Webster City’s Fuller Hall was the sight of a small, yet-passionate gathering on Wednesday afternoon. The sign on the doors read “Welcome 6-on-6 Queens!” and it set the mood of a celebration of a game that was once among the most popular in the state of Iowa.
The KQ-Radio area shares a long, storied history in the game of 6-on-6 basketball in the state of Iowa, with champions ranging to Kamrar’s run in 1949, all the way to Hubbard-Radcliffe’s championship as the clock struck midnight on the 6-on-6 game in 1993. In between is 4 more state titles (2 of them from schools who are no longer), over 40 state tournament appearances, and more memories than could fit on Noah’s Ark.
This gathering of women from one of Iowa’s most prideful heritage’s is Jean Eells, herself a 6-on-6 basketball player at Stratford High School from 1970-1974.
“I have wanted to do this for 10 years, because I knew women who played 6-on-6 basketball were getting older,” Eells said. “There needed to be some memory of that and have us get together and laugh about dribbling twice and staying on the half court.”
The history of girls basketball in the KQ-Radio area, specifically in Hamilton County, can be traced back to the earliest days of the 20th century. Eells handed out and read an excerpt from the Stratford Courier’s article from August of 1990, on the Stratford Care Center’s Resident of the Month on one Ms. Prudence Poulson.
Poulson recalled playing basketball in her adolescents in the article:
“I was pretty good, I’spose,” she said “We played in the basement of the old school house built in 1904. It didn’t have a cement floor, just an old dirt floor.”
Poulson also recalled a game against Stanhope, played on Thanksgiving. “We hitched up the team of horses to the wagon and drove over. We got beat pretty bad,” she said. “They had real uniforms, with the old bloomers — remember those? We just played in our street clothes, so we couldn’t stoop over so good, the skirts were always in the way.”
From there, 6-on-6 basketball grew in popularity in Hamilton County, and became a source of town pride from towns as big as Webster City (population 8,520 in 1960), to Randall (population 201 in 1960). Eells says the collective love of women’s basketball in Iowa played a large factor in these towns sense of pride.
“People loved their girls basketball teams, in partly because, girls basketball in Iowa, as a state, was huge,” Eells said. “At one point, a player from Iowa would go and play (college) anywhere else; 20 percent of them (college basketball players) in the nation were from Iowa or had played in Iowa. It’s definitely a part of the culture.”
Visitors ranged from players who played in the “modern era” of 6-on-6 in the early 80’s, to those who, for all intensive purposes, played town ball in the late 40’s, when many small communities still supported their own high schools.
Members of the 1965 South Hamilton state championship team were present, a squad that saw the Hawks run through Everly, West Marshall, West Central and finally Iowa’s largest school in Valley, West Des Moines to capture the schools only girls basketball state championship. Other members were apart of previous or later state tournament runs were also present for the Hawks.
On display were pieces of memorabilia and clippings for those to relive their school or towns run to a state tournament, or in some cases, state championships. On display was gear from South Hamilton, as well as the former Stratford Indians, Stanhope Vikings, Randall Rams and the Kamrar Komets.
In the release announcing this event, Eells pointed to the soaring popularity of the game of women’s basketball nationwide, specifically the run of one Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes, as a key factor in getting the ball moving. Eells said that not only has it gotten women interested in basketball again, but even men who fondly remember Iowa’s version of the game from not-so-long ago.
“It’s made it possible for a lot of the men who used to come in and cheer on the girls teams, to get back into it,” Eells said. “It’s made them say ‘you know really, that women’s basketball at that college level is really good’ and people are remembering how wonderful that was.”
Those that have followed the Iowa women’s run of the past two seasons have noted the influences of the 6-on-6 game. To native Iowans, it’s not a surprise, as the two architects of Iowa’s run, head coach Lisa Bluder and assistant coach Jan Jensen, were 6-on-6 stars in their own right. Bluder was a standout at Linn-Mar, Marion from 1979 to 1983, while Jan Jensen is heralded as one of the best players to ever come out of Iowa, along with Ventura’s Lynne Lorenzen, averaging 66 PPG as a senior at Elk Horn-Kimballton High School in western Iowa.
The most noteworthy influence was shown in the 2023 tournament with the play of Iowa center Monika Czniano, who took just one dribble of the basketball in Iowa’s first three games of the tournament: Czinano scored 57 combined points in those game.
Eells noted that it wasn’t just Czinano’s dribble-less play in the post that was reminding people of the 6-on-6 game.
“You can see it in the way Lisa has coached them,” said Eells. “That passing game makes it so fast and makes things really happen, so that influence is a great thing for basketball in general.”
For the small group of “queens” that gathered at Fuller Hall on Wednesday, it was a coronation of sorts. A commendation of a job well-done in not only their playing careers, but for carrying the heritage that has been a long source of pride among Iowans. A source of pride that has now taken the nation by storm.