IOWA CITY, Iowa — With the basketball from her off-balance 3-pointer still falling through the net, Iowa’s Caitlin Clark sprinted off the court to behind the basket at Carver-Hawkeye Arena and flexed before a sold-out crowd on Senior Day.
The celebration last season turned into hysteria when Clark’s buzzer-beater toppled No. 2 Indiana 86-85. Players, coaches and fans mobbed one another. About a minute into the madness, Clark wheeled toward midcourt and saw 48-year-old Lisa Brinkmeyer, a former Drake basketball player, sitting in the stands. Brinkmeyer previously worked at the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union, and the two knew each other from Clark’s high school days.
“Lisa!” Clark yelled. And they embraced.
“That shot meant so much to so many,” said Iowa associate head coach Jan Jensen, who coached Brinkmeyer at Drake. “(Brinkmeyer’s) husband said something so poignant to me. The next day, he called me and said, ‘This year has been so tough on our family, but for that 30 seconds, we all forgot she had cancer.’”
Brinkmeyer died from brain cancer four months later. But in one touching gesture, Clark’s compassion symbolically married Iowa’s electrifying present with respect for the past. In 1993, Brinkmeyer was the state’s final six-on-six Miss Basketball, concluding an era that brought recognition to girls from river to river well before Title IX mandated equal representation in athletics. Clark, the likely No. 1 pick in the upcoming WNBA Draft, will carry her basketball heritage to the next level and beyond.
Six-player basketball was more than just a sport in Iowa. It was the game of the winter, and its legacy flourishes through this Hawkeyes women’s basketball team. Every home and road game has sold out. Juxtaposed with the preteen Clark fans who line the locker-room tunnel seeking autographs and handshakes are the middle-aged and elderly women who played six-player girls basketball wearing the same T-shirts and sweatshirts. Their pride in the game’s growth and their role in building it beams like sunshine off their smiling faces.
A day after Clark set the NCAA women’s all-time scoring record in February, Heather Heddens, 69, barely could contain her excitement. Heddens, who helped Mediapolis High win the 1973 six-on-six state title, has season tickets only a few rows off the floor at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. The morning after Clark’s achievement, Heddens flipped from channel to channel trying to absorb every second of coverage.
“It was just electric to be there and have every seat filled and the crowd, just so many 22 shirts — men and women and boys and girls,” Heddens said of Clark’s jersey number. “She’s brought the world’s attention to women’s basketball.”
Girls six-on-six basketball once did that in Iowa with stories appearing in national publications and newscasts. It was much different than today’s style of play. In 1899, Spalding’s official basketball guide for women debuted in Springfield, Mass. The guide, which appears in the Library of Congress, recommended six girls play per side in three separate zones. In Iowa, the first promotion for women’s basketball took place at the Cedar Rapids YWCA in 1899. Many of the games took place outdoors.
After a few variations, in 1934, the court was divided in half with three forwards opposing three guards on each end and no crossovers. Players could dribble only twice, and passing was a premium. Often, a dominant forward racked up massive points while guards were exclusively defenders. Roles were clearly defined.
In rural Iowa, where sisters worked alongside their brothers on family farms, the sport thrived. By the mid-1950s, six-on-six girls basketball became a phenomenon.
“We filled up Vets Auditorium in the heyday during the ’60s and ’70s — Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night,” said Connie Shafar, a six-on-six player in the 1960s and the first female member of the Iowa Girls Coaches Association. “You couldn’t get a ticket.
“My dad nailed a hoop inside the barn. We did the chores and helped milk the cows, and then we’d go up to the barn and shoot. That was tradition.”
Few communities were as devoted to the sport as Mediapolis, which once qualified for state 17 times over an 18-year period. In 1973, on the Bullettes’ path home from Des Moines, police met them and their fans as part of a caravan. In Wapello, fire trucks greeted them, and the mayor gave them a key to the city. The last 13 miles south led to a jam-packed homecoming in their gymnasium.
“It’s kind of like what’s happening now,” Heddens said, “only on a smaller scale.”
A caravan of cars followed the Mediapolis team home after one of its state tournament wins. (Courtesy of IGHSAU)
From a sport to a spectacle
A trophy resting atop her grandmother’s china cabinet made Jensen curious as a child. It led to a question, a realization and a lifelong passion.
“I asked my mom one time, ‘Why did grandma get that trophy?’” said Jensen, now 55. “My mom explained it, and I said, ‘I’m gonna get one someday.’ She looked at me and said, ‘Well, you keep working hard, and maybe you will.’ That was when I started to know grandma had done something.”
Dorcas Anderson (later Randolph) — Jensen’s grandmother — and her Audubon High teammates rode the train from southwest Iowa to Des Moines for the girls state tournament in 1921, the second one staged in Iowa. Anderson’s 89 points in six games set a state record that held for 11 years, and her team won the title. Audubon’s delegation of rooters, according to the Des Moines Register, was a “feature of the affair and did much to enable its team to win.”
Anderson earned that IGHSAU Hall of Fame trophy, as did her granddaughter six decades later. Their symbols of excellence did not come without a fight, however. Nationally, there were efforts to end girls basketball, and according to reports from the Des Moines Register, the majority of Iowa administrators considered girls basketball “a menace to American motherhood and maidenly modesty.”
The matter landed before the Iowa High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) in 1925, and heated arguments ensued. The state’s small-school officials were in favor of keeping the tournament. Mystic (Iowa) Superintendent John W. Agans told the room, “Gentlemen, if you attempt to do away with girls basketball in Iowa, you’ll be standing at the center of the track when the train runs over you.” But the IHSAA voted to end the girls tournament.
In 1926, those defeated small-school officials switched tactics. They formed the IGHSAU to supervise girls sports. The organization remains in place, and Iowa is the only state with separate bodies governing boys and girls sports.
The sport thrived competitively, but the state tournament was not a moneymaker. That changed in 1954 when the IGHSAU hired E. Wayne Cooley as its leader. Cooley saw the tournament as a celebration of “The Iowa girl.” He brought in high school bands, pageants and other activities for beloved halftime extravaganzas.
Cooley moved it from Drake Fieldhouse to Vets Auditorium, and the next year, the five-day tournament drew 65,217 spectators, more than twice the previous year. A record crowd of 15,015 saw Goldfield rally to beat Holstein in overtime. For the next four decades, Iowa’s six-on-six state tournament became a Midwestern spectacle.
“(Cooley) was way ahead,” Shafar said. “His flag ceremony at the beginning made you think about mom and apple pie and wanting to cry. All of the kids that performed at halftime, they were all Iowa students. No professionals.
“They called him the Barnum and Bailey of girls basketball.”
Cooley, who died in 2013 at age 90, ran the IGHSAU for 48 years. The revenue generated from the girls basketball tournament allowed his organization to invest in other girls sports, starting with softball in 1955. The IGHSAU now sponsors 10 sports.
“He was a visionary,” Jensen said. “To be stereotypical, it’s been a man’s world for a long time. But when you were a girl, a six-on-six basketball player, you felt like you were on top of the world.”
Widely regarded as the state’s greatest title competition, Denise Long (left) of Union-Whitten bested Everly and Jeanette Olson (right) 113-107 in overtime in 1968. The two were photographed with IGHSAU leader E. Wayne Cooley after the game. (Courtesy of IGHSAU)
The downfall of six-on-six
As a high school sophomore standing about 6 feet tall, Jane (Christoffer) Rubel averaged 46.7 points a game for Ruthven, ranking fifth in 1970 state scoring. But that spring, she became pregnant, was married by midsummer and gave birth to her daughter in December. Rubel sat out that season and wanted to play again, but the IGHSAU had a rule against mothers and wives competing in sports.
In Iowa, boys could continue playing high school sports regardless if they were husbands or fathers. With her school district backing her, Rubel filed suit against the IGHSAU. Shortly before the 1972 season, after a judge issued an injunction, the union rescinded its restrictions. A month later, a federal district judge ruled the IGHSAU’s laws violated the state constitution. At season’s end, Rubel was named honorable mention all-state.
Despite its place as a forerunner of girls athletics, the IGHSAU was not immune to lawsuits like Rubel’s or regarding the six-on-six game itself. Collectively, the controversies led to the downfall of its unique approach to basketball.
In 1971, national rules established five-on-five as the standard for girls and women’s basketball, with only Iowa, Oklahoma, Texas and Tennessee holding out. In 1972, Title IX required school districts and colleges to adopt girls sports, which led to a rise in five-player basketball. In 1978, a Tennessee court ruled six-on-six was discriminatory, and Texas also flipped to five-on-five. Oklahoma was the last state to end six-on-six in 1995.
A 1983 lawsuit accused the IGHSAU of violating the 14th Amendment ensuring equal opportunities to female athletes and claimed six-on-six basketball was discriminatory. In a settlement, the Iowa organization agreed to host five- and six-player tournaments beginning in 1985. Larger school districts shifted to the five-player game while smaller schools stayed with six-on-six.
University of Iowa associate professor Jennifer Sterling, who played both styles in high school, has led numerous discussions and research on the legacy of six-on-six girls basketball. The eroding support for six-player basketball dealt with scholarship opportunities.
“College (athletic) scholarships weren’t a thing before Title IX for women,” Sterling, a former Division III women’s basketball player at Central (Iowa) College, said on a panel discussion in the fall in Iowa City. “That was one of the justifications or the rationales, that they were feeling like they would be able to compete better for those scholarships.”
Athletes like Jensen had to play both methods through the mid-to-late 1980s to get noticed by colleges. Her high school coach formed a southwest Iowa five-player squad, which won the state AAU crown and finished fourth at a national tournament.
“That was difficult playing in the summers, going from two dribbles and just the pace, and then a whole different style,” Jensen said. “You’d have to play defense and run up and down. But I was so thankful for that because it helped with my transition.”
Eventually, more high schools switched to the five-player game, and the future became clear. On Feb. 4, 1993, the IGHSAU board of directors voted to end six-player basketball after the season.
Letters poured into the Des Moines Register.
“The girls will be compared to the boys, put down, and maybe even laughed at, not to mention the revenue that will be lost at future state tournaments,” Linda Jones of Emmetsburg wrote. “The art of the game will be lost and girls basketball in Iowa will be just another ho-hum game.”
Jan Jensen (left), a former six-on-six player, is in her 24th season on the coaching staff for Iowa women’s basketball. (Courtesy of IGHSAU)
The legacy lives on
Those who played six-on-six still have a fondness for it three decades after it faded from Iowa’s basketball courts.
“It was a faster-paced game,” said Heddens, a dentist who later coached both styles of basketball in Columbus Junction. “You had two dribbles. We’d get over the half-court line — you shouldn’t be dribbling more than a couple of times anyway. Move without the ball and pass it.”
“As much as I loved it — and I know there are still protectors of it today — but the world changed,” Jensen said. “The six-on-six game gave a lot of girls great opportunities, kids who couldn’t score, kids that weren’t real athletic. But as society progressed and the female athlete evolved, they desired the challenge of playing both sides. I feel like it was just time.”
Jensen, like her grandmother, became one of the state’s most prolific scorers. At Elk Horn-Kimballton, Jensen averaged 65.7 points per game in 1987, topping the nation and ranking second in state history. She once scored 105 points in a game, and her 3,457 points rank fourth in state annals. While competing at Drake in 1990-91, Jensen led the nation in scoring at 29.6 points per game.
The honor roll of six-on-six players includes former Nebraska women’s basketball coach Connie Yori, Jan Krieger (George Kittle’s mother), Iowa coach Lisa Bluder and Northern Iowa coach Tanya Warren. Legendary scorers include Deb Coates (Mediapolis), Lynne Lorenzen (Ventura) and Jeanette Olson (Everly). In 1987, Lorenzen set the national record with 6,266 career points. Union-Whitten’s Denise Long still holds the Iowa record for points per game (68.5). In a publicity stunt, the San Francisco Warriors drafted Long in the 13th round of the 1969 NBA Draft.
Clark, the 22-year-old face of college basketball, embraces the sport’s history like few superstars. The pride of those who came before her is apparent in their reverence for her confidence and on-court prowess.
“I’ve had so many people come up to me like, ‘I played six-on-six basketball, and I just can’t believe the crowd you draw and how much fun you guys have playing,’” Clark said. “These women who played 30, 40 years ago are just so mesmerized by our team and what we’re doing for women’s basketball. That never gets old. That’s super cool. A lot of those people are some of our biggest fans.”
Caitlin Clark will play in her final Iowa home game Sunday against No. 2 Ohio State, looking to remake the Senior Day magic of last season. (Matt Krohn / USA Today)
When Jensen received her IGHSAU Hall of Fame trophy in 1993, Dorcas Rudolph joined her granddaughter for the ceremony. After Rudolph died in 1995, her four diaries were passed down to Jensen’s mother and later to Jensen. During the pandemic, Jensen read them and wept. One passage about her grandmother’s state title run stood out.
“According to her words, the Drake Fieldhouse was pandemonium,” Jensen said. “After they won, she got hoisted on the shoulders of all the fans, but she felt embarrassed and she wanted them to put her down. I was reading this, and I’m crying because it was what she wrote. ‘Although I’m happy … I can’t believe my basketball days are over. I feel like I’ve lost a good friend.’
“I think about now, all these little girls running around that have wanted to be like a lot of the greats: Sabrina Ionescu, Megan Gustafson here, certainly now Caitlin Clark. Then when you go back to the 1920s, there are those women who thought it’d be fun. I mean, they had to want it.”
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos courtesy of IGHSAU, Scott Dochterman / The Athletic, Jeffrey Brown / Getty Images)