DLS welcomes back former manager

By Ron Brocato, Clarion Herald

The day young Craig Cowand wandered into the De La Salle gymnasium and announced to its head basketball coach Jimmy Dykes, “I want to be your team’s manager,” changed the lives of the coach, his basketball players and young Cowand.

A student at St. Michael Special School who lived across the street from the De La Salle gym, he wanted to be part of a team and sport he was never able to play because of a condition of palsy he has lived with from birth.

Dykes was pleased to welcome him as an honorary Cavalier, and the players took him in as a special friend. And he served the school in that capacity from 1970-73.

Even when Dykes left coaching and Reboul, who starred at the University of New Orleans (LSUNO  at the time), became the head coach at Birmingham Southern, the three remained close. Cowand’s family moved to Spring, Texas. But that did not deter this friendship.

Cowand visited both coaches and was a guest at Birmingham Southern games he was able to visit.

Now residing in an assisted living facility in Texas, Cowand returned to the school on Jan. 10 for a reunion in his honor with the men in maroon and gray he remembered from years past.

To top off the evening, De La Salle’s president and head basketball coach, Paul Kelly, treated Cowand to a special guest appearance to watch the Cavaliers defeat Country Day, 57-49.