Apr. 3—Bob Kowalick, the man who shaped and steered the Frontier League behind the scenes for almost 50 years, died Monday at the age of 88.
Kowalick, a native of Watertown, served as Frontier League executive secretary and then later as executive director since taking the position in 1976. During the 48 years that he advocated for the league, there wasn't a scheduling change, division realignment, league controversy, new sport addition or rule change that didn't cross his desk until his retirement in 2024.
"Bob has always been a strong advocate for the Frontier League," former Section 3 executive secretary Dick Bader said in 1999. "His knowledge of the rules and regulations is second to none. He's never afraid to argue his point, and he's steadfast in his desire to make sure his league is treated fairly."
During Kowalick's tenure, the Frontier League grew in the number of teams, athletes and sports. Kowalick was key in the growth of girls athletics and also in the addition of sports like volleyball, lacrosse and competitive cheering to the league. Kowalick came to be known as "Frontier Bob," for championing the league, which is now in its 94th year.
"Shortly after I started in 1976, the movement for girls sports really came on and the job was to make sure they fit in," Kowalick said in 2021. "And you can imagine at the time, the male coaches of the boys teams didn't want to have anything to do with them, because now they had to share facilities. As a league we took it upon ourselves to make sure they were given every opportunity that the boys were given and so on, it was a challenge."
Kowalick was a standout athlete in baseball and basketball for Watertown High School in the 1950s and also excelled in both sports at SUNY Potsdam, batting .488 his senior season and setting several school marks. He was inducted into the SUNY Potsdam Athletic Hall of Fame in 1984.
Kowalick received a bachelor's degree in education at SUNY Potsdam and then earned a master's degree in educational administration at St. Lawrence University. He began his teaching career at General Brown, chiefly as an eighth-grade social studies teacher. He also coached varsity wrestling from 1958-66 at the school. Later, he took over the General Brown baseball program as coach and compiled a 170-75 mark with nine league titles and two sectional titles over 17 years. Over his 26 years coaching at General Brown, his teams won 11 league championships.
Kowalick's background as an athlete and coach in the Frontier League gave him the confidence to stand up for the league during his many Section 3 meetings with administrators from Syracuse- and Utica-area schools. He vouched for the league's members who he felt were being punished when it came time for sectional games because of their distance from the more populated southern part of the section.
He told several sectional committees over the years: "You people seem to forget that Interstate 81 has a northbound lane as well as a southbound lane."
A significant part of Kowalick's job was working on every league sport's schedules for not only varsity contests, but junior varsity and modified, too.
"That takes a majority of my time," Kowalick said during a Times interview in 1999. "Some are easy, like baseball and basketball that don't change much over the years. But in those sports where not all of the league teams participate, it takes a lot more work."
Kowalick said he knew that he couldn't make every school happy when he was scheduling 17 schools that range in size from Class A to D in a league that included three or four divisions over the years.
"Every school has its own agenda. If it's good for them, ...
