Eastern Illinois men's golfer
Keegan Gowin had always heard stories about how good of an athlete his mother was, but it wasn't until he saw a recent graphic on the EIU Athletics Instagram account that it came for full circle for him.
"I knew my mom practiced really hard when she was young, and I heard a lot of stories from other people telling me how good she was in high school," said Keegan. "As for her college career, I saw on Instagram the other day, that her team at EIU was ranked number one for how many wins they had in a season. I didn't know that part, but I figured out what people were talking about and that she was good."
Gowin's mother is Theresa Ramage, who played tennis for the Panthers in the early 1990's. During her senior season, Ramage helped lead the team to a school record 21 wins, a total that still tops the EIU charts for the program to this day.
Despite having a background in tennis, Theresa did not push her sport of choice on her sons – Alex and Keegan, both who have played golf at Eastern Illinois.
"Alex and I both played tennis in high school and we were pretty decent, but not anywhere near as good as her," said Keegan. "Alex played golf and went on to play at Eastern. I always wanted to out-do my older brother, so I focused on golf."
"I didn't really push them to tennis," added Theresa. "I knew that team sports were critical to the core of everything in life. I told them that an individual sport was always great to have as a back-up, something you can do the rest of your life. My tennis coach actually studied golf, to coach tennis, because it's the same mental game. It was intriguing when they both (Alex and Keegan) started playing golf, so I said pick which one you love and go for it."
Theresa was a standout tennis athlete at nearby Mattoon High School, but her athletic career didn't start out at Eastern Illinois, the school eight miles down the road from her hometown. Instead it started at one of the Panthers current rival Ohio Valley Conference school, Murray State.
"I started at Murray State, but I loved and missed EIU. After my freshman year, my coach (Sherryl Rouse) was going to another school in Georgia and she wanted me to follow her there from Murray State," said Theresa. "I turned that down and said I'm going back home. I actually walked on at Eastern, halfway through my first year. Coach John Ross has just been named the new head coach. Grant Alexander had been the head coach and I knew him pretty well from growing up in Mattoon."
Under Ross and with Theresa as one of the Panthers key players, EIU posted several successful seasons on the court. She would earn first team All-Mid-Continent Conference honors as a junior and senior and finished her career with more than 40 singles and 40 doubles wins for the Panthers.
It was some of those memories that Theresa remembers and cherishes.
"The tennis girls and I will always have those lifelong experiences and memories," said Theresa. "We are always on group chats and I sent them the Instagram post from the athletics page the other day. We are still really close friends. It really was the perfect marriage of a coach that let us be who were and we all got along. A team effort."
Despite playing at EIU herself, Theresa never pushed the boys towards EIU, instead making them look at other colleges in Florida, Missouri and the Nashville, Tennessee area. In the end, the wanted to stay home, in part because of the perfect marriage of coach and team that she herself had found.
"
Mike Moncel has been so positive in the fact that he lets these boys choose how hard they want to work at their game and gives them the opportunity to earn time on the course," said Theresa. "For me Alex's highlight was competing at the OVC Tournament and then last season, seeing Keegan post a fantastic score to lead the team in his first tournament. Also I guess being back in the OVC is great for me too with the boys, because it's the same teams I competed against when I started playing in college."
"I really like being close to home for college," said Keegan. "My high school teammates (
Preston Smith &
Ben Lanman), we were looking at colleges and we decided we should all go play together at the Division I level. Eastern gave us that opportunity, so we all came here."
Keegan's foray into college golf came last October, when he posted a tournament score of 2-under par to finish as the Panthers top finisher at the F&M Bank Austin Peay Intercollegiate. He remembers that event vividly as one of the top moments of his golfing career.
"Playing at Austin Peay in my first tournament was awesome. Of course I was shaking on the first tee but that course was amazing. Just the experience of getting to play college golf for the first time, it was a lot of fun out there."
Another career highlight for Keegan came in partnership with his high school teammates as they led Charleston High School to the Illinois State Championship.
Yes, that right Keegan and his older brother Alex both attended high school in Charleston. While the common bond for the Gowin family is Eastern Illinois, Theresa says the rivalry between the two schools located in the same Central Illinois County still runs deep; especially when she was a standout at Mattoon HS.
"You know I have a couple of close friends that gave me a lot of heck about it when the boys attended Charleston. I'll be honest it took me a long time to wear something that said Trojans on it (Mattoon's mascot is the Green Wave). I would wear red but that was about it. It's great now because we all have Charleston and Mattoon friends that are really close and I consider the towns equal in terms of how much we love both. We have a lot of tradition in both."
With tradition and championships won at both high schools and parlayed to the college ranks at EIU, one has to wonder how the other translates to the a sport other than the one they excelled in.
"We try to get mom out to golf every once in a while, but she gets so frustrated at it because she knows she was so good at one sport," said Keegan. "It's a mental game like she said earlier, so I mostly compete against Alex, my dad and my younger brother."
"When it comes to tennis I usually try to match up against my mom," added Keegan. "I played lot against her in high school and I don't know that I've beaten her yet to this day."
