Issue date: 3/4/10 Section: Features

Media Credit: Trey Burke Donna Sowder cheers on her Eastern Kentucky Colonels at a basketball game.

Media Credit: Trey Burke

Donna Sowder loves Eastern athletics.

You can always spot her at home basketball games - she's the very vocal one, usually passionately waving a towel in the air over her head, half-hanging over the banister above the Colonel bench.

"I love all [the sports]," Sowder said. "I've been into basketball for seven years [now and] all the others for [about] two. I want to go to tennis and golf, but I'm afraid they'd throw me out because I'm too vocal."

She said she loves being able to support the teams, and on top of that they make her feel welcomed. She said the basketball team invited her to an end of the season party and presented her with a basketball signed by all the players.

"I was so embarrassed because I cried," Sowder said. "It meant so much to me."

She said she was very proud of the basketball teams this year, even if they didn't always pull through with a victory.

"I love them whether they win or lose," Sowder said. "[I tell them] what you've got to do is play your best, whether you win or lose, you're still my boys and girls. You've always got to believe, 'I can do it…I can do it'."

Sowder said she always tries to motivate the teams because she thinks its uplifting to hear someone yelling your name from the stands, and she usually treks over to the student section to get them riled up too. She said the cheerleaders and the student section have done a good job this semester at the basketball games about getting into the school spirit.

"It's so motivating to have someone [support] and holler at you," Sowder said. "It makes you explode!"

When she's not cheering on the teams, Sowder works as a personal trainer, which she has essentially been doing for nearly 15 years.

"I just want everyone to be healthy," Sowder said, "like I want to be healthy."

In addition, Sowder has also participated in professional bodybuilding competitions, snatching several awards along the way - she has won the Miss Kentucky Bodybuilding competition three times and has competed in the Masters National Bodybuilding competition three times.

In 1996, Sowder competed in a powerlifting competition, winning her class, squatting 350 lbs. to help qualify her for the nationals. She weighed only 117 lbs. Afterward, she was featured in the magazine Powerlifting USA.

Sowder said the last time she participated in the Masters National competition was in 2005, where she placed third in the 35-49 age division.

"I want first," Sowder said.

So, she plans to return to the Masters and compete in July 2011 in Pittsburgh.

Sowder said she'll have to move up an age group, to the 50-60 division, and thinks she should have pretty good odds in placing, considering she did very well at her last run at the Masters, while competing against younger opponents.

"I was an old fogie in there with the young girls in that one," Sowder said.

Her own background is what makes Sowder put so much emphasis on supporting and motivating others.

"I know how much it means to have someone supporting you," Sowder said. "I know that feeling from what I do."

Sowder said she tries to motivate the athletes at the games because she loves it so much.

"I've had people come up and ask me 'which one of the players is your kid?' and I say 'all of them,'" Sowder said. "[Now], none of them are mine biologically, but [they are] in my heart."

When asked why she likes EKU Athletics so much, Sowder simply replied with one word.

"The togetherness. How everyone is so together."

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