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BER 2, 2019
he taught them how to stretch, eat better and move
more efficiently, borrowing from Kelly at every turn.
Parkrose had finished 0–9 the previous year, allow-
ing the most points of any 5A school and scoring the
fewest—and then three all-league players graduated.
The week of the Broncos’ 2018 opener they practiced
on a field without lines. On the first snap of their first
game under Lowe one player lined up two yards offside.
The losing streak moved to 24.
If this felt like the football version of The Bad News
Bears, what happened next seemed like a movie too.
In its second game Parkrose hung 82 on Benson High,
shattering the school record for points scored. Lowe ex-
pected a Gatorade shower, but that would have entailed
his players knowing about the tradition. The Broncos
finished 5–5, making the playoffs for only the sixth time
in school history. Lowe got his sugar-water bath when
Parkrose clinched a spot in the state playoffs. “One
of the best moments of my life,” he says. Better than
a police chief who’d responded to countless calls like the
one he received that day, arrived at the apartment to find
familiar flashing lights. His 24-year-old son was dead.
Lowe got the call from Forrest, caught an early flight
from San Francisco and was the first grieving visitor
at the Martinek home that morning. Privately, he fell
into absolute grief: If only I had been there. Been around.
Put Taylor over my ascendant career.
The NFL grind—even the six-figure paychecks that
awaited him if he were promoted to a full-time position
coach—no longer seemed all that important. His brother,
Trey, then 17, was playing at receiver for Jesuit High,
where Brian Martinek was an assistant. Lowe knew he
couldn’t leave them. He decided that day to come back
home, to heal, to entrench in his community. “I was still
searching for something,” he says. “And I was going to
find it.” He told his mother, and she offered him her
couch. “You are where you’re supposed to be,” she said.
Lowe volunteered at Jesuit, working
with the offensive skill groups, and all
season he wore a pin bearing Taylor’s
face on his left breast, close to his heart.
The following spring, in 2018, he found
a bigger opportunity.
There were reasons for the coaching
vacancy at Parkrose High: the thin ros-
ter, the dilapidated equipment and the
23-game losing streak. But the same
kid who responded to Chip Kelly’s chal-
lenge—You’ll never play a down!—saw
opportunity in such despair. In his job in-
terview Lowe told administrators, “0–23
is nothing; I can turn this thing around in one year.”
He had work to do. His best players didn’t know what
a win felt like. Some were homeless or had lost parents
or lacked the money for cleats. The weight room had
only four barbells. The practice field was so barren it
resembled concrete. Maybe 20 kids showed up for the
first workout that summer; to build some basic football
knowledge Lowe started giving quizzes with questions
like, How many points is a touchdown worth?
“We were teaching them things,” he says, “so that
after that we could teach fundamentals. But the biggest
thing was not to make excuses. Ever.”
Lowe instilled discipline and accountability. He took
money from his own wallet for team barbecues and
helped players get to and from practice. He taught them
the dimensions of the field, the number of downs and
what red zone meant. For his first intrasquad scrimmage
he used trash cans to simulate defenders since he didn’t
yet have enough players. But they were his players, and
JORDAN N
AHO
LOW
A’AM
URPH (2)
RIDING HIGH
Lowe put Parkrose
on the map again,
coaching up players
who lacked football
knowledge—and
sometimes cleats.
