From Six-on-Six to Full Court Press: A Century of Iowa Girls' Basketball

5. Divided Court to Full Court Play

Divided Court to Full Court Play 1973-1993 IN THE 1970s AND 1980s IOWANS COULD AND DID BOAST that their state led all other states in the percentage of girls participating in high school athletics.' Iowa was the only state to have had official state basketball tournaments for girls since 1920. While Texas, Tennessee, and Oklahoma also had longtime state programs, none had been continuous .2 In most other states girls' basketball state tournaments essentially started in the 1970s. A survey by the National Organization of Women (NOW) showed that Iowa surpassed other states by a wide margin in the percentage of female athletes-50.6 percent, which astounded non-Iowans. Before Title IX was passed for school year 1970-71, 20 percent of the 294,000 girls in high school sports in the country were in Iowa. By 1976 3 years after Title IX, the number nationwide had increased to 1.6 million and approximately 93,000 of those were in Iowa, which reflected the fact that nationwide many states first included girls' sports after the passage of Title IX.3 As the Union was fond of saying, "It is only in Iowa that the girl athlete is queen;' And, as Iowa State University women's basketball coach Pam Wettig said in 1989, "There's nothing like this in the world for a female basketball player;' Women sports promoters used Iowa as an example and inspiration in their drive to increase sports opportunities for women. The decade before, Tug Wilson, president of the United States Olympic Committee, had said, "ten years ago, those directing women's physical education would not vote 99 100 FROM SIX-ON-SIX TO FULL COURT PRESS 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 I '013 I 1113 I 1m 1,m 1AM '082 for women's athletics but that has changed. We give thanks to the state of Iowa for changing all that .. :' He predicted in 1963 that each state would soon permit competitive athletics for girls saying that lithe Olympic Committee literally is reaching out to shake the hand of Iowa:" By 1975 larger schools had joined the IGHSAU. Sports such as track, golf, tennis, and gymnastics had been conducted by the Division of Girls and Womens Sport (DGWS), which was affiliated with the Iowa and American Physical Education Association, but when larger schools joined the Union , it sponsored these sports. In the 1970s the larger schools also started fielding basketball teams. In 1971, 332 Iowa schools offered basketball, but in 1980, 493 schools did, and in 1990, there were 581 schools that had girls' basketball programs. During this 20year period many small schools consolidated, so the number of high schools decreased, but the number of schools offering basketball rapidly increased. Cedar Rapids Kennedy was the first large school to compete at state in 1972. Its high school enrollment that year was higher than the total enrollment of all sixteen schools that competed at the state tournament in 1957. By 1977 many of those 1957 state tournament team schools-Garrison, Maynard , Donnellson, and Tingley-had been absorbed into larger reorganized districts. Some other schools, such as Walnut and Guthrie Center, had fewer students than in 1957. Americans increasingly heard and read about sports5 .1. Dates of official girls tournaments in other states. (State Federations from individual states) 101 DIVIDED COURT TO FULL COURT PLAY, 1973-93 women in Iowa. Sports Illustrated magazine featured the phenomenon of Iowa girls' basketball. Statewide television and radio coverage expanded. The television contract for covering the state tournament is the largest for any high school boys' or girls' sport in the nation. Annually, the nine-state television network broadcasts to five to six million fans. Sports journalists from major u.s. newsmagazines and some from abroad, including the Soviet Union, cover the girls' basketball state tournament. When the Iowa Wesleyan College women's team played the USSR national team in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, in 1962, a travel ad in Sweden used a photo of that game on a travel poster.s In 1990 the Tokyo Broadcasting Company sent a five-person crew to film the tournament. American sports journalists such as Sports Illustrated's writers B. Gilbert and N. Williamson reported with some surprise , "the press of rural Iowa treats competitions [boys' and girls'] equally ... the local newspapers will lead off and devote the most space to whichever game was the most exciting. The stories seldom are cluttered...