With the likes of Anson Dorrance and Roy Williams leading Tar Heels to multiple NCAA championships, many people fail to fully appreciate that Bolowich has consistently kept men's soccer at the University of North Carolina at or near the top of the collegiate ranks for a decade. His Tar Heels' titles include the 2000 ACC title and the 2001 NCAA crown, and they reached the NCAA finals again in 2008. But his contributions to soccer in Chapel Hill go well beyond that, and deeper into the community.

He's coached youth soccer for years. Just last month, he took a Triangle United Soccer Association club to the United States Youth Soccer Association's national finals for the third straight year.

Even before his run with CASL '91, Bolowich coached a Triangle U-19 club team to the 1990 Maguire Cup's last rounds. In 2008, his Under-16 Triangle United club reached the USYSA nationals.

As those players aged up into U-18 leagues, he kept coaching club soccer, investing every Saturday for years in Carolina, TUSA or Capital Area Soccer League activities. Some of the CASL '91 Gold club had been taught by Bolowich for years. That included his son Alex, a top-flight goalkeeper.

"I've been with them since they were 14, and what they've done in the past fours years is just tremendous," Bolowich said recently in an interview.

Blessed with some excellent talent in the CASL club season, Bolowich may have felt a bit snakebit this summer.

CASL Gold's Bjorn Johnsen of Norway, an all-state forward for Broughton, signed with a Norwegian pro club immediately after the state cup championship, making him ineligible for USYSA play with '91 Gold. Another opted or a family vacation.

Bolowich did some juggling and thought he had a player rotation figured out after the regionals, but, five minutes into this summer's first game in the USYSA final four in Kansas, Gold's leading striker, Robert Lovejoy, went down with a hamstring injury.

That left the front of Gold's line without many of its top players.

Bolowich's club struggled to retain its focus after that. "We were all over the place, which wasn't like us at all," he recalled. "Understandably, that resulted in some losses."

CASL Gold didn't make it back to the championship game, but Bolowich remained sanguine.

In three years, his CASL club won three N.C. Cups and three regionals to reach three national finals, and it also played in both the Disney Showcase and the Jefferson Cup in Virginia three years in a row, facing top national talent on a national stage.

"Those were all fantastic accomplishments for this team," he said.

If there is any sadness for Bolowich, it's that he will now say goodbye to teenagers he's known since they were 14 years old. The team is breaking up.

Most will go their separate ways to play at the next level. That includes his son, Alex, who is playing at Florida International University next semester.

This club could reform as a U-19 club, but it would have to be without Bolowich as head coach. NCAA rules prohibit him from coaching the University of North Carolina varsity and a club team with college players.

Maybe that's not a bad thing, he said.

"I've been doing this for 20 years, doing something every Saturday with either the club or UNC," Bolowich noted. "Now that Alex is done, I want to spend more time with my wife on the weekends."

His departure from the club scene represents a major loss for youth soccer, especially in the Triangle and Chapel Hill specifically. Having Bolowich as a coach of middle- and high-school-age players was like having Lou Holtz coach your son's Pop Warner football team.

"Who knows? I may get the itch again in two or three years," Bolowich said. "We'll just have to see."