Iowa Girl Makes Good
Iowa Girl Makes Good
Hawkeye Basketball Star Breaks Record
I grew up during the 1960s in Story City, Iowa and graduated from Roland-Story High School in 1971. The following year the girls’ basketball team won the state basketball title:
The 1971-72 Roland-Story girls were unranked all season, but they played their way to a state championship - the school's first and only girls’ basketball title. Watch as some of the players on this year's 50-year honor team from Roland-Story talk about that memorable season.
50-Year Team Roland Story | Iowa PBS Sports (youtube.com)
Girls’ basketball in the state goes back over 100 years starting with six-player, half-court and then switching to five-player, full-court:
1984-85 -- In May of 1984, the IGHSAU's board of directors votes unanimously to allow schools to switch to five-player, full-court basketball if they choose or continue with the six-player game. The Union will conduct a tournament series for the five-player schools and stage a state tournament alongside the six-player event in March of 1985.
100 Years - 100 Memories - Iowa High School Girls Athletic Union (ighsau.org)
Fast forward to 2024, and Caitlin Clark puts Iowa college girls’ basketball on the map with her scoring record:
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Caitlin Clark wasted no time becoming the NCAA women’s career scoring leader Thursday night, taking less than three minutes to score the eight points she needed to break Kelsey Plum’s record.
The Iowa star who has brought unprecedented attention to women's basketball surpassed the record with her signature shot — a 35-foot 3-pointer that hit nothing but the bottom of the net.
And Clark didn’t let up from there. She finished with a school-record 49 points, tied her career best with nine 3-pointers and had 13 assists in No. 4 Iowa’s 106-89 victory over Michigan.
Interestingly, there is a connection between Caitlin Clark and QB Brock Purdy previously of Iowa State University and most recently QB of the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII:
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy and Iowa State's NCAA women's basketball superstar Caitlin Clark have an unlikely connection, with the WNBA-bound 22-year-old's brother a former college football star.
Purdy, 24, spent four years at Iowa State, where he recorded the most wins of any quarterback in the college's football program history with a 30-17 record while also leading the team to four straight bowl games. The 2022 NFL Draft's "Mr. Irrelevant" is also Iowa's leader in passing yards with 12,170, touchdown passes with 81, completions with 993, and completion percentage at an impressive 67.7 percent.
Brock Purdy's unlikely connection to NCAA history-maker Caitlin Clark (msn.com)