Iowa Women’s Sports
KXEL’s Tim Harwood pointed out to me the other day how strongly Iowans were again supporting their women’s basketball teams.
For example, more than 15,000 people were at Carver-Hawkeye Arena Sunday as the Hawkeyes clinched a share of the Big Ten title. That’s a sellout. When I used to do play-by-play of University of Iowa games in the pre-Vivian Stringer era, the record was 628 people in attendance.
Monday night, the Iowa State women’s team fell just short of claiming a share of a Big 12 conference title after being in the top 10 nationally much of the season.
The current form of the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union’s state basketball tournament is underway in Des Moines, and while for some of us the current venue doesn’t have the charm of the old “barn”, Veterans Memorial Auditorium, our towns still shut down across the state when the hometown team makes it way to the state tournament. Iowa of course has one of the most unique histories in the country regarding the sport…the old 6 on 6 game was wildly popular, more popular than the male counterpart in many areas of Iowa.
Credit to Tim for accurately making the connection, that Iowa’s citizens go above and beyond to support girls’ and women’s sports…and probably no coincidence that that support leads to success on the court.
Also of note this week, legislation that would limit participation in girls’ sports to those who are born female.
I’ll leave it to you to decide if such legislation is part of the long tradition of Iowa supporting females in sports, as proponents say…or if it is improper discrimination, as opponents suggest.
