‘I’m a coach, let’s get a game plan.’ Fort Gibson girls basketball coach returns to bench following bout with cancer

Cancer delayed Scott Lowe's debut at the helm of one of Oklahoma's top girls basketball programs.

By Buck Ringgold | Photos by Karen Schwartz

FORT GIBSON — In more than a quarter-century as a basketball coach, Scott Lowe always lived for game day.

Over those years, he has experienced a multitude of wins, and was even part of a state championship-winning staff. But this past January 4 might go down as certainly Lowe's most memorable night in his profession.

That night, he finally had his opening night as the head coach at one of the premier girls programs in the state since the turn of the century. Now, Lowe finally got his chance to guide the Fort Gibson Lady Tigers, who have won four state titles since 2011 and have been to 17 consecutive state tournaments.

It was a long time coming for Lowe, who had been a head coach at two previous stops — Central Sallisaw and Roland — and had been on Fort Gibson's staff as an assistant since the 2017-18 season. Last spring, Lowe was promoted to take over the Lady Tigers, who had lost in the 4A championship game several weeks earlier.

"I didn't find out I was going to be the head coach until like late April or early May," Lowe said. "That kind of falls into my lap, which was something I was eager to do.

"Obviously, you don't get a chance to coach at Fort Gibson very often, so it was one of those things where I said, I better take advantage of it while I have the opportunity. Very excited, but also, when you're at the helm of a program like this, it can be daunting, too, and you don't want to let anybody down."

The grind for a coach goes on, even deep into the offseason.

In the summer, there are the numerous youth camps being conducted and the team camps that squads attend. Lowe was also spending other parts of his days on the phone with other coaches trying to put together the schedule for the coming season.

Even with him averaging about five hours of sleep over a four-week period, things were going good for Lowe.

One morning, though, a routine shaving session took a turn for the worse.

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Also Fort Gibson's slow-pitch softball coach, Lowe was getting ready to take one of his former players to an all-star game in Oklahoma City. He got up and went to shave.

It didn't take him long to notice something different on his neck.

"I got up that morning to shave, and I had a big lump on my neck, and it wasn't there the day before," Lowe said. "When I shave, I put shaving cream there and it just wasn't there, so I was alarmed.

"Being the hypochondriac that I am, I got on Google and learned that malignant tumors can actually pop up spontaneously and they can happen overnight. That scared me a little bit, so I immediately scheduled an appointment with the doctor."

At the doctor, Lowe decided to stretch the truth, telling him it had been there for about a month, just so he would be able to have it checked out expediently. An ultrasound session was scheduled.

"They said there was something irregular about it; we don't think it's anything, but we're going to dive into it a little further," Lowe said. "So, I did the biopsy on a Monday and I was leaving for a cruise on Saturday.

"They told me I was going to have the results back (before his cruise), but I didn't get the results back. So, I was on this cruise in the Caribbean wondering if I've got cancer or not the whole time."

As soon as Lowe returned from his cruise, he finally got an e-mail with the prognosis. A malignant tumor had been found.

The medical term was squamous cell carcinomas, also known as head and neck cancer. It was similar to what NFL head coach Ron Rivera had two years ago before finally beating it.

"It didn't start in that lymph node, it had to travel from somewhere," Lowe said. "So, the next step was trying to find out where it all came from.

"My oncologist did a pep scan and when we did that, nothing came up except there were some parts of my tonsils that lit up."

Though the physicians weren't certain the cancer was in the tonsils, they had to be removed just to make sure.

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Lowe had been getting the initial work done in Fort Smith, Ark., not far from where he grew up, Sallisaw, and not far from the places where he previously had been a head coach. 

He was informed his lymph node had to be removed, but the procedure needed to be done someplace else. Lowe immediately thought of M.D. Anderson, the renowned cancer treatment center in Houston, Texas.

There was one problem, though. His insurance was not accepted in the hospital's network. 

So, Lowe had to come up with a Plan B. There was another prestigious medical center he could go for treatment, the legendary Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

He called the clinic on a Monday. He was told to be there first thing Friday morning to be scanned.

"That afternoon, I had six doctors walk into my room and they said, 'You have been the topic of our lunch the last hour-and-a-half, and we've got a plan and here it is,'" Lowe said. "They said, 'We did not find the cancer. But, based on our expertise, we feel like it's going to be in a certain part of your tongue, at the base of your tongue kind of near your tonsils.

"'It's a calculated risk whether we're going to find it or not, but we have to do surgery, and while we're at it, we're going to take out the lymph nodes.'"

The surgery was to have taken four hours. It ended up being seven hours. There was good news from it, though.

"When I woke up, my wife (Melissa) leaned over and whispered in my ear that they found the tumor," Lowe said. "They took out 50 lymph nodes and found cancer in like six of them."

Lowe then had to take another month off to heal from his surgery. In November, he returned to Minnesota to start his treatments.

"I got radiation twice a day and chemo once a week for four weeks," he said.

"I asked them what the chances were it was coming back and they said very miniscule, and they think they got it all during the surgery."

But the radiation treatments really took their toll on Lowe.

"I won't lie, it was terrible, the radiation was awful," he said. "When you have radiation on your throat, it affects your voice, you have a sore throat constantly, you're burning, you have blisters in your throat and your mouth, and you can't eat anything, and you don't want to eat anything.

"I lost probably between 20 to 25 pounds. ... I needed to lose some weight, but that's probably what I didn't have in mind."

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The architect of the Lady Tigers' successful program was Jerry Walker.

He was the coach when Fort Gibson began its current run of 17 straight state tournament appearances. In 2011, the Lady Tigers finally broke through and won the gold ball. They did it again in 2013 and in 2014.

But after the 2017 season, Walker decided to step away from his job and eventually became an administrator at another school. He wasn't sure who would be his successor, but he had a name in mind to at least come on board and help continue the Lady Tigers' winning ways.

"I've known Scott forever; we've shared film and stuff and ideas and stuff for a long time, and he's a great guy, well-liked by everybody," Walker said.

Walker's post eventually went to Chuck London, who had been Walker's long-time assistant. But both Walker and London helped persuade Lowe to leave what had been a good job for him as Roland's girls coach to be an assistant at Fort Gibson.

The Lady Tigers didn't skip a beat. In London's first season as coach, and Lowe's first season as an assistant, they won another state title. That was also Lowe's first time being in the state tournament as either an assistant or head coach.

Last season, Fort Gibson reached the 4A state title game before falling to Tuttle. Before that season, London had another assistant on the staff — none other than Walker, who returned to Fort Gibson as the junior high coach.

Last spring, London stepped down as coach to continue to serve roles as assistant principal and athletic director at Fort Gibson. Though Walker might have been the natural choice to take over the Lady Tigers once again, it was decided that Lowe more than deserved the chance to lead the program.

And Walker was fine with that decision.

"If you ask anyone else who were my assistants, and Scott knows, but we've always been about team," Walker said. "I treated my assistants like head coaches. That's just the way we've always been, and Scott's the same way. 

"We communicate; Coach (Wes) Whiteley (another Lady Tiger assistant), Coach Lowe and I, we communicate and him being the head coach, he gets the right to say no, we don't question it, he gets the right to do what he wants to do — he's earned that right. But it's our job to stimulate his thought and just say, 'Hey, what about this, what about this?'"

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With Lowe fighting his cancer battle, his dream job had to be put on hold. And Walker was once again in charge of the Lady Tigers.

"I get this great job, and who other would you lean on but Jerry Walker, a Hall of Fame coach?" Lowe said. "I call him Fort Gibson's favorite son, and he is that for a reason.

"He is one of the best people, one of the best men that I've ever known in my life, and so I've got him, no pun intended, holding down the fort while I'm gone. To have that kind of security was unbelievable."

But Walker's main priority was getting the team ready for Lowe whenever he did come back.

"The first day of practice that I had the girls, I told them, 'Coach Lowe is the head coach, but until he gets back, I'm going to coach you just like you're my girls,'" Walker said. "But I said, 'Here's my responsibility. My responsibility is to have you ready to play for Coach Lowe when he gets back, because Coach and I have already talked about what he wants done, how he wants it done, we're going to talk every night, so once we get started, understand what my responsibility is to have Coach Lowe's team ready when he comes back — whenever that time is, whenever he's ready.'

"Then I said, 'Your responsibility is to have yourself ready to play when he gets back.'"

For their part, the players were prepared.

"Coach Walker really stepped up and did the job," said senior guard Jenna Whiteley, Wes Whiteley's daughter. "But Coach Lowe was definitely texting my dad, because he was watching every game (online) and he was definitely coaching from home.

"Coach Walker had us ready, and that was the whole thing. He told Coach Walker and told us that he knew Coach Walker would have us where we needed to be when he was back."

The Lady Tigers were also confident Lowe would be back sooner rather than later.

"I think he was pretty confident (in coming back). ... He was like, 'We're going to get this show on the road and we're going to get it done,'" senior guard Marianne Parks said.

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Lowe missed the first seven games of the season. The Lady Tigers went 5-2 in his absence.

Finally, after the team hadn't played since Dec. 17 and being off for more than two weeks due to the holiday break, Lowe finally returned to the sideline Jan. 4, a game at Tulsa school Bishop Kelley.

"This is year No. 26 for me, and I've never taken it for granted that I'm a coach and I get to do something that I really enjoy," Lowe said. "But there was a little bit of extra meaning in it, for sure."

Walker also was thrilled to see Lowe finally get the chance to guide the Lady Tigers.

"I told him the first night back, 'I am so glad to see you sitting here,'" Walker said. "I told him, 'You have been waiting for this job for a long time,' because we have talked a long time before he was ever here. I said, 'Welcome to the head coaching spot.'

"I love helping him, he's a great guy, he's all about family and that's what we are here, we're all about family. I love his approach with the kids, he's relatable and he's personable and he's very interested in our kids besides basketball."

The Lady Tigers won that night, 47-32, against a Bishop Kelley squad ranked in the top 10 in 5A.

"He was definitely excited and pumped to be back. ... I'm glad he's got the treatment done and everything done and back to feeling like normal, at least the best you can," Parks said.

Lowe remarked the most difficult thing for him during his leave of absence was not being around the players.

"The hardest part was being away from the kids," he said. "I really enjoy being around kids every day and getting to see them grow.

"Then the transition coming back was smooth. We've got great kids and our administration was awesome. They told me the whole time just to take care what I needed to take care of and this place is incredible."

During Lowe's absence, the team had a chili pie fundraiser and wore T-shirts featuring the slogan, "Team Lowe."

"Our message to Scott was, 'Hey, we love you, we appreciate you and the character and what you teach our kids; you go take care of you, and this will be here when you get back,'" Fort Gibson superintendent Scott Farmer said. "We lifted Scott up in prayer, our school bonded together and we had some fundraisers for him and Scott kept in touch with us and even did a couple of messages for our girls that we played on our Jumbotron, just so he could wish them luck before the first game.

"I think it was a good message for our kids, that you're going to get these trials in life and keep an upbeat and optimistic attitude, keep looking to the future, do things right and good things will happen to you. We're just proud to see Scott back on the bench and proud for him to be our head coach."

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Since Lowe returned to the sideline, Fort Gibson has won 11 of 13 games. The Lady Tigers (16-4) have won five in a row.

One of the bigger wins came Feb. 1, a 52-32 victory at home against Locust Grove in a matchup between two teams ranked in the top 15 in 4A.

Despite losing four starters from last season's team, Fort Gibson is in a customary place, having received a No. 8 ranking in the latest statewide poll.

"At first, it was a little hard because Coach Lowe had to get on the same page as us. ... It took us a little bit to get us all communicating and back together, but after a couple of days it was totally back to normal and like he never left," Jenna Whiteley said.

And during last Tuesday's win, Lowe appeared to look normal while roaming the sideline, stopping occasionally to drink from his water bottle.

That's another thing — his sense of taste, which was altered due to his treatments.

"Sweets actually taste bad to me now and like vegetables, broccoli, green beans, taste awesome," Lowe said. "I can enjoy vegetables now.

"My voice isn't as strong, and the girls lately have said we need to go to some more hand signals because I'm not as loud. So, we'll probably start going to some hand signals."

But as far as his recovery, Lowe remarked he is 85 to 90 percent cancer-free.

"The one enlightening thing for me through this whole deal was how blessings can be revealed to you even through something that you would think would be terrible," Lowe said. "I was never scared; I was scared for maybe 10 to 15 seconds after I heard I had cancer.

"Then it was like, 'OK, I'm a coach, let's get a game plan, what do we do?' And then my faith is very strong and this community and our school is very faith-based."

Lowe is also appreciative of the many well-wishers and people who told him they were thinking of him and were praying for him.

"When you have people coming up that you don't know or you don't think maybe even care for you that much, and they call you and text you and say, 'I'm praying for you every night and my kids are praying for you, too,'" Lowe said. "Gosh, that's so empowering; it's uplifting, you know?

"That gave me all the strength I needed to keep pushing forward and do those things."

And as long as the Lady Tigers keep winning, like they did Feb. 1, it keeps Lowe in good spirits.

"I get a little tired every now and then, but this is exciting to me," he said. "Right now, I'm full of energy. When I go home, I'm going to crash and I'm having a hard time getting up in the morning."

But the grind for a coach continues, regardless of what one is dealing with or going through. More games loom, and perhaps a chance to extend the state tournament streak and maybe even play for another gold ball.

Lowe, though, plans to be with his girls every step of the way.

"Just all of us being back together, it's one as a team," Parks said. "There's nothing like it.

"If one of us gets separated and everybody comes back, it just feels normal, like you click."