• Mike Cowan - 2000

A native of Superior, Mike Cowan played youth hockey for the Superior Amateur Hockey Association. After a high school career at Superior Cathedral where he played for Wisconsin Hockey Hall of Fame member Ray Liebaert, Cowan went on to play for the Wisconsin Badgers. He capped his playing career as a member of the championship Fond du Lac Bears.

Following his playing career, Cowan began in earnest to pay back to the sport of hockey what he had received from it. For more than 20 years as an educator, Cowan has taught kids on and off the ice. He began his coaching career in 1970 as the first high school coach at Waupun High School where led the Warriors to four state tournaments. He also coached the 1980 Fond du Lac state Bantam champions. After one year as an assistant coach in Blaine, Minn., Cowan returned to Wisconsin and took on the job of head coach at Lawrence University in Appleton. He than returned to the high school ranks where he continues today as the coach at Fond du Lac Springs High School. . Since the early 1990s, Cowan has coached and worked on the Wisconsin Selects AAA Summer Hockey Program.

Cowan’s greatest contributions to the sport though may be in his desire and ability to organize hockey activities that have furthered the cause of ice hockey in the Badger State. To name a few of the projects that Cowan has spearheaded or participated in over the past 25 years: Cowan founded and funded the “Wisconsin Hockey Exchange”, a publication that would become the Wisconsin Section of “Let’s Play Hockey” magazine. Cowan worked on the building of the Waupun indoor rink, one of the few in the State in the late 1970s, and has taught coaching clinics since the late 1970s across the State In the 1997-98 hockey season, along with Wes Bolin, Cowan helped organize the Fond du Lac girls hockey program.

But Cowan’s greatest single contribution to Wisconsin hockey is the Wisconsin Senior Class Tournament that he started in Waupun. The Senior Class Tournament provides exposure for Wisconsin high school seniors at this tournament, and also provides additional exposure for those seniors who are selected to go on and play for Team Wisconsin at the Chicago Showcase Tournament.