Jacques Bowe ’10
BY GEOFF GOYNE

Some Peo­ple like to stay busy. Then there’s Jacques Bowe ’10. It’s hard to find an orga­ni­za­tion in which this 2010 grad­u­ate was not involved in dur­ing his time at Wes­ley. A cap­tain on the men’s bas­ket­ball team, Bowe was the pres­i­dent of the Wes­ley Col­lege Stu­dent Ath­lete Advi­sory Coun­cil, the vice pres­i­dent of the Cap­i­tal Ath­letic Con­fer­ence (CAC), a mem­ber of the Fel­low­ship of Chris­t­ian Ath­letes, a res­i­dent assis­tant in Malm­berg Hall, a stu­dent ambas­sador for the Admis­sions Office, a mem­ber of the College’s Gospel Choir, an employee in the Office of Stu­dent Activ­i­ties, vice pres­i­dent of the cam­pus Legal Soci­ety and a mem­ber of the Advi­sory Com­mit­tee for Legal Stud­ies. And that’s just on-campus involvement.

Out­side of school, Bowe has been active in his church, the Pen­te­costal Church of God (PCOG) in Lin­coln, Delaware; a drum­mer in both the Pen­te­costal High­lights and the Future Gen­er­a­tion; a mem­ber of the National Youth Depart­ment Plan­ning Com­mit­tee for the PCOG; and he vol­un­teers at the Old Manor Nurs­ing Home in Mil­ford, Delaware.

When he first came to Wes­ley, Bowe had plans to play both foot­ball and bas­ket­ball. After two years of both sports, he gave up foot­ball to focus on bas­ket­ball. “When I became an RA, play­ing two sports was too much,” he said. “That’s when I became ded­i­cated to improv­ing on the court.”

Head Coach Jerry Kobasa also noticed the hard work. “When Jacques came into our pro­gram, he was an out­stand­ing ath­lete who hap­pened to play bas­ket­ball,” he recalled. Over the years, he just worked harder and harder to become a bet­ter player.”

The move paid off. After aver­ag­ing only 8.4 min­utes per game and just 1.5 points and an equal num­ber of rebounds as a fresh­man and sopho­more, Bowe hit the gym. As a junior, he added the three­p­oint shot to his arse­nal and set career highs in nearly every cat­e­gory as a key reserve on the Wolver­ines’ run to the CAC Cham­pi­onship and first NCAA Tour­na­ment appearance.

But Mr. Every­thing wasn’t done yet. After another sum­mer of hard work, Bowe was named one of two team cap­tains for his senior year. He also emerged as a scor­ing threat, and his num­bers in almost every cat­e­gory across the board sur­passed those of his first three sea­sons com­bined. When injuries among team­mates struck and he was given his first career start, he did not dis­ap­point. He hit five threes on his way to a career high 17 points. Bowe remained in the start­ing lineup for six more games and aver­aged 10.9 points per game over that time.

“Before this year, Coach [Kobasa] told me I’d be a cap­tain,” he said. “We went over how I would need to take on a lead­er­ship role with the team and devel­oped a plan with coaches. Come early, stay late.”

The deci­sion to make Bowe a cap­tain was an easy one for the coach­ing staff. “Jacques has always put the team first,” Kobasa observed. “There was never a time that it was Jacques first, team sec­ond. And that’s what makes him a suc­cess­ful leader. The team knew that when he said some­thing, it had mean­ing and substance.”

“Jacques is the kind of player that if you had a son, that’s who you’d want him to be like,” Kobasa con­tin­ued. “He always best rep­re­sented the pro­gram and the school.”

In part because of Bowe’s play, the Wolver­ines kept rolling through the reg­u­lar sea­son and into the CAC Tour­na­ment, earn­ing a trip to the finals for the sec­ond straight year. Wesley’s win in the CAC Semi­fi­nals was the team’s 19th—a school record at the Divi­sion III level. The Wolver­ines fell in the con­fer­ence title game, but still earned their sec­ond straight NCAA berth.

Among his off-campus activ­i­ties, Bowe takes great pride in his vol­un­teerism, know­ing it makes a dif­fer­ence to oth­ers. This is par­tic­u­larly true in his role at the Old Manor Nurs­ing Home. “We min­is­ter to the res­i­dents and also just spend time with them, talk­ing,” he noted. “Basi­cally we just try to brighten someone’s day while we’re there.”

Now that Bowe has grad­u­ated from Wes­ley, he plans to attend law school and his past endeav­ors have pre­pared him for that path. As pres­i­dent of the Legal Soci­ety, he orga­nized dif­fer­ent events for stu­dents in the pro­gram, includ­ing work­shops to pre­pare for the LSATs. In addi­tion, as a stu­dent rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the Advi­sory Com­mit­tee for Legal Stud­ies, a group made up largely of lawyers, judges and other legal pro­fes­sion­als, he has gained expo­sure to a pro­fes­sional net­work in the field. In prepa­ra­tion for his future plans, Bowe also is doing an intern­ship with the law firm of Dono­van & Hop­kins. He assists in trial prepa­ra­tion, con­ducts research for cases, and aids in for­mu­lat­ing trial strate­gies. He will spend this sum­mer study­ing for the LSATs and get­ting ready for law school.

“Jacques is the kind of worker that is always suc­cess­ful,” Kobasa observed. “He is not afraid of chal­lenges or putting in the effort to reach any goal he sets for him­self. That’s what will make him suc­cess­ful in the real world.”