Cowley Softball Staff

Head Coach Ed Hargrove

Ed Hargrove begins his 24th season as the head coach of the Lady Tigers,  coming off a 2007 season in which they finished 46-9 overall and 16-2 in the Jayhawk Conference Eastern Division good for a fourth consecutive conference championship. The Jayhawk Conference Eastern Division title was the program’s 14th with Hargrove as coach.

The 46 wins marked the 10th consecutive season of 40 or more victories for the Lady Tigers, and the 10th consecutive season the team was ranked in the top-20 of the NJCAA rankings as Cowley was ranked as high as fourth in the country.

Hargrove is the winningest coach in Cowley sports history, and his 823 victories rank him second in the nation on the National Junior College Athletic Association’s wins list of active softball coaches. Also, the 823 victories are the most by any coach in Region VI.

Hargrove has been named the Jayhawk Conference Eastern Division Coach of the Year six times. Hargrove earned Coach of the Year honors in 1997 (28-4 in the East), 1998 (28-4), 1999 (29-3), 2000 (29-3), 2004 (16-2), and 2005 (18-0).
He won his 800th game on April 1, 2007 with a 21-2 win over Kansas City. He was inducted into the NJCAA Softball Hall of Fame May 16, 2007 at the NJCAA National Tournament in Normal, IL.

Hargrove also received the Greater Wichita Area Sports Commission “Outstanding Achievement Award” on June 26, 2007 in recognition of his 800th win and induction into the NJCAA Softball Hall of Fame.

Hargrove is a graduate of Arkansas City High School, Cowley, and Fort Hays State University. He attended Cowley on a football scholarship and Fort Hays State on a baseball scholarship graduating in 1976.

Ed and his wife Linda, a former Cowley Athlete and coach, have been married 37 years.  They have two children: Tara, a 1994 graduate of Wichita State University, and Brian, a 1998 graduate of WSU. Tara is a stay-at-home mother, and she and husband Jeff have three children, Jacob 9, Brynn 6, and Halle 5. Tara played for her dad at Cowley in 1991.  Brian lives in Wichita and is the Director of Events and Marketing for the Greater Wichita Sports Commission. He attended Cowley during the 1994-95 school year.

Linda, a standout athlete at Cowley, is a member of Cowley’s first Tiger Athletic Hall of Fame, the Class of 2000. She was inducted into the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2007. She is the General Manager of the WNBA’s Washington D.C. Mystics.  In addition to her duties as G.M., she conducts several basketball camps and clinics in the state of Kansas.