Wrestling and Girl’s Basketball: They Made Iowa Great!

Here’s a little history lesson and perhaps a bit of personal bias snuck in!  Over my lifetime I have had opportunity to meet with educators, coaches, and athletes from all over the country, as well as some journalists that cover sports at various levels.  When talking with folks from other states, more often than not, when I mention I am from Iowa, I commonly hear some form of “wrestling’s really big there.”  They don’t talk about football or basketball, or any other sport.  Honestly, our state is not thought of very highly from a national perspective for having quality high school basketball or football programs, or for that matter, any other sport except for wrestling.  Then, when you get into any kind of conversation about girl’s sports it doesn’t take long until someone says something along the line of “didn’t they play some kind of half-court type of basketball where there six girls instead of five?”  Nowadays I tell them that game disappeared for good in the early 1990’s, but do say that back in the day the girl’s state tournament easily outdrew the boy’s and a lot of those six-on-six players became legends in the entire state.  Since girls started playing the regular game of basketball there are still people in the gym every Friday night in the winter that remark how much “better the game used to be.”

In truth, these two sports put Iowa on the map in the 20th-century.  Wrestling had an incredible history in the State of Iowa with young men from Clarion, Cresco, Eagle Grove, Waterloo, and many other places becoming legendary figures in the sport at the highest levels.  Names like Gotch, Peckham, Gable, Brand, Yagla, Davis, and Zalesky are just a few from the incredible list of outstanding wrestlers who were born, raised, and competed in Iowa high schools, as well as on the world stage.  One of the Olympic teams from the early 1900’s was made up almost entirely of Iowa born wrestlers!  Wrestling is to Iowa what football is to Texas and basketball is to Indiana.  There are some that may very well refer to it as our State Sport!  And, a number of years ago Sports Illustrated declared the the Iowa High School State Wrestling Tournament was the premier sporting event in our state, and the best in the country.

Iowa girls were given opportunity to play high school sports long before their sisters in most others states when in the early 1900’s a few high schools sanctioned basketball teams.  In 1925, a group of school superintendents formed what would become the Iowa High School Girls Athletic Union, and basketball soon became the crown jewel and remained so well into the late 1900’s.  For most of that period of time the game was dominated by teams from small towns as the urban areas were slower to add girls sports to their school programs.  Denise Long, Jeanette Olson, Deb Coates, Lynne Lorenzen, and Connie Yori were “Iowa Girls” and became household names due to the intensive media coverage given to the Sweet Sixteen teams that played in the state tournament.  Back in the day the girls tournament was a production worth of Hollywood or Broadway.

Now that were are just shy of twenty years into the new millennium, it seems to me that a lot of the luster on these two sports — the sports that made Iowa famous — is not quite as bright and shiny.  Neither of these sports are as popular as they once were.  Iowa’s population is higher now that it has ever been, yet these two sports have seen a definite decline in the number of participants.  Wrestling peaked in 1980 with 12,800 high school wrestlers, but the most recent numbers from the 2016-17 season show that the sport has lost almost half the number of participants since that time, dropping to 6,586.  Yes, there are fewer schools in Iowa than there were in 1980, but not fewer students.  Wrestling is a tough sport, yet I would guess there are a number of other factors that explain this drop.  It is particularly frustrating for wrestling fans and competitors to see teams that have more open weights and forfeits than they do varsity wrestlers.  Yes, at the state tournament the finals still sell out and most of the sessions are packed with fans from all over the state.  The state media outlets still give the sport a lot of attention, particularly in February.  However, below the surface the sport is struggling and is currently the fifth most popular boys sport in Iowa behind football, track, basketball, and baseball.

Girls basketball seems to have lost even more luster than wrestling.  The concept of the Sweet Sixteen disappeared when the IGHSAU made the decision to divide schools into classes, and now that we have five of them in basketball there are actually 40 teams that make it to the state tournament.  In the eyes of many it is not as “special” when over twice as many schools make it to state.  Another factor with that many teams is that the media is not able to give as much attention to each team.  There is no doubt that the change to five-on-five changed the sport as the play of the girls is more easily compared to boys and a lot of games are very low scoring compared to the six-on-six days. It truly is a different game.  When one looks at participation, in 1981 14,146 girls played basketball in Iowa high schools.  That has dropped to 7,576 in 2016-17, ranking the once most popular sport for girls in Iowa fourth behind volleyball, track, and softball.  Closer to home, for some schools in the Upper Iowa Conference and Northeast Iowa Conference, the low number of participants is concerning.  Five schools in the UIC and one in the NEIC started the season with just 15 girls out for basketball, including NFV and Decorah.  That makes it impossible to play three levels — 9th grade, JV and Varsity — and very difficult to  build a program to compete at the 3A level.  

If you listen to some, the number one reason that basketball has dropped in popularity is because of the emergence of volleyball.  In the glory days of girls basketball in Iowa, volleyball was not a sport that was played, though the growth of the sport started picking up before six-on-six was abandoned.  Now it is the most popular girls sport with over 11,000 Iowa girls participating.  As it has grown in popularity, girls not only play high school volleyball during the fall season, many also join club teams and play in the winter . . . the same time high school basketball season is going on.  At NFV in recent years it is not unusual to have over forty girls play volleyball during a season when they also have a choice to run cross country.  And once basketball season rolls around, the past three seasons there have been twenty or fewer players.  This is the same at a lot of schools.  What is equally discouraging is that the crowds have also declined despite the fact that these players work just as hard as their male counterparts.

I do not see either of these sports going away but it is interesting what has happened to the sports that made Iowa famous.  People will hold on to memories and take pride in the legacy that has been built, but I am a bit saddened that our student-athletes who battle on the mat and mix it up on the court no longer get a chance to have that special feeling that comes with that bright spotlight on them.

Free Range Children! Are You Kidding Me!

This was my response the first time I heard the term “free range children."  I had heard of free range chickens, and later on, free range hogs.  Both of those terms emerged basically as marketing terms to let consumer know that the meat they are consuming comes from animals that were not raised in confined spaces.  Taking that understanding,  I figure that free range children must refer to raising them in a manner where they are not confined.  I’m not talking cages, rather from a little research it refers to the concept of raising children in the spirt of encouraging them to function independently and with limited parental supervision, in accordance of their age and development.  This runs contrary to how many parents — often referred to as helicopter parents — have chosen to raise their kids in recent years.  In reality, this is basically the way I was raised, back when parents got a lot of their advice from Dr. Benjamin Spock.  That said, I am still somewhat surprised by the use of the term free range!

To be very honest, my generation of parents has in many ways disabled their kids because of the control we have exerted over their lives.  I can’t count the number of times that I have made the comment that we should “just wrap out kids up in bubble wrap” to protect them!  But what have we been protecting them from?  In retrospect, I believe we have protected them from growing up and living life.  And what I find very interesting is that there are examples of parents who have taken this “free range approach” and have been met with some serious pushback.  For example, not that long ago the Washington Post reported about a mom from Wilmette, Illinois that created a huge uproar in her neighborhood when she let her 8-year-old daughter take the family dog on a walk around the block by herself.  She saw this as giving her daughter a little more independence and responsibility.  Apparently neighbors thought different and reported her to authorities!  Really!

It went even further in Maryland where a family from Silver Spring found themselves under investigation for neglect by Child Protective Services for letting their two kids, ages 6 and 10, walk home alone from a park a few blocks away from their home.  When I think back to when I was ten, I was living in Council Bluffs, Iowa and on more than one occasion I walked home from school by myself along Highway 6 for at least three miles because I behaved badly at school and had to stay after.  My parents added to my punishment by making me walk home!  I shake my head when we have some parents in our own community that drop off and pick up kids at school rather than expecting them to walk four or five blocks!  (By the way, I know it was three miles because I checked on my odometer about ten years ago because I was curious how far I actually walked!  However, it was not uphill both ways and there was not ten foot of snow!)

It seems that leaders in at least one state see that this coddling of a couple of generations of kids has been taken too far.  However, it is a bit ridiculous that it has come to this!  In Utah, a state Senator introduced a measure that “exempts from definition of child neglect various activities that children can do without supervision, permitting a child, who’s basic needs are met and who is of sufficient age and maturity to avoid harm or unreasonable risk of harm, to engage in independent activities . . .”  That includes kids being able to walk, run, or bike to and from school, travel to recreational facilities, play outside and remain at home unattended.

When we have thirty-somethings still living at home, twenty-year-olds deeply depressed because they have no sense of self-worth or confidence, and teens who balk at being told “no,” one has to at least consider that we need to “open the range” and free young people from the cocoons we have built around them.  I truly understand the fears that parents have raising a child, but at some point we need to recognize the responsibility that comes with being a mom or dad is to raise an adult, not a child.