A teacher, a coach and an administrator. Bob Lowery coached cross country and track, and taught in Vermilion for 17 years before he become the Assistant Executive Director for the South Dakota High School Activities Association. He was also involved in discussions and rules when it went from five classes to seven classes of high school football in South Dakota. Today, while retired from the SDHSAA, he's a substitute teacher, and he still helps out at local sporting events.
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And he retired from the High School Activities Association 10 years ago. You know, he may be retired now, but he's also filling in quite frequently as a substitute teacher now in Pierre. He's Bob Lowery, and he joins us on In Play. Hey, you and I first ran into each other back in 1978. You were teaching and coaching in Vermilion, when I arrived to broadcast Vermilion football and basketball on the radio. How long had you been in Vermilion when we first met in 1978?
That was my first year, my first year there was the '77, '78 school year. So... started there in the fall of '77.
Was it your first job after college, SD issue?
It was, yeah. I got my undergraduate degree at Peru State College in Nebraska, and then I spent a year as a graduate assistant at South Dakota State, working on my masters degree.
Your home own is Superior, Nebraska. That's right along the Nebraska, Kansas border, right? I think you can see Kansas from Superior, can't you?
Oh yeah, it's about one mile away as the crow flies, you know? But yeah, still have two sisters and my mother still lives there. My father passed away about 20 years ago. But get down there quite frequently. Matter of fact this summer, we had our 50th class reunion. So, I couldn't believe how old my classmates had gotten.
What was sports like for you and the family when you were growing up in Superior? Were you involved with a lot of sports as a family?
Well, yeah. I was really the only one. My two sisters weren't involved in athletics. Of course that was prior to Title IX so there wasn't a lot of opportunities for the girls. But I ran cross country and then played basketball and then ran track. Played baseball in the summer up until I was 17 years old and then I didn't play baseball, I devoted all my time to running during the summer, getting ready for my junior and senior year of cross country and track.
I know you love the running, the track and the cross country. What got you into that particular sport?
You know, I'm not sure. I wasn't a very good football player, I know that. I tell everybody I played guard and then tackle in junior high, I guard at the end of the bench and tackle anybody that got close. That was my experience as a football player. So cross country, as an eighth grader, I started running track and running the distances. I wasn't real fleet of foot, so I wasn't going to be a sprinter. And just thoroughly enjoyed that, so just pursued that was basically my career in athletics was with running.
I know you talked about playing baseball in Superior. I found out, and this is a little bit of a tidbit here, Superior, Nebraska, one of the smallest cities in America that had a professional minor league baseball team, the Superior Senators. Back in the late mid '50s or so. And in fact Jim Kaat, the former Twin, apparently pitched in Superior at one point in time.
Yes he did. And I think he actually played for a team called the Superior Knights. They actually built the baseball stadium that still stands today when those minor league teams were there. And it's a really nice baseball stadium, doesn't have grass infield or anything, but it's got the brick stands for the fans and so forth. So yeah, matter of fact, when I was at a meeting in Kansas City one time, when I was with the Association, I was in a sports bar with some of my colleagues and they had a bunch of old newspaper clippings up on the wall. And sure enough there was the thing on there, "Superior Knights win", and that was kind of interesting to see that.
And Kaat just went into the hall of fame recently.
Yes, he did. Yup.
How cool is that? So after high school it was off to Peru State. Was there an athletic scholarship in on that when you went to Peru?
Yeah, I did get a half tuition scholarship to run cross country and track at Peru.
Nice, wasn't too far away from Superior, right? Peru wasn't that far.
It was about 150 miles, a three hour drive. Down in the southeast corner of Nebraska so it was maybe about 60 miles straight south of Omaha, right on the Missouri river. Beautiful campus. Really small college. We only had about 650 students when I was going to school there. And the campus was called Campus of 1000 Oaks, and they had just huge oak trees all over campus. So our saying was always, "Campus of 1000 Oaks, where there's more oaks than folks". Unfortunately, Peru, they ran into some financial difficulties and the cross country and track programs were dropped after my sophomore year.
Is that when you went to South Dakota State?
No, I stayed and finished my degree at Peru State, didn't run as a junior or senior. And then when I graduated then I was fortunate enough to get a graduate assistantship, spent a year working under Jay Dirksen with the cross country and track program at South Dakota State.
Hmm. So you go to Vermilion right out of college, how much coaching were you doing right away? Very first year in Vermillion.
Yeah. So that very first year I was the head boys and girls cross country coach and then the head boys and girls track coach. So, kind of got thrown into the fire and had to tone down my jack rabbit cheering a little bit, being in coyote country. But we all survived. I had some really good cross country and track teams the first few years I was there. And there, during that period of time, we were bumped up to double A for about a four year period of time because we had a big class going through and it pushed us up in enrollment into the double A class. But then starting in 1983, we dropped back down to class A and were fortunate enough in '83 to win the state A cross country meet. And then followed that up that spring in '84, winning the state A track meet for the boys.
You know, you think about all those early years coaching in Vermilion back in the late '70s and you take a look at the training of athletes in track and cross country back then. What do you think has been the biggest difference in coaching track and cross country since the late '70s?
Well, I don't know if there's a lot of things that have changed. Rich Greeno who knew a little bit about cross country and track always told me, he said "Yeah, there's 100 different ways to coach them Bob, you just have to figure out what works for you". And I took that advice to heart. We experimented with different training techniques and so forth, always went with the hard day, easy day concept where we would run a hard one day and then kind of take it easy the next. But I don't know if it's really changed all that much other than, like I say, there's 100 different ways to coach athletes and you just got to find what works best for you.
You added the Athletic Director job in Vermilion, you did that for nine years. What surprised you the most about doing that job when you took it over in Vermillion?
Well, it's a lot of time, and time away from home. And I had a really young family at that time and I ended up spending more time with other people's kids than I did my own. That was probably the biggest thing. And not near as busy as what athletic directors are today, I mean we've added, since I got out of the administrative duties, soccer's been added for boys and girls, you got cheer and dance for girls, you know, there's something going on every single night of the week, and some nights there's two or three things going on. So it's a lot of time, and I don't know if people really understand the amount of time that our athletic administrators have to put in beyond the normal school day. Because there's a lot of times they get to school at seven in the morning and they don't get home till 10 at night. And with all the added activities and everything we've got going on now, that could be four, five nights a week.
It's about 1994, I think I got the year close, but there's a job opening at the South Dakota High School Activities Association. What intrigued you about that open position?
Well, when I became the Athletic Director in Vermilion in 1986, succeeded Ronnie Brown. Ronnie Brown had been the long time Football and Athletic Director in Vermilion. He retired and I became the Athletic Director, and one of those responsibilities was to manage the football playoff championships that were in Vermilion every year. And just doing that statewide organization for that event kind of intrigued me about the High School Activities Association position when Bernie Stocking announced that he was going to retire. So I threw my name in the hat and was fortunate enough to get the job and enjoyed that thoroughly for the 17, 18 years I was there.
How big was that job description when you first got there?
Well, it was a big jump. You know, here I am, a guy that's got a lot of cross country and track experience, and the two biggest sports that I had to be in charge of were football and wrestling. Other than participating in football as a seventh and eighth grader, I'd never participated in wrestling, and now all of a sudden I'm the chief rule interpreter for the state for those two sports. And I was very upfront and honest with people and I think people appreciated that. I said "There's going to be a learning curve here. I'm not going to try and buffalo you if you ask me a question, I don't know the answer, I'll tell you I don't know the answer, but I'll research and get back to you". And I think people appreciated that, that honesty.
And I can still remember the first time I ever went to a National Football Rules Committee meeting, I was the South Dakota voting rep on that for all the years that I was at the Association. And we were in our sub committee of game administration, and they were talking about a particular rule change. And Mike Webb, who was counterpart from the state of West Virginia, was Chairman of that committee, and we're talking about this rule change, Mike does not have his rule book open, and he starts quoting. He's saying, "Well if we change that rule, it's going to have an effect on rule 375 on page 28 of the rule book". And I'm thinking wow, am I out of my league here? But the great thing about serving on that committee too, there was no dumb questions. Everybody wanted to help each other help and make sure that we all left and we were all on the same page.
It wasn't too long after you got to hear rumblings about the seasons of girls basketball and volleyball. Remember, girls basketball was in the fall and volleyball was in the winter. What were those discussions like, knowing that a possible switch in the seasons was being pushed?
Right. They were down to I believe five states were still playing girls basketball in the fall. Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Michigan and the fifth one is escaping me right now, it might've been West Virginia. I'm not sure on the fifth one. But a lot of discussion on that. And the push was coming from the volleyball people because we're out of traditional season. The basketball people liked it, but the volleyball people, all the college scholarships, although that wasn't the main focus or shouldn't be a main focus of high school athletics, all the volleyball scholarships were being awarded prior to our seniors having an opportunity to play their senior year of volleyball. And there was a push in the courts that that was not fair, and it was actually a violation of Title IX.
We fought that for a long time because that's what our schools wanted us to do, they wanted to continue doing what they were doing. But ultimately we knew that every state that had tried to fight it had lost, and we didn't think it was wise to spend millions of dollars fighting a court case that you're going to lose. And so we ultimately switched the seasons and lo and behold the following year, we were sued for switching and ended up in federal court. And of course the federal court sided with us and now we have volleyball in the fall and girls basketball in the winter. And I'll tell everybody, it worked out great. We have bigger crowds in volleyball now than we ever had with volleyball in the winter, and we've got bigger crowds for girls basketball than we had in the fall. So ultimately, it turned out to be a great move I think.
Well another story unfolded during your tenure, shortly about the same time, and it regarded nine man football, 1999, adopting the three class system for nine man football. What were those discussions like?
Well, that had been discussed quite a bit prior to me coming to the office and then it kind of died. And so I'd been there for five years and not a whole lot had been said, I had a few small school administrators ask me about it. And I just personally got to be evaluating things that here we had three classes of 11 man football, we had only two classes of nine man football, and we had more schools playing nine man than we did 11 man. So I thought it was only fair we tried for a couple of years of qualifying 32 schools to the playoffs with two classes of nine man. But geez, we were playing a game on Thursday, Tuesday, Friday, Monday, and that's just too much football, it's just not safe.
And so, I kind of proposed this to people and it kind of caught fire and we ultimately went to three classes of football. Only because I kept saying that football is the only sport that you have to qualify for to get to post season. You can be 0-21 in basketball and you still get to go to a district or a region tournament. Not so in football, and it's still not so today, not everybody qualifies. By adding that class we had more schools that were going to have an opportunity to experience post season play in football.
First five years in the job, you're debating the switch of the seasons with girls basketball and volleyball and you're dealing with the class nine man debate. Did you think things maybe would slow down a little bit after those two big time stories?
No there was never really a slow time. Because shortly after we went to three classes of nine man football, then we started experiencing some problems with only three classes of 11 man football. You know, then ultimately where we're at now, where we've got four classes of 11 man. And seven classes of football, for the people that are on the outside looking in, with the number of schools and the number of football programs we have, seven classes, I will agree, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. But when you look at our demographics and the disparity in enrollment at the 11 man level and the number of schools that are playing nine man football, it begins to make a little more sense.
When we started talking about going to a fourth class of 11 man, the big issue was that the old 11AAA was those top 16 to 18 schools. And we were going with enrollments all the way from 600 up to enrollments of about 2000 who were all in the same class. Everybody agreed, we probably had 30 meetings trying to decide what we were going to do, and everybody agreed that that bottom four, five, six schools in enrollment really couldn't compete on a weekly basis or a yearly basis with the larger schools, so what do we do with them? Well, if you move them down to 11A you haven't really solved anything, the only thing you've done is shift the problem to 11A.
And then if you move the bottom of 11A down to 11B, then you've just shifted the problem again. So ultimately we just decided that the trouble is at the 11AA level, let's leave the other classes alone, and let's just split the AA into two equal classes of, at that time it was eight, eight and eight, AAA and AA, and we're still there today.
Do you think six man football might return to South Dakota? I think it might down the road. What do you think?
Yeah, it might down the road. I know that these schools up in the northwest corner of the state were really pushing to add six man, and it looked like it was going to become a possibility a couple of years ago. Because there was about 30 schools that indicated an interest in playing six man football. But then when you come right down to it for people to actually make the decision, it meant splitting some co-ops and people weren't really interested in doing that, especially down in the southeast corner where those co-ops have been in existence for a long time. And so there ended up only being about 14, 15 schools that were interested in playing six man football. And the problem was the traveling distance between those schools that were interested just made it impossible to really consider. So it kind of got put on the back burner. But as enrollments continued to decrease, I can foresee six man football coming to the state at some point in time.
Bob, one more note on football. While you were there at the Association, you developed the regular season football schedule for all the schools. That was back in 1998. What was the reason for that, and why doesn't it happen with all the sports, with the Association?
Well, we started in 1998 doing it for just 11 man and then, a few years later, we started doing it for the nine man as well. And what was happening, and I ran into a little bit of this when I was the Athletic Director in Vermilion, everybody was looking for games, but somebody might be open week one and somebody else is open week seven, so they'd end up playing week four on a Tuesday. And then play two games in one week and not have a game at all another week. And so, when I came to the office I just met with the schools and I said "I'm not interested in breaking up conferences, I'm not interested in ending out of state games that you may have, that you've had for a long time, and I'm not interested in breaking up long time existing rivalries within states. But I would be willing to take it upon myself to schedule everybody's football schedule for them so we can get everybody playing one game a week all season long".
And the schools bought into that and what I did was, early in the school year, usually in September or October, I would send out a form to the schools, "Let me know what conference you're in. Do you want to play a full round robin conference schedule? Do you have any out of state opponents, and if you do, what week do you play them? Because we're going to have to lock that in. And then do you have any non conference opponents that you want to continue playing that have been long time rivalries?". And then once I got all that in, then I would start plugging games together and usually by about March, just prior to the Athletic Director's Conference, I would have those schedules done.
That's over 100 schools you're doing football schedules.
Yup, and that's why it took me from November to March to do that. Spent a lot of time at home on the kitchen table. But it was something I thoroughly enjoyed. I mean I really enjoyed it, it was like putting a 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle together, and you had to make sure you had all 5000 pieces there before you started because you change one thing, it changes five other things. So you had to have everything in front of you before you ever started that process.
But it's still going on today where the Association is coming up with the football schedule.
Yup, yup, it still is. And I think the reason it doesn't happen in the other sports is football's a little different animal, where you play one game a week. You know, basketball you might play two or three. Volleyball you might play two or three. So people are able, they've got a little more flexibility to choose dates and so forth as to where they can play and where they can't play. And realistically, people want to be in control of their own scheduling. But football is just that different animal where we're trying to play one day a week. And first we ran into some issues at the double A level with ESP and [inaudible 00:25:12] schools and trying to work through all of that, and ultimately we did work through it and I think everything's going pretty good right now.
You did oversee that soccer became a sanctioned sport. It started, I believe, the year after you retired. But there were a handful of teams in one class, and now in its 11th year, there are two classes of boys and girls soccer, 28 schools in girls soccer, 30 in boys soccer. Did you think we would see the expansion in soccer when it was first sanctioned?
Yeah, we started talking about that and we were talking with the club soccer people about it becoming a sanctioned sport. And you're right that we voted to add that as the sanctioned sport and then the first year was the first year that I had retired, so I never really got involved with overseeing the soccer. I was there involved on the ground floor of getting it sanctioned. We were the last state to sanction soccer in the nation. And soccer's a very, very popular sport and we just thought it was time, and it was something we could add for both the boys and the girls, which we did. And it'll continue to grow, I think. Some of our smaller schools, real small schools, maybe not just because they don't have enough kids. But it'll continue to grow as it has here the first 10, 11 years.
Bob were there a couple of items that you just couldn't get past before you'd retired in 2011? Or an issue?
No, not really. When I decided to hang it up, Wayne Carney, who was our Executive Director at the time, he tried to talk me out of it. So I had given my letter of resignation that was going to be effective the end of the 2011, 2012 school year, so July 1st 2012. I'd given that letter to Wayne at the end of September. And Wayne, he says "Are you sure this is something you want to do?". And I go "Yeah, I just think it's time Wayne". He said "Well, I'm going to put this letter in a file, and we don't have to let the board know till January. When we come back from Christmas break in January, you and I will talk again and we'll see if this is still something you want to do".
He was holding out hope for you, wasn't he?
Yeah. And so sure enough, we got back from Christmas break and Wayne called me down to his office and had the letter, and he says "Well, what do you think?". And I said "Wayne, I just think it's time". I said "If you haven't noticed, I don't get here at eight o'clock in the morning anymore, I leave my house at eight. And I take a little longer at noon. If I can duck out of here before five o'clock in the afternoon I duck out. And that's not doing the job justice. I'm tired and just want to move on, and I'm ready to turn this over to somebody else". And 95 percent of the job was great. The relationships that you're able to develop, being in charge of state events was a lot of fun, but that five percent constant second guessing every decision that you make was beginning to work on me a little bit. And so I just thought it was time for me to move on, let somebody else deal with that. And John [inaudible 00:29:07] and did a nice job for the nine years he was there and now he's gone and went to Omaha to be the Athletic Director down at the Omaha school system.
Well the board of directors of the Association of course is made up of superintendents, coaches, Athletic Directors, and administrators from the states', oh about 172 school districts. Is the make up similar in other states' Association board of directors when it comes to their Activities Association?
Yeah, for the most part I think. We might be one of the few states that have Athletic Directors on our board of directors. A lot of states only have superintendents and principals. Some have only high school principals on their board. But I think for the most part across the country people have a diverse cross section of school administrators that serve on their boards. Probably the one thing that we do different in South Dakota is with our advisory committees. And that was something that was started way back in the late '70s, early '80s by Ruth Rehn. And we have advisory committees for each sport and people can go to those advisory committees and make recommendations for rule changes or whatever it might be affecting that particular sport. And then that advisory committee will meet and consider those, and then from there they pass it on to the Athletic Directors, and the Athletic Directors vote on them at their spring conference, and then from there it comes back to the board. So, the board has a lot of information from the schools as to how they feel about particular rule changes. I'm not sure if any other state does that. But we feel it's very important to make sure that our schools are heard when we're talking about particular rule changes.
Two more questions for you Bob, and one of them we got to get back to track, the sport you really love. You've been involved with the Howard Wood Dakota Relays and the State Track Meet for decades. Why do you love those two events?
Well, I don't know, I think it just goes back to I really fell in love with the sport when I was in high school, continued on into college level. It's just always been in my heart for those particular sports. And of course I had kids and now I've got grandkids that are participating in those activities. And it's something that I just thoroughly enjoy watching. There's nothing more colorful and nothing more exciting than the State Track Meet at the end of the year, when the weather cooperates. When the weather doesn't cooperate, the State Track Meet's kind of a bugger to get through. But boy, when that weather cooperates, there's nothing more colorful and more exciting than watching all of our schools. And last year of course was the first day of the three day State Track Meet, and everybody all at one site. And I think that overall went over very well. I think they'll make a few adjustments, minor adjustments, this year. But I think that's here to stay.
And Bob, you've been away from the Activities Association now for 10 years. What's keeping you busy today?
Well like I say, I'm doing a lot of substitute teaching, thoroughly enjoy that. It's an opportunity to develop relationships with kids, which is the reason why I got in the business in the first place. I run the clock for all the football games here in Pierre, I do the shot clock for boys and girls basketball, I help out running the clock when needed for our wrestling tournaments and so forth. Officiating middle school track meets. You know, so I'm plenty busy.
