Ann McLachlan Cowan

CowanAnn McLachlan Cowan
(Basketball, 1971)

This 2014 Danbury High School Hall of Fame inductee amazingly earned fourteen varsity letters, Ann McLachlan Cowan. Ann was an impact athlete in field hockey, basketball, softball and track. Ann’s senior year, the basketball team coached by Mike Morris was undefeated. She averaged over 30 points per game and did not miss a free throw the entire season, shooting 100% from the charity line. An article in the school newspaper described Ann as “The Jerry West of DHS”. Ann’s goal her senior year for basketball was to personally outscore the other team. She accomplished that goal! The DHS girls’ track team began in 1970, and Ann was able to throw the javelin her junior and senior years while also participating for the softball team. Ann had never thrown a javelin prior to joining the new track program, but under Coach Helen Brown, Ann won the state javelin competition both her junior and senior years! Ann earned her fourteen varsity letters before “Title IX”. Ann participated in organized sports at Danbury High School when the female athletes had to wear navy pleated skirts and long-sleeved oxford shirts and “look like ladies”. Aside from her participation in DHS sport teams, Ann was also the junior club champion at the Ridgewood Country Club in 1968, 1969, and 1970. She played softball for the War Memorial team from 1968- 1971 and was on the swim teams for both the Norwalk YMCA and the Ridgewood Club team. Ann attended a small college in Oklahoma that did not have organized sports, but she kept competing. She won the American Cancer Society National Team Golf Championship twice and has qualified for the USGA Senior Women’s Amateur three times. She played on the 2007 USGA Women’s State Team Championship and was on the 2009 Oklahoma Fore State Team Championship. For the past ten years, Ann has been in the top four in the Oklahoma Women’s Senior Championships and in the top twenty in the Southern Women’s Golf Association Senior Championships.