Iowa Girls Six-on-Six Basketball

In 1925 the men who ran Iowa high school sports decided to drop girls basketball. Twenty-five superintendents from small towns walked out and started their own union instead. It happened at the state teachers convention in Des Moines, in a Presbyterian church. John Agans, the superintendent from Mystic, is the one whose line survived: gentlemen, if you attempt to do away with girls basketball in Iowa, you will be standing at the center of the track when the train runs over you. They formed the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union, which is still the only high school governing body in the country devoted entirely to girls sports. The game they saved was six on six. Three forwards and three guards, a line across the middle of the floor, and neither trio allowed to cross it. Forwards did all the scoring. Guards did nothing but defend. Two dribbles and you had to shoot or pass. It made basketball a game a school with eighty-nine students could win, and tiny Hansell, enrollment eighty-nine, did. By 1940 there were nearly five hundred and forty girls teams in Iowa, mostly in places like Climbing Hill and Curlew and Sperry. The state tournament moved to Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines in 1955 and drew 15,015 people to a single session — a figure never beaten — and 65,217 across five days. In 1978 the five-day total hit 93,460 and that record still stands. It was on television from 1951, and by 1968 the union had built its own network carrying the final into nine states. The scoring is hard to believe and it is documented. Denise Long of Union-Whitten finished with 6,250 career points, once put up 93 in a state tournament game, and scored 282 points in a single tournament. In the 1968 final she scored 64 and lost, because Jeanette Olson of Everly scored 76. Lynne Lorenzen of Ventura ended with 6,736, which was then the national record. Going back further: Irene Silka scored 110 points in a game in 1926, Norma Schoulte 111 in 1952. The union's board voted on the third of February 1993 to end the six-player game. By the end of March every conference in the state had voted to switch. Hubbard-Radcliffe beat Atlantic 85-66 that spring, with Lisa Brinkmeyer scoring 53, in what turned out to be the last six-player state championship ever played. One thing worth being careful about: this is often told as a story of a lawsuit or a federal order forcing the change. We could not find a source for that. What the record shows is schools choosing, one conference at a time, and a board following them. If you played six on six, or your mother or grandmother did, add the school and the years below. Compiled by MyHistoryStone from published reference sources, August 2026. Corrections welcome.