Bowen to Boaz
- Updated: August 6, 2024
After leading Southside girls’ basketball to back-to-back Elite 8s, Alexandria grad and former Oxford assistant will lead Boaz girls’ hoops
By Joe Medley
East Alabama Sports Today
Doors keep opening for Justin Bowen.
After leading Southside High’s girls’ basketball program to back-to-back Northeast Regional finals, the deepest runs in program history, he’ll be Boaz’s head girls’ basketball coach.
His hiring was approved Monday night, and he started Tuesday.
“Ultimately, this decision was based off the opportunity to help my wife and my son,” Bowen said. “Boaz, I believe, also has some of the best facilities in (Class) 5A for sure, but also the state. Their administration is all in on athletics, their school system is committed to providing for their athletics in every possible way across the board, and their basketball program has a tradition of success.”
Bowen will focus on girls’ basketball at Boaz. He also served as defensive coordinator in football at Southside.
Before going to Southside, he was part of Oxford’s football staff under Keith Etheredge and the baseball staff under Wes Brooks. He came to Oxford from Hazel Green, where he served as an assistant coach on the Trojan’s Class 6A state-title baseball team in 2018.
He called his experiences at Southside “some of the best memories of my coaching career.’
“As far as our girls basketball program goes, I feel like our girls the last few years have helped put a huge spark back into the life of girls basketball in this community,” he said. “Watching those girls celebrate at JSU the last two years in our runs to the Elite 8 have been two of the major highlights of my time as a coach, but the relationships that I built with not just them, but all of the kids here, is what makes it so tough to leave.”
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