Charlton County had just finished a rare losing season, and Indians football head coach Rich McWhorther asked a rhetorical question of his team: “How do you want to be remembered?”
The rising seniors gave a concrete answer.
“Coach Mac had never had a losing season before, or at least since any of us could remember. It was absolutely heartbreaking to finish the season the way we did. We didn’t want to go out like that. We started talking about [it] in the weight room, and we knew we wanted to be the team that took Charlton County back to the Georgia Dome. We hadn’t been in the state championship game in seven years, and we wanted to be the team that brought the Indians back,” Charlton County Indians defensive tackle Will Gowen says.
The road back to the Dome for the Indians last season wasn’t easy, but they were able to get there through hard work and determination.
“Everyone nicknamed us the Road Warriors, because we had to go on the road during playoffs. We played better than anyone [thought] that we could at Commerce, a number-one seed. We even surprised ourselves,” Gowen says.
Gowen was an All-Region Freshman Team selection, Second Team All-Region as a sophomore, and for the pas
t two seasons he has been a First Team All-Region selection.
As a defensive tackle, Gowen has brains that come with his brawn. Scoring an impressive 1450 on the SAT while holding a 3.8 GPA and playing football and baseball landed him several scholarship offers, one to the University of the South in Sewanee. Often called the “Harvard of the South,” the school’s most influential president was former Confederate Lieutenant General E. Kirby Smith. Gowen was honored by the offer to play at the University of the South, though his first choice was to play a little closer to home at the newly minted football program at Mercer University in Macon. Gowen has accepted an offer at Jacksonville University, where he will play nose guard.
“I wanted to go Mercer, but it didn’t work out the way I was hoping it would, but Jacksonville does play Mercer next year,” Gowen says.
Gowen isn’t the only one in his family who will be playing at the college level. His brother Drew, who was a catcher on the Charlton County state finalist baseball team a couple of springs ago, is the starting catcher at Darton College in Albany.
A great athlete, Gowen has also learned to appreciate letters – mainly American Literature taught by Ian Warenkine last year. Warekine is also one of Gowen’s football coaches.
“I never really liked literature that much, but Coach Warekine is passionate about literature and makes you appreciate it and enjoy it, so I got where I liked it. I got a lot out of my Anatomy-Physiology class that was taught by Tracy Willis,” Gowen says.
Gowen has been in the baseball program at Charlton and seen it literally rise to one of the strongest programs in Georgia. He has been an outfielder but primarily is the designated hitter for the Indians. His sophomore season, Charlton dropped to Class A, which still put them in a tough region but one more manageable than that they had been in when they were Class 2A. Just like this past football season, Charlton faced some trials in the playoffs but were able to overcome them.
“We had to come back against George Walton and beat them to get in the championship. The championship game kept getting postponed because of tropical storms, so we were actually out of school by the time we played. We won the first game and lost the other two. It was either me or my teammate Jacob Baxter that came out of the dressing room after we had lost and asked Coach Marchman what color uniform are we wearing tomorrow, because we started summer baseball the next day,” Gowen says.
“Will is a valuable part of our baseball team. After eight games he has a .391 batting average and seven RBI, while playing left field and DH. Will is [a] player that his coaches and his teammates can count on. He brings energy to the field everyday and has helped us to get off to an 8-0 start to the 2014 baseball season. Will is a competitor. His dedication makes the players around him better. Will was also the starting designated hitter for the Class A state championship game in 2013, where Charlton County earned their first state championship in baseball in school history,” Charlton County head baseball coach Thad Marchman says.
Marchman is still building his legacy with the Charlton baseball program, so there was no need to ask about how the next baseball team wanted to be remembered – they wanted to be state champions. Gowen and his teammates did not want to know the feeling of finishing second again. Just as the seniors took it upon themselves to do what it took to get Charlton to the Dome, the baseball team adopted the slogan “Do More.”
“Do More” carried them through the 2013 season, a region title, a tough road in the playoffs, and finally the one thing that rewarded them for doing more: a state championship win over Class A baseball power Gordon-Lee.
Gowen has certainly accomplished a lot which he credits to his family and teammates, and he will be remembered for giving his all in everything he has done. He plans to major in history and minor in political science in college and then go to law school. For now, the Indians have their sights set on making a return trip to the Class A state title game.
SE-AA-4.14-WillGowen
Accomplished and Remembered
By John Wood
