Local Sports

During my elementary school years I and some of my siblings would be allowed to attend the high school basketball games when they were held in the Gowrie gym. I suppose this was where some of our weekly allowance would go. I recall that my father had a complimentary ticket to all the games because of his service on the local school board. It seemed to me that we could not use his ticket — my father virtually never did use the ticket as he was typically occupied with other evening activities, such as his bookkeeping work at the Johnson lumber company.

Often the countywide tournament in basketball would be held in the Gowrie gym because of its size. The tournament was limited to the smaller high schools in the county. Fort Dodge being so much larger was excluded. There would be perhaps eight schools competing — Lehigh, Dayton, Burnside, Lanyon, Callender, Moorland, Duncombe plus Gowrie. Gowrie being somewhat larger tended to dominate this group, though Lehigh was often a strong competitor.

Lehigh was a town east and north of Gowrie, near or on the Des Moines river and a coal mining community. The town had a reputation for “hard-ball” type of play, how justified I don’t really know.

One year, aunt Laurine provided Clarice and me with a tick for the entire tournament, a much appreciated gift. The games were all played on a single Saturday, so it was quite a day of playing and watching. I think the tournament tickets cost $1.25 which was a great deal of money in our young lives. I wonder now if my aunt Laurine didn’t teach at Gowrie for a few years; why she would have been around to know of our wanting to attend the tournament otherwise I can’t imagine.

Most of the competitive athletic activity was in basketball on the high school level. Originally there was just boys’ basketball but girls’ basketball was introduced later — this may have occurred when I was in high school but I don’t remember for sure.

To the west of the school building there was a large grassy expanse and here there were two softball diamonds, used in elementary school play (and games with nearby towns as I indicated above).

During my later elementary school days Gowrie had a coach who was interested in track and built up the sport, but there wasn’t much public support for track and the sport collapsed as soon as he left. His departure was largely the result of his basketball team not being successful enough and the pressure by the more rabid local rooters (principally businessmen). I’ve heard that the coach who succeeded him profited by his development work in the basketball area as the tea, was quite good for several years thereafter.

Out behind the school bus garage there were two tennis courts but I don’t recall ever seeing anyone using them. It seems there was the net(s) strung up so someone must have used them.

There were also about four horseshoe facilities and these were used during noon hours by pupils for recreation while eating lunch. One group of four boys were a common sight here during the noon hour when weather permitted as in spring and fall months. Vernon Telleen, Marvin Telleen, Howard Nelson and my cousin Clifford Strand comprised the group. Clifford had an atypical style of throwing horseshoes, sort of end over end, instead of a slowly turning horizontal style.

My cousins Leonard, Floyd and Clifford all attend country school through eighth grade, but came to Gowrie for high school — I suppose the rural district paid tuition for them. After our move to the farm so that we had lunch at school on a regular basis I’d play horseshoes sometimes at noon, perhaps with John Woodard. The other foursome was a quite tight-knit group and seldom if ever played with anyone else.