Terry Bowen, Millennium Hall of Fame

It wasn’t so much Terry Bowen discovering water polo as it was the

sport finding him.

And Costa Mesa High’s long-dominant aquatics programs have him to

thank.

It has been a wild ride from the wine country in Northern California,

where Bowen was an all-league defensive back in football at Healdsburg

High School, to aquatics coaching legend at Cuesta College.

Too small for football at his local junior college, Santa Rosa, Bowen

moved south to Cerritos College to get involved in gymnastics. At

Cerritos, Bowen took a swimming class and soon realized he could jump off

a diving board with more grace than anyone.

Bob Horn, the Cerritos water polo and men’s swim coach who would later

coach at UCLA, picked Bowen out of the class and put him on the diving

team. Bowen was a state finalist his first year, but all of his buddies

who were swimmers played water polo in the autumn.

Bowen, who grew up swimming in a river, figured it was “a natural” to

try water polo, and, well, it was like going downstream.

He earned an aquatics scholarship to Cal State LA, which finished

second and third in the nation when Bowen played, including an NCAA

Tournament win his senior year over UCLA and his old coach, Horn.

Bowen, who took up surfing while attending Cerritos because that’s

also what his friends did, accepted his first coaching job at Seaside

High in Monterey. He left and went to Kennedy in Anaheim, where he stayed

for one year before landing at Costa Mesa.

For 9 1/2 years, there was no better relationship between coach and

players and coach and parents.

“One year, there was a problem with me being the swim coach,” said

Bowen, who operated a club team as well as the school’s team, which the

CIF Southern Section had reportedly endorsed.

That is, until CIF got wind of the fact that Corona del Mar was doing

the same thing and “all of the sudden it wasn’t all right, so CIF put an

injunction against us and we couldn’t swim in the CIF championships,”

Bowen said. “Well, our (Mesa) parents got an attorney and put an

injunction against CIF, and we came back in and won.”

Bowen, whose Mesa water polo teams won league titles virtually every

year for 10 seasons, ran into another problem once when the Newport-Mesa

School District was apparently slow in reopening the pool on campus.

The Costa Mesa parents got a phone committee together to call the

district office every two minutes round the clock to complain until the

pool was fixed.

“They were the most loyal, dedicated group of people ever,” Bowen

said. “At a school board meeting, the superintendent was told there are

two things you can’t do in this district: One is cut out textbooks and

the other is shut down a pool. The years I was at Costa Mesa (1968 to

‘77), there were three major sports -- football, basketball and water

polo. We had a hiring freeze once in the district, but if the water polo

coach ever retired, the school would be allowed to go outside of the

district to bring in the best person.

“One of the things that always impressed me about the Newport-Mesa

District as a whole is the fact that they put a major emphasis on

aquatics and have four outstanding high schools with great aquatics

programs.”

Bowen was greatly influenced in the game by Horn and former U.S.

Olympic Coach Monte Nitzkowski, his club coach, and said coaching at

Costa Mesa “was an excellent program for me to grow up in. Orange County

water polo, even today, is the hub of aquatics in the United States.

There are so many Olympic athletes there.”

Bowen, 57, has been at Cuesta in San Luis Obispo for 23 years, 21

years as the aquatics coach, because construction of the pool wasn’t

complete when he arrived.

In water polo, Bowen has guided the Cougars to 17 conference

championships and 21 consecutive winning seasons, including five state

tournament appearances. Cuesta has captured two Southern California

Regional titles (1989 and ‘90) under Bowen and twice finished as state

runner-up. His career record there is 468-193-14 (.704 winning percentage).

Bowen, who still surfs in the winter and enjoys riding his Harley in

the summer, used to hear the whispers that he was only a water polo

coach.

But he has proved otherwise, directing the Cuesta women’s swim team to

16 conference titles and the men’s team to 10 conference championships.

In 1995 and ‘98, Bowen was named men’s swimming State Coach of the Year.

Bowen, who has coached 41 All-Americans in water polo and 92

All-Americans in swimming (combined), today enters the Daily Pilot Sports

Hall of Fame, celebrating the millennium. He lives in Atascadero with his

wife of 35 years, Sandy. They have two grown children: Jeff, 34, a

newspaper sports editor, and Stephanie, 28, an attorney in San Luis

Obispo.