Manchester's track coach leaving after 42 years

All along, Gene Bowen knew he was destined to coach.

His sport, he thought, would be football. 

Little could he have imagined more than 50 years ago when he was charting his course that it would be track and field or that he would spend 42 years heading the program at Manchester High School.

Though serving as a varsity-level head coach is time- and labor-intensive, Bowen has savored the experience, or at least most of it. 

The detail work of managing staff and athletes in 15 indoor and 17 outdoor events as well as hosting meets and traveling to myriad weekend invitationals can be overwhelming at times, but the benefits, he said, have outweighed the challenges.

“The feeling that you get from coaching is unbelievable,” he said one morning recently as he sat in the Manchester fieldhouse team room a few days before the VHSL Class 6 championship meet.

“When the kids are trying and you can see it in their faces and they perform well, it gives you a feeling I don’t think you can get in too many other jobs.”

Though Bowen uses the term “jobs,” he really means “calling,” for that’s what coaching has been for him.

Over the years, he’s worked with young, evolving athletes and made them better and stellar athletes and made them great. Along the way, he’s created championship teams, received numerous coach of the year honors (though he hasn’t kept count), and, perhaps most gratifying, earned the respect of the track and field community.

He’s also surrounded himself with good assistants and empowered them to use their knowledge to summon the best from the athletes entrusted to their care.

Now, at 69 years old, he’s retiring.

It’s time, he said. No one had to tell him. He just knew.

“With Gene, it’s always been about the kids,” said Will Byrnes, the Lancers’ long-time distance coach. “When I was young, he made it clear: Don’t make it about you. You’re trying to help kids do their best in track and field.

“At Manchester, he’s made a really big commitment of time and effort to make us competitive. What makes him happiest is seeing kids improve as they continue to work hard.”

A 1976 George Wythe High School graduate, Bowen played baseball (catcher, outfield) and football for the Bulldogs and earned honorable mention All-Metro honors as an offensive lineman his senior year.

He cites GW coaches Frank Butts (football), Bob Booker (basketball), Philip Mourtzakis (baseball), and Bob Gary (multiple sports) as mentors who shaped his life and gave him direction.

“All of them had a great influence on me,” Bowen said. “I idolized them. I was borderline juvenile delinquent. I didn’t go to jail or anything, but, oh, my gosh, I got in trouble a lot. Athletics saved me.”

Bowen had no track and field experience when he stumbled into the sport when he was fresh out of VCU in 1981 and serving as a substitute teacher at Swift Creek Middle School.

“They asked me if I wanted to coach track,” he recalls. “I wanted a (full-time health and physical education) job, so I said, ‘Sure, I’ll do track.’ That’s how I got started.”

He also coached football at Swift Creek and a couple of years later coached JV at Manchester, but there was something about track that excited him.

In 1984, he succeeded the late Jim Triemplar (who coached at Dinwiddie and Atlee as well as Manchester) and never looked back.

Triemplar became a great resource for him, as did Jim Holdren, who has coached cross country and track in Central Virginia, most recently at Maggie Walker Governor’s School, since 1964. 

“I ended up giving up football because track was more rewarding,” he said. “Since I didn’t know much about track, I went to a lot of clinics. If there was a clinic nearby in the ‘80s and ‘90s, even some that weren’t nearby like Philadelphia, Washington, and Baltimore, I went. The VHSL had a strong coaches clinic back then. I went every single year.”

He was a sponge for information. That desire never waned. In time, he developed sufficient expertise, especially in the horizontal jumps, that he was often served as a presenter.

Why the horizontal jumps?

“I happened to have some athletes who were good at that,” Bowen said. “They were sprinters first. My philosophy was that if you’re a sprinter, you’re a jumper. The vast majority did both. Some ended up being really good.”

Under Bowen’s guidance, the Lancers' boys and girls teams have earned numerous district and regional titles.

The pinnacle of his career came in 2015 when the boys won the VHSL Class 5A (as it was then called) state title at the Boo Williams Sportsplex in Hampton.

The Lancers won three events — the 1000 (David Lucas, 2:31.44), the high jump (Zach Marshall, 6-4), and the 4x800 relay (Lucas, Andrew Akright, Joe Hewett, Ben Taminger, 7:55.90) — and used their depth to amass 61 points to finish ahead of 35 other teams.

“Things just fell together,” Bowen said. “The stars aligned. That day was incredible. It was our day.”

Now, that his career has ended, Bowen says he’ll miss the day-to-day connections with athletes and colleagues and indulging his passion for his chosen profession. Replacing him will be no easy task.

“Gene did everything from scheduling to coaching the coaches,” said Manchester athletic director Greg Woodle. “He’s never looked for accolades. It’s been about the kids and the sport of track. He’s been in coaching for all the right reasons.”