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DiGregorio’s offer changed Bowers’ life
By Greg Gulas
AUSTINTOWN
While growing up on the city’s East Side, Dorothy Bowers Collins said the farthest she had ever traveled was either Pittsburgh or Cleveland.
With graduation approaching in the spring of 1984, she was looking forward to enlisting in the military with a friend under its buddy system.
But after East High graduate and former YSU women’s basketball coach Ed DiGregorio approached with a scholarship offer, the decision to enter the military was no longer clear-cut.
Speaking to the Curbstone Coaches during Monday’s weekly luncheon, Bowers Collins said it became clear that pursing a degree would become her new objective. She knew she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to play Division I basketball in her own backyard.
“Coach DiGregorio was the main reason I chose to attend YSU and it’s a decision I never regretted for one moment,” she said. “He’s been like father to me — back then and still today as we keep in touch on a regular basis. He wasn’t just caring toward me; he was like that with all of the players on every team that he coached during his time at YSU.”
Staying close to home so that family could see her play was also a big consideration.
“I wanted my mom and family to have the chance to see me play and they were able to do that with all of our home games and even when we played nearby,” she added.
An assistant coach for DiGregorio during the 2002-03 season, she said that while basketball was her passion, coaching was not.
But she said the game and YSU more than prepared her for role today as dean of Student Services and Success at Eastern Gateway Community College.
“I always had a passion for the game and no one — coach DiGregorio, my mom or anyone else — had to tell me to go out and practice,” she said. “The coaching end just wasn’t for me. While the game stays the same, times change and so do the players and today there are just too many outside interferences. Practice still makes perfect in order to become a better player.”
She earned her bachelor’s in education from YSU in 1990 and her master’s in education in 1994, also from YSU. In 2011, she earned her Ph.D in education from Cappella University.
Bowers Collins graduated as YSU’s all-time leading women’s scorer with 2,324 points (she’s second overall to all-time scoring leader Jeff Covington, who scored 2,424 points) and was second to Wanda Grant with 1,083 rebounds.
Her No. 33 uniform is retired and as she looks back, she cannot thank DiGregorio enough for taking a chance on someone overlooked by other coaches.
“I later found out that a couple local coaches tried to talk coach DiGregorio out of offering me a scholarship, saying there were other players locally that might work better for his style of play,” she said. “He stood firm on his scholarship offer, told them I had the hands, can catch and run and that he’d make me a good player. To this day, I remain the lucky one to have had him in my corner all these years.”
Next week, local sports broadcaster John Caparanis will serve as guest speaker.