It’s Friday afternoon and James Brown’s “Super Bad” blasts through the third floor of the Student Union Building. Old vinyl records fill the KUOI studio and all of a sudden, time travel seems real.
Unfortunately, it’s not — but every Friday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Mark Sowa tries his best. He takes a break from his day job as the University of Idaho swim coach to bring soul music to the KUOI airwaves.
The show is called “Who Stole the Soul?” and Sowa admitted his definition of soul has expanded throughout the years.
“To me, soul is anything that makes you want to move,” he said. “It’s anything that gets you up and dancing, anything that brings a smile to your face and really anything with integrity.”
He plays everything from James Brown to the Grateful Dead, and genres such as classic punk rock to country bluegrass.
Despite the variety of music, the old-school nature of his show still turns off some listeners like junior swimmer Jamie Sterbis.
Sterbis introduced Sowa to the possibility of hosting his own radio show last year.
“I was the reason why he became a radio DJ,” she said. “First I was (a DJ) and then I told him about it because he loves music. Now he is obsessed with it.”
Sterbis said she has class when the show airs, and hasn’t been able to tune in because of it.
“Plus, we listen to his music every practice, so the last thing I want to do is purposely listen to it,” she said. “Not like it’s bad, he definitely has an audience, it’s just not my style.”
While Sterbis and her teammates might not like the music, Sowa said they probably like him better after he hosts the show because he’s always is in a good mood afterwards.
“I call it my music therapy,” he said. “For the longest time, I was trying to not let people know that I was the swim coach. I just wanted to sneak in here and do my thing.”
Sowa developed his love for music at a young age. He always wanted to be a rock-and-roll star, but chose to give up the dream after he reached the age of 27.
Growing up, Sowa played guitar and took piano lessons. He said he wasn’t very good at either of them, though.
“I actually quit piano because I wanted to join a swim team,” he said. “Who knows, maybe if I had chosen piano I’d be rocking in some band right now, but I doubt it. I think this was the right choice.”
While he can’t pick one favorite band or album, Sowa said he’s always been a huge Bob Dylan fan.
“I love Bob Dylan,” he said. “‘Bringing It All Back Home’ is a great record, so that’s probably in there. It’s not my favorite record, but in the top five — and my top five probably has about 50 records in it.”
It’s easy to see why Sowa has such a hard time picking just one favorite. He has about 7,500 songs on his iPod and approximately 800 records at home. Combined with over 70,000 albums from the KUOI archives, Sowa has plenty of musical options for his show.
With all the options someone can play music from, Sowa said he still prefers vinyl records.
“Records are awesome, because you can find a record for two bucks and find a hidden gem,” he said. “I love the snaps, the crackles and the pops of them.”
It’s not only the sound of the records Sowa appreciates — he enjoys the whole experience of buying records, too.
“When you go to a record store, you want to be able to flip through the stacks and have the crazy hipster dude behind the counter making you feel like you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sowa said.
It’s common practice for a radio DJ to have a nickname and a different persona. Sowa tried to keep his coaching separate from his work as a DJ, but when it comes to a nickname, the two might collide.
Idaho Athletic Director Rob Spear said he wouldn’t listen to Sowa’s show until he has a nickname. Spear thinks it should be Big Splash.
Senior swimmer Rachel Millet said Big Splash reminds her of a whale. She thought Sowa should go with a more soulful nickname — Phat Sowa.
“I think anything that you do, do with a lot of passion, do it with a lot of soul and do it with a lot of integrity,” Sowa said. “That’s what we try to do on the pool deck and that’s what I try to do behind the microphone, too.”
David Betts | Blot
Sowa traverses the side of the pool, commenting on the form and technique of his athletes as they swim past.
Swimming
The music doesn’t stop when Sowa gets to the pool, either. With practice themes like Motown Mondays, ’90s rock, soulful with Sowa, old-school rap and more, the tunes sound a lot like his show on KUOI.
“We play music a lot during practice,” he said. “We blast it and the girls don’t particularly like what I play all that often … Occasionally I’ll even stop practice and be like ‘alright you just got to appreciate how good this is, this is a great tune.'”
Although Sterbis doesn’t care for her coaches’ preference in music, she said she can’t hear it while swimming. When she takes a break, Sterbis said she can hear the music and it makes her want to get back under water.
“Maybe that’s why they do it,” she said. “To make us think ‘I’d rather swim than listen to this music.'”
Sterbis recalled a practice when she bet Sowa the team would swim faster if he played some fast pace contemporary music.
“It was a Friday evening practice and we do 50s, which is what everyone dreads because it’s the hardest practice of the week,” she said. “We all swam terrible. It was one of the worst practices since I’ve been here, so they must be on to something.”
Millet said Sowa is thoughtful and attentive to each swimmer’s stroke. And like his radio show, she said everything has a purpose with Sowa.
Sowa didn’t recruit Millet, and when he arrived she wasn’t quite sure what to expect. In her three years with Sowa, Millet said he’s taught her how to appreciate swimming and have more fun doing it, which wasn’t always the case for her. In high school, Millet said she didn’t like swimming and thought about not doing it in college.
“I really didn’t know what I was getting into,” she said. “It worked out really well and I have had a lot of fun. It’s been a really great experience and he’s been a major part of that.”
Sterbis added Sowa is a detail-oriented coach. She said he is good at pinpointing what a certain swimmer needs to work on and what drill works best for them. Sowa adapts to each swimmer, instead of a swimmer having to adapt to his coaching style, Sterbis said.
Sowa grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, and was a distance swimmer at American University, located in Washington D.C., where he swam the mile.
“I wasn’t blessed with a heck of a lot of speed,” he said. “But what I did do is have a pretty good work ethic — I just tried to outwork people. I hope I’m a better coach than I was athlete.”
His coaching career started shortly after he graduated from American University and got a spot on the coaching staff at Brown University as a graduate student.
After he finished grad school, Brown offered Sowa the assistant coaching job in 1999. Sowa jumped around from there, stopping at schools such as Harvard and Wagner College before he came to Idaho in 2012.
“If you would have asked me when I was 18, 19 years old, that would I make a career of being a swim coach, I would have laughed, and now I couldn’t imagine doing anything different,” Sowa said.
Spear said Sowa has been able to use his passion and intelligence to develop advanced training regimes that bring out the best in his swimmers. He said he’s been able to develop and grow the program and has been a great salesman for not only the program, but also swimming in general.
“He’s just a positive person who always brings a different perspective on different issues, and I have always appreciated that,” Spear said. “You knew that he was smart and passionate about swimming, and obviously had success on the East Coast, but could he transfer that to the West Coast? I think he certainly has.”