From Courtside to Counseling: How One GU Alum Is Shaping the Mental Game

Published: October 04, 2025

Rick Fowler ’70 didn’t plan to become a professor—or an author. He just wanted to play basketball. But one voice at Greenville changed everything.

When Rick Fowler ’70 walked onto the basketball court at Greenville College (now Greenville University) in the late 1960s, he wasn’t thinking about philosophy, graduate school, or publishing. He was thinking about basketball. That was the plan.

Academics, by his admission, ranked low on the priority list. “I was a special ed student in high school,” he says. “Told never to attend college because I would not succeed. For me, life goals apart from basketball were a mere blur.”

THEN HE MET PROFESSOR ROYAL MULHOLLAND

In a required philosophy class, Mulholland viewed Fowler not as a struggling student but as someone with potential. “He was the first person who ever told me I could do anything,” Fowler recalls. “He changed my life.”

That conversation, along with a hard-earned “A” in the class, launched a transformation. Fowler would go on to earn master’s, specialist, and doctoral degrees. Today, he serves as professor and program director at Truett McConnell University in Cleveland, Georgia, where he leads graduate-level courses in professional counseling and sports psychology.

And he hasn’t stopped moving.

A LIFELONG LOVE STORY, AND CALLING

Fowler’s time at Greenville also brought him something else: his wife. The two were introduced on a blind date—he was on the basketball team, and she played in the band. They attended church for their first date.

“End of this month, it’ll be 57 years since I married Jerilyn (Rowell ’70),” he says with a smile in his voice. “It all worked out.”

After graduating from Greenville, Fowler coached basketball at two universities and taught sociology, psychology, and clinical counseling. He served as inpatient and outpatient director at the renowned Minirth-Meier Clinic in Dallas, a leading Christian counseling center with global influence in the 1980s and 1990s.

There, he authored and co-authored books with Thomas Nelson Publishers, appeared on national programs such as Focus on the Family and The 700 Club, and collaborated with athletes from the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Rangers.

His most recent work? A book titled Counting the Cost: Raising & Coaching Elite Athletes, co-written with two colleagues and introduced by the chaplain of the Atlanta Braves.

The Braves anticipate promoting it across their youth league network. In addition, the book will be the theme for a three-hour workshop this fall at the 2025 Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP) world-wide convention in Montreal, Canada.

A NEW PLAYBOOK FOR MENTAL RESILIENCE

At 77, Fowler isn’t slowing down. He still teaches full time, mentors student-athletes, and serves as the sports psychologist for all teams at Truett McConnell. This fall, he will launch two new graduate programs that combine counseling with sports psychology, making his university the only one in the country to offer a master’s degree track in professional counseling paired with a sports psychology credential.

The book, he says, is more than just theory. “It’s a tool for coaches, athletes, and especially parents,” he explains. “So many parents live through their kids. We want to help athletes build confidence and balance—without inflating their egos.”

His passion is fueled by his own experience as an elite athlete and as a student once told he wouldn’t amount to much. “We’re trying to teach kids how to handle pressure, how to face failure, how to be coachable.”

Fowler already uses the book as a course text and hopes to see it adopted by youth sports programs and schools nationwide. Partnering with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, a portion of the proceeds from book sales will help support that organization.

ADVICE FOR TODAY'S STUDENTS - AND TOMORROW'S LEADERS

When asked what he’d say to GU students today, Fowler doesn’t hesitate.

“Don’t underestimate what one voice can do,” he says. “That professor who sees something in you? Listen to them. They might be right.”

He also urges students—especially those from Gen Z—to embrace challenge and own their growth. “I see it all the time: they struggle to make decisions, to take criticism. But life won’t let you hit delete. You must engage.”

For Fowler, it always comes back to that pivotal encounter in Roy Mulholland’s classroom and the grace that found him on a campus he almost left behind. “If you’d told me then I’d be a professor and an author with 17 books, I’d have laughed,” he says. “But God uses weakness to show strength. I’m living proof of that.”