Natosha Dowies struggled with the decision.
It was in the spring of 2014, Dowies had just completed her first season playing college basketball. Not only did the former Fairview High all-state star play well, Dowies shined as she was named the American Southwest Conference Freshman of the Year.
Yet, Dowies felt her passion for the game was waning and she knew in her heart that the time had arrived for her to step away from the game she loved from a young age, no matter how difficult it might be to do so.
“It was a very tough decision,” Dowies said. “I actually made the list of the pros and cons on why to leave and stay. I debated it for days and maybe even weeks. Then the all-conference awards were announced and that made it even harder.”
Dowies finally made the decision to hang up her promising playing career and transfer to McNeese State. Dowies wasn’t leaving the game — she was simply pivoting into a different relationship with it.
“I had thought about it for a long time,” Dowies said. “I made up my mind by that point that I wanted to get into coaching and I wanted to start as soon as possible.”
Part of a dynasty
Dowies’ journey from heralded prep star, college starter and now head coach of the Kinder High girls basketball team began in the small incorporated community of Mittie, located roughly 10 miles northwest of Oberlin.
Born November 8, 1994, to Tonya and Jessie Morvant, the young girl nicknamed “Tosha” gravitated to basketball even before she attended kindergarten.
“I started playing when I was four,” Dowies said. “My older sister played and I just picked up a basketball and it stuck with me.”
Like most girls from that area, Dowies would attend Fairview High School and play for one of the state’s most decorated basketball coaches — Kyle Jinks who has led the Panthers to 10 state championships, including seven straight from 2007-14.
To play for Jinks, a player must be committed to the fundamentals of basketball, have a desire to play defense and above all embrace discipline.
“My first year in seventh grade I was scared of him,” Dowies laughed. “If he yelled at me I would cry. The older I got you kind of realize that it is a love–hate relationship you get with him.
“You hate it when he yells at you, but he is doing it because he loves you,” Dowies said. “I don’t think we would have been the team we would have been if he hadn’t pushed us as hard.”
Dowies would play for Jinks for seven seasons, starting for four of those seasons, winning six straight state titles and was named the Class B All-State MVP twice.
“Her work ethic was unbelievable,” Jinks said. “She was always a good leader but she was the type that led by example. If I asked her to run through a wall, she would do it. She may die trying, but she would try.”
Even with the slew of accolades Dowies had accumulated in her six seasons at Fairview, the undersized player didn’t have many offers — which isn’t uncommon for players from the Class B and C classifications.
There was one offer and it came from nearby Louisiana College — a Division III program in Pineville. It took only one visit for Dowies to realize that she wanted to play for the Wildcats.
“The game that my family and I went to watch, the coach at the time was Jack Tinsley and he got so mad during the game that he threw a basketball down and either dislocated or broke his finger,” Dowies said. “Seeing that passion and style of play it felt like the perfect fit for me. That was going to be the school for me.”
Dowies, who also ran on the LC cross country team, thrived as a freshman for the Wildcats’ basketball team. Dowies not only played in all 27 games, she started all of them, the only player on the roster to do that. Dowies averaged 8.7 points, 6 rebounds, 1.3 assists and 1.6 steals per game. Dowies would be named to the ASC Freshman Team and named Freshman of the Year.
Despite the on-court success, that season at Louisiana College was a challenge for Dowies.
“It was hard,” Dowies said. “You don’t know your whole community. I didn’t feel like I had that support system that I had back home. It was tough. My family and the people back home couldn’t go to every game. It just wasn’t the same as back home.”
Taking a new path
Dowies made the tough decision that summer to transfer to McNeese State University. Dowies moved back home with her folks and would commute back-and-forth to Lake Charles for her classes four days a week.
In addition, Dowies began her coaching path by shadowing her former coach; first at a summer camp, then at practices and games that fall.
“I knew she knew how to push kids,” Jinks said. “I just didn’t know if she was capable of it with her personality. I told her that she didn’t have to be me. She didn’t have to yell and scream.”
Dowies may have given up being a student-athlete but that didn’t make her daily life less chaotic or stressful. In fact it made even more time consuming, as she had to balance school, commuting and life as an assistant coach.
Dowies could have given herself relief with her schedule by easily giving up the shadowing of her mentor, but she realized how valuable that experience would be to help her become a coach.
“There were some days that I would leave my last class at 2:30 in the afternoon and then drive to wherever we were playing,” Dowies said. “It was tough, but it was so worth it.”
In the fall of 2017, Dowies graduated from McNeese with a bachelor’s degree in health and physical education. With already having passed her PRAXIS test, Dowies became certified on graduation day.
Dowies, who did her student teaching at Kinder Elementary, didn’t have to wait long or look far for her first teaching job.
“I felt like it was meant to be for me to be there,” Dowies said on the Kinder job. “They placed me in Kinder for my student teaching at the elementary school. On my graduation day, they offered me a teaching position at the middle school. Then that following May, the high school position opened up, and I was hired.”
That first season was a bit of whirlwind for Dowies.
Dowies got married to Hunter Dowies and soon after the two were married, Dowies found out the couple was having a baby — a daughter named Lilly. That meant her first season as a high school head coach would be while she was carrying her child.
“It’s hard physically,” said Dowies, who also has high blood pressure. “It is a long night. It is sitting on a bus for hours and being on your feet all day. It’s a tough position to be in.”
The pregnancy proved to not be the only thing that made that first season a challenge.
Lessons learned
Dowies quickly found out that coaching basketball at Kinder wasn’t the same as it was back at Fairview.
“That was a learning year for me,” Dowies said. “Fairview has its own culture. It is a basketball school and a small school with one campus. Kinder has three different campuses so it is a little different.”
Dowies also made a misstep by not trusting her gut that first camp.
After being coached hard by Jinks all those years, Dowies decided that was the same approach she would choose until that first day of tryouts.
“That first summer I held tryouts for the fall,” Dowies said. “I want to say I had 25 kids on the first day. By the end of the day, I had lost nine. I was like oh my gosh. What just happened?”
Dowies made the decision to change her approach, and that was one she regretted.
“I thought I had to loosen up a little bit, but I regretted it,” Dowies said. “I was scared that I was going to lose my whole team, so I thought I should be the more easy going coach. That year was a struggle.”
“I remember telling her that you can’t go over there and be Fairvew right off the bat,” Jinks said. “They are not used to that culture. You can be tougher, then the next year be tougher and then a little tougher and then you can be like what we had.”
Dowies went back to her hard-nosed approach to help build a culture of winning and accountability. After making strides in 2020, Kinder took another step forward this season by winning a share of the district title and advancing to the second round of the playoffs.
“These girls didn’t grow up in that basketball environment,” Dowies said. “I am not the type of coach to throw chairs or water bottles. I choose to sit them out to get them better. These girls care and they really want to want to win now. I feel like my biggest accomplishment so far is to have that mentality.”
“She is very serious about the game,” Kinder assistant coach Kris LaBuff said. “She wants the best from those games. She is always pushing them to be the best. She loves to win and wants to coach winners.”
This season presented a few challenges for Dowies, specifically when it came to coaching.
Dowies is pregnant with her second child, due March 29th, but she also tested positive for COVID-19 during the season and was forced to quarantine herself from the team during district play.
“As a coach you are worried about COVID and you are worried about your players getting it,” Dowies said. “You don’t want to bring it home either. I had to set that mentality with myself and my team that it is going to be okay.”
Dowies had to sit out the final three district games due to the quarantine, and was forced to coach via FaceTime on her phone while LaBuff would handle the on-court coaching duties.
“The girls would handle FaceTime for the play by play,” LaBuff laughed. “So they would tell her what was going on because her phone would freeze sometimes. If we had a timeout or at halftime I would ask her what she thought.”
“I would be like ‘what’s going on?,’” said Dowies. “It was hard to sit back and watch and not be there.”
There is no doubt that Dowies wants to win as the Yellow Jackets’ head coach. Recording a winning season and winning a playoff game this season was nice and all, but Dowies wants the standard to be far higher at Kinder.
That championship drive is not why she is so passionate about coaching. Dowies points to just how much a coach can play a role in a young player’s life.
Dowies’ father suffered a heart attack during her sophomore season, and that proved to be a chaotic and emotional time for the teenager. Thankfully, her coach understood that and made sure that Dowies could find comfort by being part of the team.
“I went through a tough time my sophomore year after my dad got sick,” Dowies said. “Basketball was an outlet for me. I would get the keys from the coach and just go shoot in the gym and clear my head.
“I am very thankful to coach for that and that’s the type of coach I want to be for the girls here at Kinder.”