Iowa Girls 6-on-6 Basketball: Small Communities Travel to Des Moines to Support Their Teams

In this segment from Iowa PBS’s More Than a Game: 6-on-6 Basketball in Iowa documentary, reporters, players and coaches recount how rural towns traveled to support their teams during the week of the state tournament in Des Moines.

Narrator: In 1955 the girls' basketball tournament moved to Veterans Memorial Auditorium, affectionately known as the barn. When a school earned a spot at state, the whole community came along for the wild ride. The towns were empty during the week of competition. Afterwards, every team was treated to a homecoming fit for royalty, whether they won the championship or were eliminated in the first round.
 
Jim Zabel, Sports broadcaster, Newsradio 1040 WHO: I witnessed a whole town came to veterans auditorium in Des Moines. It did, the whole town! Towns of 300, 400, 500 people, the entire town would be there.
 
Sandy Van Cleave-Little, Montezuma High School, 1967 to 1971: It was awesome. The community here in montezuma were just awesome people. They backed you one hundred percent. Then they followed you to vets auditorium. Looking back through some of my scrapbooks a few days ago you see the crowd. It talks about in some of the articles, the town is empty. You could rob the town because there was no one here.
 
Kim (Peters) Wilson Andrew H.S., 1973-1977: If somebody told you it was going to be the reception like it was, you would have said, no, no, no. I can remember meeting the caravan of cars. If there was one car, there was 201 cars and a police escort, a sheriff escort. Then when we got here, the gym was packed. It was packed. There was a welcoming line and the band played and people gave speeches. I can remember some feelings after some games -- because we had some hard hits when we went to the tournament for a couple of years. You felt obligated to win and you felt like you didn't do your part. But yet when you came back, everyone was like, it's okay, that was really cool, this was fun for everybody.
 
Larry Niemeyer, Coach 1959 - present: the years we went in Adel, they closed down the banks. Brenton bank closed down. Now, the people in Des Moines that owned Brenton bank could care less about Adel girls' basketball, but they closed down. That's just wonderful. It's kind of a social thing. I can remember some of the good years in Adel that some of the kids would send us -- every time we'd qualify for the state tournament, the second graders, third graders, fourth graders, they'd send little love notes to our players. I still have some of those.