By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
Rich Dowler went out a winner as coach of the Western Alamance boys’ tennis team.
“You can’t draw it up any better,” Dowler said. “After so many years getting close, it’s a storybook ending for me.”
The Warriors won the Class 5-A dual team state championship in the spring. Dowler, a math teacher, is retiring from Western prior to the 2027 season.
“It has to be my highlight,” Dowler said of the state title. “We’ve had some really good teams.”
He spent 23 years coaching tennis at Western, including many of those years in charge of the boys’ and girls’ tennis programs. He arrived at Western after teaching for five years at Broadview Middle School.
“They needed a tennis coach,” said Dowler, who has a tennis background and continues to play in U.S. Tennis Association age-group events.
In his early coaching days, he said he learned from now-former Williams coach Mike Beamon and John Walton, who was director of the Burlington Tennis Center.
The coaching part came with lots of good times.
“It has always been so much fun because that’s why I stuck with it so long,” Dowler said.
He took time off from the boys’ team for a few years when his daughter, Mackenzie Dowler, played soccer for the Warriors, though he helped as an assistant with the boys’ golf team during that time.
Under Dowler’s watch, Western became a longtime host school for tennis regionals at Burlington Tennis Center.
Several members of this year’s Western boys’ team had been together for eight or nine years since competing on youth circuits. The roster grew with players wanting to be part of the success on the courts – something embraced by Dowler’s no-cut policy.
Dowler said the players made the coaching part easy.
“It makes practices and seasons go by so quick,” he said. “It makes it so easy and so much fun.”
Western rolled through the Mid-Carolina Conference to notch a league championship for the fourth consecutive year. Weeks later, the Warriors ended up with the school’s first boys’ tennis dual team state championship since a three-year run from 1998-2000.
Part of the strategy, Dowler said, came with putting together a tougher non-conference schedule for early in the season.
Dowler knew it likely would be his last go-around with the Warriors (21-0) as they climbed toward the championship in the spring. They defeated Hickory in the state final.
“So bittersweet, the last one,” he said. “A long time coming because we had some great teams back in the time.”
Eric Greene, Greg Patterson, and Rajiv Dinakaran – who all went on to join college tennis teams – were among the Western standouts to play under Dowler. This year, Luke Dunham won the Class 5-A singles state championship and Adam Boylston and Timothy McDowell claimed the doubles title.
Dowler, 52, said he plans to retire in February.
“When you’ve got 30 years of teaching in, you’ve got to go out some time,” he said.
