Iowa Girls 6-on-6 Basketball Covered in the News

The popularity of girls 6-on-6 basketball in Iowa was aided by major newspapers and radio coverage. This segment from Iowa PBS’s More Than a Game: 6-on-6 Basketball in Iowa documentary features interviews with several sports reports from the era.

Narrator: The popularity of six-on-six was aided by the Des Moines Register and the Des Moines Tribune. Practically from the birth of the girls' game, reporter Jack North promoted basketball. He established his own all-state selections and followed the careers of players with great enthusiasm. The late Jim Duncan Sr. was a longtime advocate and historian of girls' basketball. Most fans will remember him for his dramatic delivery of the hall of fame inductions at tournament finals.
 
The late Jim Duncan Sr.: The year is 1964...
 
Mike Newell, Play-by-Play Reporter: Jim Duncan had a place in his heart for women's sports like nobody I've ever known. He gave no quarter to anybody who said, "it's women's sports. It's girls' sports." He'd say, "yeah."
 
Narrator: Not everyone was as big a fan as Jim Duncan.
 
Reporter: He's become an anti-hero of this tournament. He's a Des Moines Register columnist who has pretty much razzed and attacked girls' basketball...
 
Narrator: beginning in 1965, Donald Kaul frequently poked fun at the six-player game in his over the coffee column for the Des Moines Register. His job was to be controversial, and what better way than to mock iowa's beloved game. He thought six-on-six was slow and often made comments like, "watching a girls' game is like watching paint dry," or "why do Iowans like watching girls' basketball? because it feels so good when they stop." Regardless of what Kaul wrote, for decades more favorable media eyes were on Iowa and girls' six-on-six. Making the trip to Des Moines were CBS, ESPN, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, USA Today, and Sports Illustrated, which profiled the Iowa girls several times. By the late 1960s the six-on-six finals were drawing an estimated five million viewers in nine midwestern states.
 
Chuck Offenburger, Iowa writer: It also let them see that something they were involved in could be not only as good as what the boys were doing, let's face it, it was better. The girls' state basketball tournament in its heyday was the number one spectator event in Iowa including all other things. It was the toughest ticket  in Iowa for years and years to get to the finals of the girls' tournament. That had to really enhance the self-esteem of young girls, that they could be involved in something that was that big-time and that important.
 
Announcer: Here comes atlantic. Six seconds, five seconds. Inside, shoot, and it's good!
 
Jim Zabel, Sports broadcaster, Newsradio 1040 WHO: wow! It really socked you between the eyes. It was so well put on, so intense. People would say -- you talk about the girls' state tournament and you'd just done an ncaa tournament. I said, "hey, you think they're two different levels. But i'll tell you, the intensity in the girls' state basketball tournament is greater than anything you're going to find anyplace else.”
 
Frosty Mitchell, Sports Announcer: The speed of a girl forward scoring, the referee getting the ball to center court, and bang, here we go again on the other end. Other than hockey, they were the quickest thing in sports broadcasting I ever saw.
 
Lynne Lorenzen-Ward, Ventura H.S. (1983-1987): I wanted to win state Iowa girls' basketball, that was the goal. I never had the goal to play college ball. When I was growing up. It wasn't to go play college. It was to win Iowa girls' state basketball. So that shows, you know.