Female Athlete of the Week excels in all three seasons
Paul Schwartz
Emma Fowler
Sport: Basketball
School: Bogota
Class: Senior. Age: 17
Accomplishment: Fowler scored 46 points, including the 1,000th of her career, and registered 23 rebounds and seven assists as Bogota split its first two games of the new season.
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Dec. 19 was a good day for Emma Fowler.
As most Bogota seniors do, she got out of school at 11:30 a.m. then went to her internship at Lillian M. Steen School in town, where she worked with third graders until the end of their school day at 2:45 p.m. Then she returned to the high school a half-mile away to get ready for her 4:15 basketball game against New Milford.
Fowler, the North Jersey Female Athlete of the Week, presented by HSS, scored 27 points and pulled down 11 rebounds, including a key fourth-quarter 3-pointer that put her over 1,000 points for her career. Unfortunately, the Bucs came up short in the game, losing 49-43.
A consolation prize came when Fowler checked her email later that evening and learned she had been accepted to Ramapo College’s Early Childhood Education program, her first college acceptance.
“I’ve always wanted to be a teacher,” said Fowler, who hopes to play volleyball in college. “I like dealing with kids from pre-K through third grade.”
Fowler also likes to stay busy on the athletic fields, no matter what the sport or season.
“My dad got me playing basketball really young and has been my biggest supporter on the court or field,” she said.
Walter Fowler was part of the 1989 Bogota team that reached the Bergen Jamboree final and came within one game of playing for the Group 1 state championship. The Bucs won both the following year.
Emma Fowler doesn’t have high school goals as big as those of her father more than 35 years ago, but she’s often defended as if she’s the team’s superstar.
“She faces double teams, box-and-1s, every thing they can throw at her they do,” coach Christina Minieri said. “She creates opportunities for herself and her teammates and she has to, because we only really have seven varsity players.”
While Emma has been a star on the basketball court almost from the outset, she started playing volleyball in middle school and played on the 2022-23 team that won the Group 1 state championship. Last fall, she earned second team All-North Jersey honors in the sport.
And she picked up the throwing events and the high jump on the track team as a freshman, earning medals in all four events at last year’s league meet and winning a sixth-place medal in javelin at the Group 1 state meet.
“Doing each sport keeps me in shape for the next one,” Fowler said. “It’s close between volleyball and basketball as my favorite, and being an outside hitter helps me with my javelin throw and vice versa. I just love to stay active.
“I’ve had great coaches in every sport and I love the environment of playing everything with my friends. I just wish more of them wanted to play more than one sport.”
Said Minieri: “Emma’s the type of kid who’s very versatile, sets individual goals for herself and tries to improve every day. She’s the whole package.”
