Severn School head football coach Demetrius Ballard believes that if he had three or four players like Bo Fowler, he would win the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) B Conference.
“He’s our poster guy,” Ballard said. “I’m going to sell Bo 24/7 to all of our recruits and tell them if you work hard enough, you can receive football scholarship offers playing at Severn School.”
Hard work is one trait Fowler has demonstrated over his short time at the Evergreen Road campus. Fowler was at Severna Park Middle School during the pandemic, but his parents liked that Severn was using a hybrid system of learning and switched Fowler to Severn before his sophomore year.
Fowler was a 195-pound left tackle in his first year at Severn and also played basketball and lacrosse. In Fowler’s sophomore year, the Admirals finished 0-9 and then athletic director Julian Domenech brought in Ballard from Archbishop Spalding High School.
The players rallied around “Coach B” and he recruited lacrosse players who previously played football to give the players a chance and see if they could raise the Admirals from the ashes.
“Coach B brought focus, direction and a winning philosophy to the school,” Fowler said. “You could feel the excitement that we were going to be competitive.”
Ballard also brought in weight training and conditioning to the program.
“We had a Penn State coach come in and ask about Bo and he inquired about how much could Bo bench press?” Ballard said. “At that time, Bo could only bench 185 one time and the Penn State coach said he was too weak to play Division I football. That’s all that Bo needed to hear because since then he’s been an animal in the weight room. Bo has been in the weight room four days a week and after practices and now can bench 225 pounds 12 times.”
Fowler also has outstanding athletic genes as his grandfather played professional football, his father played college football, and his mother played college lacrosse.
The Severn School athlete was recruited by numerous colleges, including Army and Navy, for his size and athletic ability playing multiple sports. His mobility will be useful playing offensive line for the University of Richmond Spiders, and he hopes to get bigger and stronger with an intense strength and conditioning program.
“Both my grandfather and dad played at Richmond, so I was extremely excited when the Spiders offered a scholarship,” said Fowler, who was named All-MIAA C division first-team as an offensive tackle.
Fowler will head to Richmond in June for the beginning of his college football career but will miss many aspects of Severn.
“I loved playing on that field,” Fowler said. “It had a great atmosphere to it, playing on Friday afternoons with our big crowds.”
As much as the Admirals will miss Fowler’s size and strength on the offensive and defensive lines, his coach says he’ll miss what Bo means to the school and football program.
“Bo will be harder to replace off of the field,” Ballard said. “He leads by example, and what I love about Bo is he’ll have lunch with the freshmen to make sure they are doing OK in school, and the underclassmen really look up to him.”
Severn School’s football program will take a giant leap in competition next fall by joining the MIAA B Conference and playing private schools such as Archbishop Curley, John Carroll, Boys Latin and St. Vincent Pallotti, to name a few.
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