William "Bill" Cowden was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 basketball

Basketball

Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...

 player.

A 6 in 3 in (190.5 cm) guard from Lowell High School

Lowell High School (San Francisco)

Lowell High School is a public magnet school in San Francisco, California. The school opened in 1856 as the Union Grammar School and attained its current name in 1896. Lowell moved to its current location in the Merced Manor neighborhood in 1962....

 in San Francisco, California

San Francisco, California

San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

, Cowden played collegiately for Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 with his Lowell teammate, Don Burness

Don Burness

Donald S. Burness was an All-American basketball player at Stanford University.-College career:Burness, who was , played center in high school at Lowell High School in San Francisco. He switched to playing forward when he was recruited to Stanford along with his Lowell teammate, Bill Cowden...

. In 1942, Cowden was team captain and led Stanford to the 1942 NCAA Championship

1942 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament

-External links:* on Shrp Sports * , source for much of the information on this page.*...

, in which he played all 40 minutes and scored 5 points.

After his basketball career, Cowden worked for Pan Am

Pan American World Airways

Pan American World Airways, commonly known as Pan Am, was the principal and largest international air carrier in the United States from 1927 until its collapse on December 4, 1991...

 and served as director of their Southeast Asia office. He and his wife Beverly had three sons. He is a member of the Stanford Athletic Hall of Fame. He died in San Francisco in 2007.