{"id":91,"date":"2012-10-12T18:03:23","date_gmt":"2012-10-12T22:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/sites\/gsm_spr12\/?p=91"},"modified":"2014-06-02T14:59:36","modified_gmt":"2014-06-02T18:59:36","slug":"making-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/2012\/10\/12\/making-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Making History"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Rowe\"
\nPLAYING WITH THE BIG BOYS<\/strong> By the 1972\/73 season, Coach Rowe was involved in Georgia Southern\u2019s successful transition from NAIA to NCAA Division II play.<\/p>\n

Former athlete and coach establishes the Coach J.E. Rowe Scholarship<\/h3>\n

\"Screen-Shot-2012-10-25-at-11.09.33-AM\"<\/a>
\nFrom 1959 until 1974, J.E. Rowe (\u201961) gave a lot to Georgia Southern College. He was a two-sport athlete from 1959-61, and became the head basketball coach when Hanner Fieldhouse was erected and the program moved to Division I in 1971.<\/p>\n

But, in 2011, Rowe gave what may have been his biggest contribution yet, when he and his family founded the Coach J.E. Rowe Scholarship, established to support and recognize individuals within the Georgia Southern University Department of Health and Kinesiology who plan to pursue a career in coaching or a coaching field.<\/p>\n

Rowe\u2019s motivation was simple. \u201cIn one sentence I can sum it up,\u201d he said. \u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for financial aid, I never could have attended college.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rowe attended Georgia Southern on an athletic scholarship.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it were up to me, I couldn\u2019t have paid 10 dollars,\u201d he laughed. \u201cI was the only child in a family of five that attended college. That\u2019s one of the main reasons I\u2019m so happy and fortunate that my family deemed it important enough to create a scholarship in my name. It\u2019s thrilling to give back to Georgia Southern some of the things that I was given.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rowe\u2019s playing days at Georgia Southern led to several opportunities, the first of which was being drafted by the New York Mets and later signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers. But that was a short-lived experience that quickly led to both a lifestyle and career change.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a better baseball player than I was a basketball player, but to put it this way, I only got a cup of coffee with those teams,\u201d said Rowe. \u201cI got out, got married and decided to start coaching.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the reference of J.B. Scearce, Rowe\u2019s basketball coach when he played at Georgia Southern, Rowe went on to coach high school hoops in the Atlanta area. After a year as an assistant at Druid Hills High School, he became the head coach at Avondale High School for five years, in which he accumulated a record of 81-29.<\/p>\n

Then, in the spring of 1967, Rowe was hired as an assistant by Scearce and returned to Georgia Southern. Scearce charged him with two important responsibilities in this position. The first was for Rowe to bring high school players Steve Buckler and Phillip Sisk with him from Atlanta. \u201cI coached Steve for eight years through high school and college,\u201d said Rowe, about the athlete who became one of the leading scorers in Georgia Southern history.<\/p>\n

Rowe\u2019s second task was to live with Roger Moore, an African-American athlete signed by Scearce. \u201cIn those days, it was not unusual for other colleges and universities to steal players from schools,\u201d he said, describing recruitment. Moore became the first black athlete to receive a scholarship in the University System of Georgia\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were some people who were unhappy with that situation, but they survived it, and we survived it, and everyone\u2019s better for it,\u201d said Rowe. \u201cI\u2019m glad I went through that period.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Scearce left the University to further his degree, Frank Radovich was named head coach and Rowe became his assistant, heading up recruiting.<\/p>\n

When Radovich stepped down in 1971, Georgia Southern College Director of Athletics J.I. Clements named Rowe the head coach during a period of time when Georgia Southern was in transition from the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division II, and ultimately to NCAA Division I.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a very fine line between a lower-major and a major college program back then, and we felt like we could play with the big boys if we could get some decent talent in there, and we did,\u201d Rowe said about the transition. \u201cI played teams like South Carolina, North Carolina State, Clemson \u2013 I played some very, very good teams during that time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rowe spent a huge portion of his life impacting Georgia Southern on the field and on the sideline and he was inducted into the Georgia Southern Athletics Hall of Fame in 1991. Now, with children living in and around the Statesboro area and grandchildren attending Georgia Southern, it\u2019s only fitting that his most recent, and maybe biggest contribution, will affect students and student-athletes in the classroom, every year into the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Athlete and Coach Establishes the Coach J.E. Rowe Scholarship<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1668,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[39],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-foundation","tag-fall-2012"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}