The fridge in the entryway of Walt Wells’s campus office was empty. Thomas Bowling, Eastern Kentucky’s director of football operations, noticed it on his way out the door on a late August evening.
At the top of Bowling’s to-do list when he arrived the next day: get his boss some Powerade. The next morning, with the Colonels’ season opener against Eastern Michigan just five days away, Bowling waited for Wells to get to the team facility as other coaches dived knee-deep into the work of game-planning.
“He went into his office and started working, and I started filling up his fridge,” says Bowling, who also played for EKU and was on the roster when Wells took over in 2020. “I was about done, and it sounded like he sneezed almost. I always ask him if he wants me to shut the door. So I didn’t go in yet. I was like, ‘Coach, you want me to shut the door?’ He didn’t answer, and that’s when I peeked in and I saw him there.”
