Josh Bowman story
BROTHERS BEAT THE ODDS TO JOIN THE GREEN WAVE
October 31, 2002
RAY COX
THE ROANOKE TIMES
Josh Bowman was once told he wouldn't walk. Mark Bowman was led to believe he wouldn't be able to holler.
Both predictions proved false.
How far off were these dire prognoses? About as far as from Narrows to Nairobi.
Josh plays football for the Narrows High Green Wave, for which he is a senior split end. Earlier this season, in a game against Twin Valley, he was about a half-yard short of scoring his first career touchdown.
Mark, Josh's younger brother, also is a Narrows football player. Most game nights, he out-yells an entire cheerleading squad and his own leather-lunged coaches. It is by all accounts as breathtaking a demonstration of vocal power as has been seen in these parts in many a fall campaign.
"Let's hear it," Narrows coach Don Lowe ordered Mark in the locker room one day before practice.
Mark, a 5-foot-4, 210-pound reserve center, is momentarily abashed and self-conscious.
"I can't, coach," he said.
"Come on," Lowe said. "Do it."
Bowman grinned sheepishly and turned it loose:
"G-O-O-O DEE-fense," he bellowed.
Locker room windows shook in their casements. Shoulder pads rattled on the hooks in the rows of cubbies.
Or seemed to.
Everybody laughed. Spirits rose. Players departed the dry warmth of their dressing quarters to knock the stuffings out of each other in the cold rain and mud with big smiles on their faces.
You can't blame the boys in gold and green. That Bowman boy is mighty impressive, from an auditory perspective. Especially when it is recalled that this is a kid whose vocal cords once were operated on for an ailment that could have robbed him of his powers of speech.
Mark Bowman has shouted down negativity, nullified the naysayers. He learned how to buck the odds from a good source.
Until he was 7 years old, Mark's big brother Josh was a passenger in a wheelchair. His parents, Lisa and Danny, never gave up on him, though. Eventually, a rare bone disease was di-agnosed in his hips. A specialist was found, in faraway Chicago. Money was scraped together. Surgery was arranged. Hope was offered.
Not enough hope, as far as Josh was concerned.
"They told me that I'd never play sports," Josh said.
So hideous, so absolutely unacceptable was this news to him, they might as well have told him that he would eventually have to enroll at Giles High.
"I told them that I was going to play football for the Narrows Green Wave and nobody was going to stop me," he said.
Nobody did, either. Still, there was a body cast to walk away from, legs and feet to learn how to use for the first time.
There were also 18 surgeries to wake up from, most of them as a result of persistent ear infections. At one time or another, this kid has had more tubes than the horn section in a marching band.
"They said I'd be deaf," he said. "They were wrong about that, too."
Another roadblock to the gridiron for him at first involved his mother. She worried, as mothers occasionally do. Eventually, Josh's father talked her into it.
Danny had been a Green Wave footballer. So had his brothers Gary and Jon. Danny Bowman knows how it goes when you get the call to play football at Narrows.
Josh got the parental go-ahead. The doctor didn't find out until two years later, when Josh was a freshman.
"The doctor was right mad about that," Mark said.
Josh relented and listened to reason. He started to wear two football pads on each hip instead of one.
Mark had his own medical mountains to scale. The surgery on his vocal cords worked. He can talk a streak of the purest blue now. Still, that voice isn't entirely bullet-proof.
"Saturday mornings, sometimes I can hardly talk," he said.
The truth is, there's been a lot to shout about this year. The Green Wave has won seven of eight and is poised to take aim at Galax and a Mountain Empire District title Friday night. Narrows plays at home, at Ragsdale Field, where it has won a lot of football games over the years.
Victory is measured in sundry ways.
"Winning for Josh Bowman is just being able to run, just being able to play football," Lowe said.
Something to holler about for sure. Brother Mark is happy to oblige.