Turns out Bowen's going to Carmel after all

It's a hire that has been 13 years in the making.

Carmel and its beleaguered boys basketball program has had four head coaches since 1997, the year that Tim Bowen first interviewed for the job there.

Officials at Carmel were impressed with Bowen then, and made an offer, but the two sides just couldn't make the teaching side of the job work. So Bowen went elsewhere, first to Warren as an underlevel coach, then to Grayslake Central as the head coach and for the last two years he's been at Waukegan as an assistant coach.

Last month, when second-year Carmel coach John Ryan announced his resignation in an effort to simply his life prior to retirement, the Carmel job opened once again. And Bowen put his hat in the ring for the second time.

"I've always had an interest in Carmel," Bowen said. "I've always thought it would be a great place to coach.

"I was at home during spring break when I heard the job was open. I decided to put a call in right away."

Little did Bowen know that Carmel athletic director Andy Bitto was already trying to call him.

This time, Carmel wasn't going to let Bowen get away.

"There were some other openings out there," Bitto said. "We had a feeling Tim would get snapped up fast, so we had to move quickly on this."

Even though Bitto once said that his new boys basketball coach ideally would work in the building, he has since admitted that that piece of criteria wasn't important enough to stop him from hiring a highly regarded candidate like Bowen, who "just blew our socks off."

Bowen, who remained a science teacher at Grayslake Central even when his contract as head coach was not renewed two years ago, will continue to work his day job while also taking over the boys basketball program at Carmel.

Bitto announced on Thursday that Bowen will be the 12th coach in the history of the program, which hasn't had a winning season in 18 years and reached double-digit victories (10) this season for the first time since 2002.

"We just weren't going to compromise on getting who we thought was the best coach," said Bitto, who received interest from about 25 applicants. "We couldn't pass up someone like Tim. With the economy the way it is, it's hard to match up teaching positions with coaching positions anyway. There aren't a lot of (teaching) positions open here right now. So we're fine with (Bowen being out of the building)."

Considering Bowen is tenured at Grayslake Central, the move sits well with him, too.

Plus, with no transition in the classroom to worry about, Bowen can focus all of his energy in the gym. In fact, he met up with his team there already, holding a meeting after school on Thursday at Carmel's Hesse Center.

"I guess I'm a little nervous, to tell you the truth, to meet new kids and everything," Bowen said prior to the meeting. "But I'm also really excited.

"I think Carmel is a sleeping giant. It's a mecca of really good sports teams. For basketball, it's just going to take some development, and I think once we put the time in and do that, once it gets going, this program will just kind of take care of itself, just like everything else does here."

Bowen knows a thing or two about development.

In 2001, Bowen's first year at Grayslake Central, the Rams finished 1-26.

But just four seasons later, Grayslake Central recorded its first of back-to-back 20-win seasons. Two years after that, in 2008, the Rams won a regional title, their first since 2000.

"Things were pretty tough that first year (at Grayslake Central), but we worked really hard, we stuck with it and we kept getting better," Bowen said. "We started from the ground up. We got out into the community, we worked with the middle schools and got a good feeder system going. We slowly got our concepts implemented and it took off from there.

"I think we can do the same thing at Carmel. My goal is to put some hardware up on the walls."