"My experience with Coach Cowan as a head track coach was overwhelmingly negative. In my opinion, any success the program had was due to athlete talent rather than effective coaching. Communication was consistently poor. He routinely avoided athletes and was extremely difficult to reach. During the summer he was essentially absent, and even responding to a simple text or email seemed beyond him, despite that being the bare minimum expectation for a head coach. His decision making was often questionable and lacked athlete focus. Many decisions appeared to be driven by pressure from the athletic department rather than what was best for the team. These choices frequently disrupted training and negatively impacted athlete development. He also did a poor job managing and understanding the team as a whole. He made little effort to get to know the full roster and was unfamiliar with many of the distance athletes, even though that group regularly accounted for a large share of the team’s points at conference meets. Overall, the program felt disorganized and lacking clear leadership. These criticisms apply specifically to him as head coach and are not a reflection of the assistant coaches."

"Coach appears to know the events, but time has shown he doesn’t. Gets bailed out by his talent. The same talented athletes would be better elsewhere."