Hesston, Kansas proud as one of its own becomes 1st female coach in Super Bowl history
Dan Adelhardt heard from Katie Sowers almost every day.
Adelhardt, Hesston High School’s head football coach from 1998-2004, also worked as an assistant coach for the school’s girls basketball team. Sowers had played well enough for him, but he always knew she wanted more.
In September 2018, The Kansas City Star wrote about Sowers as the San Francisco 49ers prepared for a trip to Kansas City to play the Chiefs in what is now a Super Bowl matchup. Sowers gave The Star old journal entries from when she was 8; she’d written about how she never wanted to play basketball despite growing up in a basketball family.
Sowers had always wanted to play football.
Adelhardt, who has spent the past 15 seasons at Wichita’s Kapaun Mt. Carmel High School, said Sowers asked to play football almost every time they crossed paths at Hesston.
“Back in the early 2000s, we didn’t have girls at Hesston play football, and I’m not so sure if they would have allowed it anyway,” Adelhardt said. “I’d have to tell her, ‘Well, Katie, we’ll have to wait and see.’ You’d do your best to put her off. She just had a relentless passion for the game.”
Now Sowers is set to become the first woman and first openly gay coach in Super Bowl history.
Breaking barriers always
Sowers has had to rip through doubts and stereotypes every step of the way to get to this point. That started during her days in Hesston, a town of about 4,000 located 36 miles north of Wichita.
Not getting to play football didn’t crush her dreams, Adelhardt said, but it would have been easy to give up on her goals.
When she graduated from Hesston High, Sowers continued her basketball career at Goshen College, a small liberal arts school in Indiana. She asked her coach there whether she could be a volunteer assistant when her playing days were over.
“There have been a lot of parents who are worried, their daughters being around someone who is gay,” Sowers told NBC Sports Bay Area, recalling her coach’s response that day. “We got rid of all that. It’s nothing personal.”
Last Wednesday, Goshen College president Rebecca Stoltzfus released a statement in which the school apologized to Sowers.
“Sadly, in 2009, our policies and the laws of Indiana allowed for hiring decisions to consider sexual orientation,” the statement read.
Sowers responded by saying she loved her time at Goshen and everything the college represents. And the adversity she faced there eventually had a positive effect.
“That experience actually led me to football,” Sowers told NBC Sports Bay Area.
Today, Sowers is in her second season as a 49ers assistant coach for offense. She came to San Francisco with four years of experience with the Atlanta Falcons. Before that, she was athletic director for the Kansas City, Missouri parks and recreation department for five years.
She also played for the Kansas City Titans team in the Women’s Football Alliance.
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Hesston has changed a lot since Sowers was there. Tyson Bauerle is the high school’s football coach now, and he said there is a chance a girl will play on the team next season.
“One of the cool things about football specifically is when you put a team together, it doesn’t really matter where you’re coming from, what your background is, what your experience is,” Bauerle said. “There are certain values that are respected in football, like toughness, effort, a positive attitude. I think it’s the same in coaching, and clearly she’s got that.”
Changing faces back home
Many of the people Sowers knew in Hesston aren’t there anymore. Ty Rhodes was a first-year teacher when Sowers was a sophomore. He is now the principal. He said in the limited time he was around Sowers, her drive to get where she wanted to be was apparent.
“I don’t think she’s trying to put on any kind of front for anything,” Rhodes said. “She’s genuine to who she is, and it has obviously worked for her. I can really appreciate that.”
That ambition is what most in Hesston associate with Sowers. Although terms like “first female coach” might be viewed as a means of illustrating the growth in American culture since Sowers was in high school, Hesston athletic director Clint Stoppel said her goals aren’t so different from those of other coaches.
“At the end of the day, she is trying to help a team win a football game like everybody else,” Stoppel said.
On the Super Bowl stage
This year’s Super Bowl finds those who knew Sowers in Hesston picking sides.
Rhodes said the Hesston faculty recently held a meeting. He said he asked everyone in attendance who they would cheer for during Sunday night’s championship game. He said most hands went up for the Chiefs, who are considered the hometown team, but he wouldn’t be upset to see Sowers’ team win it.
Sowers’ upbringing in Hesston has become a national story. Rhodes said he has received double-digit interview requests from the likes of The Associated Press. Rhodes acknowledged that it’s impressive his city is making national headlines, but he said it won’t change the integrity of the town.
“This is her thing; it’s not our thing,” Rhodes said. “We have to make sure not to cross a line of it being about us as a community. There are a lot of people still here who are proud of her, but it’s hard to say, ‘She made it because of us.’ No, she made it because of her.”
The fact that Sowers has made it all the way to the Super Bowl stage isn’t shocking news to anyone in town, Stoppel said. Many in Hesston have been following her journey closely since she left.
Talk of the town
Every couple of months, the school puts up an alumni spotlight for one male and one female graduate. Sowers’ story and photos are posted now.
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“One of the toughest competitors we ever had on the basketball court,” Stoppel said. “You knew she was going to do good things and wasn’t going to take ‘No’ for an answer.”
She never has.
Back when Adelhardt was an assistant basketball coach at Hesston, he never got the sense that Sowers wanted to get into coaching. But now he can’t picture her doing anything else.
“You’ve got to give credit to the Falcons and the 49ers,” Adelhardt said. “Guy, girl, whatever, if somebody gives you a chance and believes in you, that’s amazing. ...
“I don’t think she’s trying to be a pioneer of anything. She just loves football.”
This story was originally published January 28, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Hesston, Kansas proud as one of its own becomes 1st female coach in Super Bowl history."