Coach Sowers heading to Super Bowl
Katie Sowers was offered a job by 49ers after the team’s exhibition vs. Chiefs in Kansas City last year
Katie Sowers is not the only a Super Bowl LIV participant with one foot in two worlds.
There’s deity Joe Montana, who spent two seasons with the Kansas Chiefs after 13 with the 49ers.
There’s defensive end Dee Ford, traded from the Chiefs to the 49ers ten months ago.
You might even slap an asterisk on Chiefs head coach Andy Reid, who was offensive coordinator at San Francisco State from 1983-85, and who was an assistant coach with the Green Bay Packers when the Pack was awash with 49ers coaching alumni and Bill Walsh tree disciples such as Mike Holmgren, Steve Mariucci, Jon Gruden, Ray Rhodes, and Sherman Lewis.
Given the nomadic nature of athletes and coaches, the Super Bowl always seems to pit and reunite former teammates, friends, and colleagues.
Sowers is no different. According to The Guardian, she is just the third woman to be hired as an NFL coach. Sowers and her twin sister were football fanatics growing up in Hesston, Kansas, a three-hour drive from Kansas City, Missouri. There were few outlets for women in football. During her journey on the path less traveled, she attended college on a basketball scholarship. She hooked on with the Mayhem of the Women’s West Michigan Football Alliance. She coached a fifth-grade girls basketball
team.
Per The Guardian: “One of the players was the daughter of Scott Pioli, the former Kansas City Chiefs general manager and soon to be Atlanta Falcons assistant general manager.
‘Pioli admired Sowers’ coaching skills and soon discovered her involvement in football. The two formed an unlikely bond, one that not only altered Sowers’ career but also her assumptions about NFL executives. Sowers, who is gay, thought Pioli would disapprove of her lifestyle.”
She thought wrong. Pioli, in 2016, pushed a fellowship for minority candidates. Sowers availed herself of that opportunity. She found a home with the 49ers as an offensive assistant coach.
The threads that bind Sowers to Kansas City may not be as sinewy as the ones that connect Montana to the Chiefs, but they’re real. Pioli once worked for the Chiefs. She was once the athletic director for the city of Kansas City. It was in Kansas City after a 49ers exhibition game, with Sowers’ family looking on, that team GM John Lynch approached her with an offer for a full-time coaching position.
And now, like a lot of Super Bowl participants, Sowers will carry a full-circle moment into the biggest game of her life.