Pressdog.com

The Whole State in One Barn

By Bill Zahren
(Posted 03/07/01)

If someone wanted to get a good microcosm of Iowa (not that I’m saying anyone really does) I’d take them to the Girls State Basketball Tournament in tony downtown Des Moines.

It’s Iowa in a nutshell. It’s all here. The good and the bad. The exciting and the tedious. Screw the tours of the buildings and amenities that we give big shots proposing to move to Iowa (not that I’m saying there are any), I’d take them right to the girls state tournament going on now through Saturday in Veterans Memorial Auditorium, followed by boys state next week.

First of all, there’s the setting: walking into Vets is like walking into the set for the movie Hoosiers. You know, the last part where they play for the championship circa 1959? That could have been shot in Vets. Built sometime in the late 19th century, the place is like a giant, brick machine shed. All the architectural wonder of a giant cattle barn. It’s a huge rectangle with a peaked roof on it.

That’s it. Of course a lot of people here are embarrassed by Vets since it’s not the Air Canada Centre with rings of luxury boxes where the elite can occasionally gaze down upon the action while tinkling the ice in their Scotch-and-waters. We want to retire Vets by building a new $150 million Iowa Events Center across the street. That’s fine, but let’s do so without dissing Vets. It’s got HISTORY, baby. Those are real bricks in the walls.

Handwritten, faded signage circa 1967 is posted around the place. One, a “Girls State Tournament” sign, features a map of Iowa with a light in each of all 99 counties. The lights for the schools playing blink while the game is going on. After the game, the winner’s light stays on and the losers’ go off. The sign was built sometime during the Truman Administration, but it’s part of the TRADITION.

Vets is big, old, modest, debt-free for decades and proud in its old age, just like Iowa.

Second, you’ve got the people: lots of slightly pudgy white people like me. Nothing like seeing a guy with a beer gut and cap in his too-small regulation “GOING TO STATE” T-shirt. The second the school qualifies for the state tourney, they’re on the blower to a T-shirt shop, ordering a couple hundred in the school’s colors with “WOLVES RUN IN PACKS” (in honor of my mighty Harris-Lake Park High School fighting Wolves). You GOTTA buy one and wear it to the game, even if you think you can fit into that large when you’re really a double XL man.

And at the Iowa high school tournaments, a BIG THING is winning the sportsmanship trophy, given in large part based on how your fans acted. Whereas in some states the trophy goes to the fans that cause the smallest amount of gunfire during the actual game (shots fired in the parking lot do not count against the sportsmanship trophy), at the Iowa tourney chanting “AIR BALL, AIR BALL” can cost you the coveted sportsmanship crown. And it’s actually a big deal. Schools say stuff like, “No way! We were better sports than those guys!”

Plus you’ve got the total Iowa cross-section -- everything from paunchy farmers to smart-ass Web writers to grandparents -- all rooting politely for some friend or relative, trying hard to be encouraging and vocal without screwing up the chance at the sportsmanship trophy.

And you’ll hear some complaining about paying $5 to park, $6 for a bratwurst and Coke, and $6 to get in. A lot of Iowans have to work a couple of hours to make $17 after taxes. We are not an affluent tribe. The average wage here is something like $10 an hour. “$30,000 a year” sounds like a pretty big salary. The parking lot is full of mid-90s domestic cars festooned with “GOIN’ TO STATE” signs. Silicon Valley this ain’t. And here’s a shocker: We don’t want it to be.

At the end of each game -- a scene guaranteed to freak out anyone from NYC, Chicago or LA -- the fans from one school quickly file out from the lower seats to give them up for the fans of the next schools to play. The change happens as the next teams warm up. No “get your own seat, buddy” or any brawling about it. It’s all about taking turns and being polite, just like Iowa.

Third, you’ve got the teams: the players and coaches. Bunch of girls with regulation-matching-school-colors hair adornments. Somebody’s little girl out there, doing her best, working her ass off, either hitting the threeeeeeeeecola at the buzzer to win or clanking it off the back iron to lose. Girls hop around like coked-up grasshoppers when they win, and blither like small children when they lose. The emotion’s all out there.

And in a shocking number of cases, it’s the unheralded, non-star, no-college-scouts-will-be-calling sub who makes some kind of brilliant, freakishly brave play that turns the entire game. The quiet little girl who was “always a great team player” and averages a savage seven points a game will take the charge, get the call, make the crowd freak out and set off a 14-5 run. The whole thing is a festival of the underdog. It makes the marginal athletes and fans of the underdog like me want to stand up and howl (and we do, sportsmanship trophy not withstanding).

Speaking of make me weep. In suits on the sidelines are the coaches, forced to wear huge flowers (everyone pitched to get coach a flower!) on their lapels during the game -- striking. While we got an NCAA Division I coach up the road who makes $1.1 million a year (enough to pay the yearly salary for 47 entry-level primary school teachers) high school coaches are basically volunteers.

They get maybe a buck an hour to spend two nights a week away from their families and stay late after work every night during the season. High school coaches do it because they love it. That’s about it. Maybe 1% are looking to move up the coaching ranks. Yet there they are, guys like my high school coaches, Gary Richardson and Jim Boyd, turning out players who would charge hell itself for them.

For the players and the coaches, it’s all about doing what you love with people you love just for the love it. That’s Iowa.

Finally, while driving out of the parking lot, you’ll have about five people stop and let you get in the line of cars leaving. I’m pretty sure if you had all four tires suddenly blow on your car in that situation, you’d quickly have seven farmers working on your vehicle in Indy pit crew fashion while their spouses offer you what’s left of the "bars" they made for the four-hour drive down from Alton, Iowa.

Oh hell yes, that’s the Iowa I love. If you really want to know what it’s like in Iowa, just get to the girls state basketball tournament. As my wise, fellow Iowa Zealot friend Ann says about attracting people to Iowa: “Why bring them here, or back here, if they won't like it?”

Word is bond, Ann. I’d take people to the girls state tourney. If they don’t get into it, they won’t get into here. Thanks for visiting. Have a nice life. Give us a call if you have a flat tire. We'll be there for ya.

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