Dan Owen of Burkburnett led Howard Payne to the Texas Conference basketball championship as a senior in 1954, leading the conference in scoring and earning Most Valuable Player honors. In track, he ran on the record breaking two-mile and other distance relay teams and won the 880-yard run in 1953 and 1954. He also played baseball for the Yellow Jackets. After graduation, he declined a contract to play for the Boston Red Sox to coach high school. He won a state football championship at Jacksboro High. As Jacksboro’s basketball coach, he installed a slow-down offense and man-to-man defense that helped the team go to the state championship in 1962. While at Jacksboro, he invited Glenn King, a black student, to play for Jacksboro High before integration in 1964. Owen attended his first state basketball tournament in Austin in 1949 and missed only one in the next 59 years until his death in 2009. He was also inducted into the Burkburnett ISD Hall of Fame. After his coaching career, Owen later became principal and then superintendent in Holliday. He and his younger brother, Stanley Owen, are one of five pairs of brothers in the HPU Athletics Hall of Fame.