 minutes. I lifted and ran, and I ate jello and vitamins and drank water. I lost all the baby fat.”
His weight dipped from 270 to 230. His pants size dropped from 46 to 34.
He got even tougher, and he was a player. He was team captain two years. He was all-conference and all-district.
Then it was time to coach. Bowles’ first two stops were in Atlanta and Gaffney, S.C.
Chance brought him to Rowan County.
“It was 1976 and I was up at Hargrave Military Academy and someone from East Rowan had left a sport coat up there,” Bowles said. “I knew where East was, so I told them I’d drop it off.”
Bowles did, and East happened to be in the market for an assistant coach and P.E teacher. Bowles met principal Boyce Caudle, chatted a while and got a job offer.
He accepted, and he would become an icon at East. Five years after he went to work in Granite Quarry, students dedicated their annual to him. He stayed 28 years, coaching offensive linemen, defensive linemen and linebackers.
In the late 1980s, one of the Mustangs’ offensive linemen was a hard-working fellow named Scott Young.
“I actually worked mostly with Scott in track,” Bowles said. “I could tell he was smart.”
“What I remember about Ed is he opened that weight-room at East early and closed it late and gave you every opportunity to get better,” Young said.
Young didn’t forget. After Bowles retired from teaching, Young asked him to come to work with the Falcons.Bowles put on the light blue in 2004. He’s still helping out.
“I’ve made friends on the West staff, guys who are like my brothers,” Bowles said. “Scott runs a good ship, does things the right way. He’s a good man to work for.”
Working mostly with defensive linemen at West, Bowles has been a part of three 3A state championships.
He got that broken nose fixed, but three back operations and arthritis have limited his duties. This season he’s coaching just on Thursdays and Fridays, and he’ll be upstairs at East tonight, when the school he served so long hosts his adopted school.
He hopes to work with young Falcons at least until he’s 70.
“I just enjoy football,” Bowles said. “If you like contact, it’s a beautiful sport.”