Davidson’s baseball cowboy Greg Lowe is riding out the pandemic on his family ranch

When Greg Lowe takes a break from studying physics during his final semester as a Davidson student, he heads outside to mend the fencing that surrounds his family’s 10,000-acre ranch in remote northeast Oregon.

Social distancing, indeed.

“We’re more worried about the cows getting out than predators getting in,” said Lowe, an outfielder on Davidson’s baseball team whose senior season was cut short in March due to coronavirus concerns. “So if they get out, then we’ve got to go track them down, and that’s not something we want to have happen.”

Lowe is another example of how the pandemic has turned the lives of college athletes upside down. Part of a Wildcats team that was off to the best start in program history (13-3), Lowe is instead at home on the family ranch, concentrating on finishing his physics degree online for what will be a virtual graduation ceremony in May.

And fixing fences to keep the Lowes’ 450 head of cattle penned in.

“I’m mostly walking when I’m doing a fence; it’s pretty thick with timber around here,” Lowe said. “You’d be surprised how much damage that can be done to these fences.”

The Lowe ranch is so remote that the nearest “big” city is La Grande, Ore., population 13,271 and about 20 miles away. Lowe has been alone on the ranch this past week. His family — parents David and Connie, sister Stephanie and a friend — are on a camping trip.

“It’s pretty isolated out here,” Lowe said. “Social distancing up here is a little more like everyday life with the lower population. When you’re on a ranch, there’s pretty much nobody else around.”

Lowe was hitting .250 in 10 games for the Wildcats before the season was canceled. He had a hit and scored a run in a 7-6 victory against 10th-ranked Duke at Charlotte’s BB&T Ballpark.

That was the final game of a what-might-have-been season for Davidson. Lowe was among the team leaders and had a particularly unique way of firing up his teammates.

After once reading that eating a banana peel — not the fruit part, but the peel — offered more potassium to help reduce cramps, Lowe took to doing just that. He often ate the peel before games in front of his teammates, his own way of motivating them.

“They’d be disgusted by it, they didn’t like it,” Lowe said. “They didn’t believe I’d do it, but I did, and so I’d eat a banana peel to try and inspire a win.”

Eventually, Lowe got Wildcats coach Rucker Taylor to try eating a banana peel.

“It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever tasted,” Taylor told Davidson’s website. “I vividly remember how bad it was.”

Lowe said he hopes to take advantage of a recent NCAA ruling that will allow spring sports athletes an extra year of eligibility. But that won’t be at Davidson, which doesn’t offer a graduate school.

“I want to get my Masters in engineering,” he said. “So I hope I can find some place to play one more season.”