Damon Rowe

Damon Rowe is a senior at Kingston High School and has attended Kingston since his seventh grade year. Rowe plays football, runs cross country, and runs track and field. His accolades include being a part of Kingston’s state qualifying football team in 2019 and 2020, as well as the public state championship track team in 2021.

For the next school year, Rowe will be competing on the football and cross country team at the same time. This task would be hard for any athlete, but he said he is rising to the challenge.

Rowe has played football throughout high school and will be a running back and an outside linebacker. He will split snaps with Devin Tipton at running back, and start full-time at linebacker.

Rowe said the first goal on his mind for football is to beat the Madill Wildcats. Last season, the Wildcats beat the Redskins 36-35 in their highly contested matchup. Rowe is looking to begin his last football season by beating Kingston’s rival.

He said he wants to help his team make it to the state playoffs one more time. Kingston missed the playoffs last year, and Rowe wants to prove his team is capable.

“I think we can make it back,” Rowe said. “We have a new offense and head coach which are both really good and the defense we have is amazing.”

He said his personal goals is to rush for 1000 yards and have five interceptions on his season.

cross country is new for Rowe since this will be his first season of competing in it. However, he said he is confident in his ability to perform greatly for the team.

Rowe believes he will place within the top ten runners at the state cross country meet and contribute towards Kingston winning the state championship. Multiple athletes on Kingston’s XC team speculate that with their competition moving to different districts, that they have a shot of becoming the best cross country team in 3A.

Rowe may be new at cross country, but he is no stranger to track. He didn’t have a freshman season due to COVID-19, but has been electric since his sophomore season.

Rowe placed third in the 300 meter hurdles at the state track meet. He also competed in the 4x100 meter and 4x400 meter relay teams with the 4x100 team making eighth place and the 4x400 team placing first.

Rowe’s junior season also saw success as he placed third again in the 300m hurdles again and placed second in the 4x800 meter relay at the state track meet. He said he is looking forward to this continued success, and also bringing home another state championship for Kingston.

After high school, Rowe said he would love to compete in collegiate sports if he was awarded a scholarship. If that is not the case for him, he plans on going into trade school. He said he thought about working in the diesel mechanic program if he decides to go vo-tech.

“Going into diesel mechanics would be the start of my dream job. I would use that to go into building audio systems for cars and starting my own company,” Rowe said.

Rowe also provided advice to younger students that are interested in athletics.

“Show up to practice everyday and the process will work for you,” Rowe advised. “For example, my junior track season I started running the 800 meter run in two minutes and ten seconds, the next year I came back with Coach McGowan’s workouts and had a new time of two minutes flat. I dropped that time quite a bit just because I went to practice everyday and did the workouts and I stuck with it.”