But really there was no escape.
The 21-year-old was embarrassed by her side's 9-1 defeat to Canterbury in Timaru on Sunday but was trying to look on the positive side.
''We like to think about the second quarter where the score was 1-1. It's our favourite quarter,'' she said with a sheepish laugh.
The Storm also suffered a 4-1 defeat by Auckland in Dunedin on Saturday and goes into tournament week in North Harbour with precious little in the way of momentum.
While it was a bleak beginning, the fact about half the team is based outside of Dunedin was a significant mitigating factor.
And Cowan feels there is potential for the team to be more competitive and perhaps inflict the odd upset.
''To be honest, we just met half the team on Saturday about an hour before the game,'' Cowan said.
''I think we've had eight people at training consistently and two of them are goalies. So that has been quite hard.
''It is a big challenge but it does give us room for growth.
"The last couple of years we have struggled a wee bit but I think we've got a few good imports and Sophie [Wickens] has come back for another year, which has been really good.''
As for the huge loss to Canterbury, well, postmortems were only so useful, she said.
''I think that game was just a big step up and Canterbury was always going to be tough.
''They've got eight national squad members, I think. It was a bit of a wake-up call, really.
''We had moments when we played really well and the score reflects that we did not sit back and play 11-man defence the whole time.
"We kept attacking for those goals and we got one.
''But we just have to look at what we did well in that game and try to take some positives out of it.
"We did score a goal, which is a minor positive compared with their nine, but it is still a positive.''
The Storm plays Central today and Capital tomorrow. Central lost to Midlands 3-2 but rebounded to beat Capital by the same score. Capital lost its opening game to Canterbury 3-1.
If the Storm is going to poach an early win, perhaps Capital presents its best opportunity.
But it is a case of baby steps for the Southern side.
While a lack of team unity was understandable, many of the basics were not executed at all well.
The Storm's passing during the loss to Auckland was poor and a lot of traps were missed which put the side under enormous pressure.
For Cowan, though, the key will be finding a way to shut the opposition down while still trying to score goals at the other end.
