North Forsyth fills coaching positions

By: Mason Linker | JOURNAL REPORTER
Published: January 06, 2009

North Forsyth has hired three coaches -- two newcomers and a veteran -- to fill four varsity positions.

Gene Bowles will take over the baseball program for the second time, Katherine Skarbek will coach girls soccer, and Anne Zagrodnik will coach boys and girls tennis. Bowles is North's head wrestling coach and assistant athletics director, Skarbek played soccer at Wake Forest, and Zagrodnik is a history teacher at North.

Skarbek, who has coached in the Winston-Salem Twins Youth Soccer Association and who played at Wake Forest from 2004 until 2006, will replace Chris Shook. Zagrodnik will help re-establish a boys tennis program -- North didn't have a team last spring -- and will replace Travis Atkins as the girls coach. Bowles will replace Emmet Walsh.

Bowles, 57, has been a teacher and coach for 35 years, including the last 22 at North. He coached baseball for 10 seasons before stepping down in 2001, and he has been an assistant or head wrestling coach since 1987. Bowles also was North's head football coach for four seasons in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

"He is a phoenix," Athletics Director David Atkins joked. "He is coaching wrestling, he's an assistant AD, and now he is going to coach baseball again. He is mowing, and he is on a diet so he is doing pretty good."

Bowles said that coaching baseball again isn't making his life any easier right now but that he's trying to help out the players. He said that if things fall into place, this will be his last season coaching wrestling.

"After 35 years, most coaches are looking to retirement, but if kids need help or need a coach, I hate to see them doing without," Bowles said. "This time of year is tiring, so if everything works out, this will be my last season of wrestling.

"Wrestling is a young man's game. Going every Saturday, we have been about seven or eight straight it seems like, and it's getting harder and harder to spend all your time every weekend to try and be successful. Everyone is running offseason now, and I can't seem to keep up doing all that stuff."

In 18 seasons as a baseball coach, including eight at North Stokes, Bowles has a record of 212-158.

■ Mason Linker can be reached at 727-7324 or at mlinker@wsjournal.com.