2000 Lower Lake High School graduate doesn’t miss coaching current generation
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LAKE COUNTY >> A 2000 Lower Lake graduate and former three-sport athlete during her high school days, you can still catch Billie Bowles on the playing field nearly a quarter of a century later, but now she’s wearing a striped shirt and blowing a whistle.
Bowles, 42, is officiating youth football games in the Mendo-Lake Empire Junior Football League, a member of the Coastal Mountain Officials Association (CMOA).
While Bowles turned to coaching after she was done competing in volleyball, basketball and softball for the Trojans, she said she decided to make a late career change.
“I coached youth and adult sports for many years,” Bowles said. “When this generation of teens and preteens got extra difficult to coach and basically made it way less fun, I moved to officiating.”
Added Bowles, “I have always done youth basketball and baseball/softball games as a volunteer, but last year I joined the CMOA for junior high volleyball, then baseball/softball and adult softball, and now football. It has been amazing to still get this level of exciting exposure to sports I love without having to deal with the athletes and parents on the coaching level, which has become quite joy sucking, I’m sad to say.”
Bowles also plays and manages a women’s team in the Lake County Adult Softball Association.
“And we just won a championship,” Bowles said.
Looking to the future, Bowles she would like to move up the line as an official.
“My goal is to become a college official, preferably Division 1. I would shoot for higher, but unfortunately, I started this path a bit too late. It’s a dream come true I didn’t even know I had. I constantly joke with the guys and tell them I will miss them when the NFL calls me next week.”
Bowles said she doesn’t mind coaching youngsters just getting involved with sports, but that older athletes are much different now compared to her playing days.
“If this generation wasn’t so difficult, I would have been shooting to become a coach at a higher level, but coaching requires too much of one’s soul and this generation will kill a soul quick, and if they don’t their parents will.”
Added Bowles, “I have discovered a passion for officiating sports and plan to take it to the highest level achievable for me.”