High School Basketball

I did not participate in any of the school athletics in high school, which consisted mainly of basketball. The coach preceding Archie Gerber had mounted a track program, but that rapidly disintegrated under Gerber. And other sports such as football were not included at all. There were a couple of tennis courts out behind the school, near the garages for the school buses, but they were either not used at all or very seldom. Softball as a sport was limited to the elementary or junior high level.

The high school basketball team played the small adjacent towns primarily, typically on Friday evenings. On occasion I would attend such games, perhaps in company with some of my siblings. My father, as a member of the school board had a pass to the games which he seldom if ever used. At the time I considered it a misfortune that the pass was not transferable.

I can recall being rather caught up emotionally in the games, as were the other students. And often the townspeople, merchants and the like were even more involved and the coach was under considerable pressure to field a winning team. At the penultimate event of the season there would be a tournament of the smaller high schools in the county which (I think) would be invariably held at the Gowrie school because it had the largest gymnasium and seating capacity.

Because of its size Gowrie was more often than not the victor, although a town Lehigh on the Des Moines River and having a populace somewhat steeped in violence prevailed on occasion. I remember attending one of these county tournaments when I was in elementary school — my aunt Laurine provided Clarice and me with tickets to the games (costing as I seem to remember about a dollar). Both Clarice and I were eager to attend. The largest school in the county, Fort Dodge, was not included in the tournament as it was beyond the others by a considerable margin in size, so that its inclusion was inappropriate.

The final events in the basketball season were the sectional, district and state tournaments. Gowrie I think may have won a couple of sectional tournaments but they never passed the district level to participate in the state tournament. These statewide tournaments were I believe arranged in several levels of school size, so that even here Gowrie would not compete with the larger schools. Perhaps at the end there was a playoff between the different classes as the affair seemed to produce a so-called state champion. I wonder now if the smaller earlier county tournament was discontinued during my later school years in junior and senior high. I don’t remember attending or even hearing of them in this period.

After Gerber arrived as coach I believe girls’ basketball was introduced and I can remember seeing a few games in the school gymnasium. Actually I think the Gowrie girls’ team was more successful than the boys’, measured by how they progressed in the statewide tournament.