Happy Lutheran

If you are having a little bit of the post-Christmas blues, or you just need a pallet cleanser from Christmas music/movies/news, I am here to rescue your day with a short, interesting, uplifting podcast episode on the history of 6-on-6 women’s basketball in Iowa. [Yes, seriously. Stay with me.] The episode is from the podcast “99% Invisible” (a very good and quirky podcast), and, as I said, it describes the history of 6-on-6 Iowa women’s basketball. [Listen to it here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/99-invisible/id394775318?i=1000597479671]

I knew about 6-on-6 women’s basketball, because I knew someone at Colorado College who had played it in high school (not in Iowa, but in another state). But, I didn’t know anything more than that it existed–and, frankly, it always seemed to me to be a little goofy: I had always felt like it was something lesser-than; something forced on women because men didn’t think that women were good enough to play “real” 5-on-5 basketball. But that’s not the story at all!

Instead, at least, in Iowa, 6-on-6 was fully supported and encouraged at a time when team sports for women were still relatively unheard of, and certainly when competitive sports for women were discouraged. And, what was especially interesting was how the rural towns in Iowa really embraced this sport. All over Iowa, the whole town came out to support their team, and the women’s game was much more popular than the men’s game.

In 1925, there was a movement to try to stop women’s games from being competitive [and from having spectators!]–because, you know, women should play only by themselves in gym class, just for fun. However, representatives from schools and leagues in rural Iowa got together and rebelled, and they kept their competitive leagues, and the sport totally took off. It received national coverage, and the state tournament in Des Moines drew tens of thousands of spectators every year. I mean, it was huge! [And, if you are a fan of Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball team, you should know that the head coach, Lisa Bluder, and the associate head coach, Jan Jensen, both played 6-on-6. Bluder is interviewed in the podcast].

The podcast also describes what happened when Title IX was passed. Once colleges chose 5-on-5 for women’s basketball, 6-on-6 naturally began declining, as women wanted a more competitive edge to be able to play at college and get college scholarships. But, even so, 6-on-6 held out in Iowa for a long time; I couldn’t believe that the last tournament was played in 1993, which was also the end of my first year at seminary here.

Two final things to say. Through the course of her research, the narrator moves from a somewhat dismissive view about 6-on-6 to a real appreciation for the sport, including admiration for how affirming it was for the women who played it. She comments that sometimes we think of “feminism” as wanting/getting what the boys have–in this view, women should play basketball the way men play it. And, there is something to that, of course. But, at the same time, she notes how 6-on-6 women’s basketball is an example of something that grew up organically for women, and turned out to be enormously successful. [Several of the women she interviewed talked about how shocked they were to go to college and find out how little support women’s basketball had there, in comparison to the men’s team, when they had come from schools where the women’s team was at the top of the sports hierarchy, not only in the school but in the whole town].

And the last thing; you have to listen to the very last story at the end of the podcast. She tells the story of “the game of the century,” the state championship game that was played in 1968 with two very talented teams, each of which had a star player. It was a thriller that went into overtime, until one of the teams finally won. After the game was over, the star on the winning team, who was only 16 at the time, wrote a letter to the star on the losing team, praising her and expressing her admiration for her. How lovely is that?

Anyway, it is a great story, and well worth a listen.