Yorkville basketball remembers long-time scorekeeper Tim Lowry ‘Everybody loved him’

He was a Yorkville Fox, through and through.

He loved the Iowa Hawkeyes, fishing trips and a good high school concession stand.

He was a family man, and a faithful member of Cross Lutheran Church. He frequently brought his three grandsons with him on basketball road trips.

And Tim Lowry’s commitment to the Yorkville boys basketball program was unquestioned.

The Yorkville community is mourning the loss of Lowry, who died on July 16 at the age of 73.

A three-sport star at Yorkville all four years, Class of 1969 like his wife of 50 years, Marcia, Lowry later coached basketball and softball, and officiated and umpired.

Lowry started keeping the book for Yorkville’s boys basketball program in 1991. He never hung up his pencil.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in terms of the commitment,” said Dan McGuire, who coached Yorkville’s varsity basketball team from 2011-2015. “There were some years that we weren’t very good. I felt like he was even more dedicated in those situations to make sure the kids were having a good experience.

“Just seeing someone that wanted to be a part of every game, to essentially donate his time, how much it meant to him, it sunk in how lucky I was to be the head coach of Yorkville.”

Lowry played football and basketball, and ran track at Yorkville. He set a record for most interceptions in a game, a record since broken, and just missed going downstate for the high hurdles in track.

He worked for 46 years at Walker Process in Aurora until his retirement in 2019. Unable to sit still in retirement, Lowry did work for the Yorkville Park District.

He worked in the football press box with Chris Nelson, who Lowry started to keep the basketball book for in 1991.

“You don’t find people like that anymore. People don’t vest their time, really volunteering,” said Mike Dunn, who coached Yorkville boys basketball from 2015-2020. “He never asked for anything. Just a genuine guy, very supportive. He became a mentor to us coaches.”

McGuire remembered Lowry as a guy who liked to talk, but not about himself. A jokester, Lowry kept things light. He had an uncanny ability to find the light at the end of the tunnel.

McGuire’s favorite memory of Lowry was from a hotly-contested game against Morris.

McGuire got hit with an M&M candy, assumed it was coming from the student section and looked around. Tim Lowry was holding the bag.

“He could sense I was not in a good space, a lot of tension and he realized I needed to calm down,” McGuire said. “Looking back, he knew exactly what I needed to keep things calm. That’s how good of a people reader he was.”

Keith Gardner, who came over from Kaneland to Yorkville in 2015 and has coached basketball and football since, built a lasting friendship with Lowry in car rides to and from games. Gardner’s two boys and Lowry’s three grandsons often tagged along.

They learned of their families, Gardner’s wife now battling breast cancer for the second time, Lowry’s son diagnosed with a form of cancer. Lowry himself fought stomach cancer. It was difficult for Gardner to see his friend hit by it.

“The way I look at it is things happen for a reason. Tim came into my life when I needed someone with stuff I was dealing with,” Gardner said. “It was nice to have Tim there to be able to share the things I was going through. He was a good shoulder, an ear to listen, like a fatherly figure. That’s kind of how he was to me, and to my kids like a grandfather.

“From a basketball standpoint he knew basketball, he was great with the kids, great with the coaching staff. Everybody loved him.”

Yorkville athletic director Luke Engelhardt called Lowry a “stand-up guy.”

Engelhardt’s first year as AD, he came up with the idea to combine boys and girls basketball scrimmages. He tried a fan 3-point contest, and a dunk contest.

It got chaotic, which Lowry noted.

“Tim was candid with his words. He goes ‘Luke it looks like you are running a circus,’” Engelhardt said. “He would always lighten the mood, tell you exactly how things were going. He had a way of telling a joke to lighten the mood.”

That extended to the sidelines, where Lowry told a story of coaching one of his son’s teams, and calling a timeout when they were down 30 points one game.

“He calls a timeout and tells his team ‘We’re not going to win this game,’” Engelhardt said, “’but where do you guys want to go to eat afterward.’”

Speaking of food, Engelhardt joked that Lowry probably worked for the concessions. Dunn said that he, Lowry and Gardner would rate the hospitality rooms at tournaments.

Dunn loved to listen to Lowry the storyteller talk about Yorkville through the years from its days as a small farming community, the glory days.

“Such a nice humble, guy. Very supportive and a good man,” Dunn said. “He was always consistent with everything he did. He brought his grandsons around, it was a cool thing.”

Marcia, a regular with Tim at Yorkville football games, also made many of the trips with the Foxes’ basketball team.

“It’s tough,” Gardner said of losing Lowry. “He was someone we always relied on, and knew was there. Away games we didn’t have to worry about someone not showing up and running the book.

“The times he had to miss last year, it was just different. When he wasn’t there, it wasn’t the same. That is the part that will be tough. It’s going to be different without him.”