Katharine Kowell was a star catcher and slugger for several women’s softball teams in Chicago in the 1940s and ’50s.
Nicknamed “Kotch,” Kowell was a star in the National Girls Baseball League, whose teams played against the storied, all-female All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Years later, Kowell coached her church’s basketball team, and was also an avid golfer and bowler.
“Sports was her life,” said Mary Ann Estacion, a longtime family friend. “She did it all.”
Kowell, 91, died of heart failure March 30 at Alden Poplar Creek in Hoffman Estates, said her nephew, Mike Kollman. Kowell had been a Hoffman Estates resident for the past three years and had been a longtime resident of the Belmont-Cragin neighborhood on the Northwest Side prior to that.
An Ohio native, Kowell grew up in Massillon, Ohio, just west of Canton, to Russian immigrant parents. She picked up her nickname as a derivation of Katia, a Russian name that was often used by family and friends.
Kowell was gifted at sports from an early age. After high school, Kowell played basketball for a team sponsored by Goodyear before moving to Chicago at 21 to play softball for the Bloomer Girls. The team played with 12-inch softballs at Parichy Memorial Stadium at Harrison Street and Harlem Avenue in Forest Park, and the Bloomer Girls won the league championship in 1947, Kowell’s first year with the team.
By 1950, Kowell changed teams, playing for the Cardinals in the National Girls Baseball League. The following year, she joined the Music Maids team. By 1953, she was playing for a fourth team in the league, the Bluebirds, both as an outfielder and as a pitcher. She ended her National Girls Baseball League career playing for the Queens.
Kowell’s pro ball career ended after the 1954 season, when the league folded amid declining attendance, ostensibly the result of increased TV viewing of Major League Baseball.
Estacion met Kowell in 1954, when she was in her final year playing professional ball, for the Queens. After her ballplaying career, Kowell worked in massage therapy for several salons, including Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein. She also was an occupational therapist at the old Dunning mental health center, Estacion said.
Kowell continued working as a masseuse and seeing individual clients until she was about 80, Kollman said.
“She enjoyed doing that and was always dragging this big, heavy table around,” he said.
Both Kollman and Estacion said Kowell never talked much about her ballplaying career. However, she loved sports and happily took over as a basketball coach at her former church, Cuyler Covenant Church in Chicago, where she coached for about seven years, Estacion said.
“She was the only lady coach, and she won all the time,” Estacion said.
“She started out with no respect, and by the time she was done, she was winning championships,” Kollman said.
In addition to her nephew, she is survived by two sisters, Millie Ivan and Olga Kollman.
Services were held.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
