The 80th Bellwood Invitational took place this past Monday, with all the biggest awards being dedicated to a pair of former BAHS track legends.
This year, both Outstanding Performer Awards have been named after the two most influential coaches in girls and boys program history in Ms. Julia Roseborough and Mr. Bob Fowler.
Twenty schools from counties around the area competed in the meet, with Kole Dickinson and Dalton Poorman placing as Bellwood’s lone champions.
The Outstanding Female Performer award was not awarded to any athlete that day due to a malfunction with the timing system, but is planned to be presented at a later date once the confusion is cleared up.
The Outstanding Male Performer Award was also dedicated to Coach Bob Fowler, who was a 1951 graduate of Bellwood-Antis that took part of the football and track teams that later returned to the school to coach football, cross country, and track and field until 1985.
B-A senior Dalton Poorman won the outstanding jumper award after winning the triple jump and placing second in the pole vault.
“It was great. It makes me feel like prime Brian Leap,” Poorman said, referring to the record-setting B-A jumper who jumped at Penn State before returning to help the Devils’ own jumpers. “My goal was just to place and earn the team points. It’s an honor because I know Fowler had four teams that won District championships.”
Fowler made his mark on the Bellwood-Antis Track and Field Program and remained a fan until his passing this past winter.
Roseborough, or Mrs. R as she is known in Bellwood, started her career at Bellwood-Antis in 1965 as a Health and Physical Education instructor. Later on, her and Bob Fowler introduced events for girls at the Bellwood Invitational which started the first girl’s track team at the school.
From then on until 2022, Mrs. R served as the head track and field coach as well as the head cross country and field hockey coach. Currently, she still makes an impact on students by volunteering as a coach to the track and cross country teams.
During her career, her teams have won two District 6 team titles and amassed an amazing 484-101-3 record along with coaching 24 state medalists and one state champion. She has been inducted into the Huntingdon County Sports Hall of Fame and was a recipient of the Blair County Sports Hall of Fame Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2006 Bellwood’s track was renamed the “Mrs. R Track”.
“We thought it would be a great honor to name the boys award after Coach Fowler and Mrs. R,” commented Nick Lovrich. “[Fowler] had such a great record of being the track coach and tremendously helped the track program even by creating the invitational, and Mrs. R had been the only main head coach of the girls track program. It was only fitting naming the awards after them for all they’ve done for our school and community.”
On March 14, Mrs. R made a public Facebook post opening up about her ongoing battle with breast cancer since October. She stated that surgery had been done and she has been on a “six month IV chemo program and radiation to follow and finish up with a IV sister chemo drug program.”
All the proceeds from the meet are going to Mrs. R for her battle against breast cancer.
