| It’s state tourney time in KMAland A whole lot of life happens during March Madness by CHUCK OFFENBURGER When this time of year rolls around, my wife Carla Offenburger and I always plan on several trips to Des Moines to take-in games at the Iowa girls’ and boys’ state basketball tournaments. It’s become such a tradition with us that Carla once declared she’d “never have another job that wouldn’t let me take off the week of the girls’ state tournament.” It hasn’t worked out quite that well, but we still get to a lot of state tourney games – and listen to nearly all the rest of them. For me, the state tourney tradition began in boyhood when I was listening to KMA radio broadcasting from then-new Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines. In 1958, I was glued to the radio for every game as Coach Marlin Mercer, star player Vivian Fleming and the Emerson Eaglettes went to state and finished runner-up. In ’59, I was listening again as the Farragut Admiralettes girls and the College Springs “Amity Amhawks” boys teams both went to state. I attended a tournament for the first time in 1963, when I was the young sportswriter of the Shenandoah Evening Sentinel, covering Coach Leon Plummer and the Admiralettes. Plummer figured in a whole lot of state tournament fun through the rest of the 1960s and early 1970s, bringing seven more teams to state, including the state champs of 1971. I think it was at the ’70 state tournament, when the Admiralettes finished fourth, that he came out of the dressing room following a Farragut victory to answer questions from a gang of reporters. They crowded around him and, before the first question, Plummer reached in his coat pocket, pulled out a small jar of a dark liquid, opened it and tossed it on the reporters’ shirts. Yelling over the din, the beaming Plummer said, “You all have given me and my girls so much ‘ink,’ I decided to give you some back!” The reporters gasped, looking at their shirts, before they realized it was invisible ink that faded quickly. Most of us old Shenandoah fans have never forgotten the 1966 boys’ state tourney. The Mustangs, with a very young team, qualified for state for the first time in school history. It was an all-one-class tourney then, and Shenandoah was matched against No. 1 ranked Marshalltown. The Bobcats drilled our boys 100-54, the worst beating in the history of the state tournaments, boys or girls. Twenty-four years later, in 1990, I was doing feature columns for the Des Moines Register at the girls’ state tournament when Cedar Rapids Jefferson blasted Keokuk 123-43. Keokuk coach Joel Semprini had suspended several starters, who had celebrated making state by going to a party where alcohol was involved and arrests were made. After the game, I shook Semprini’s hand, congratulated him for his firm stand, and that brightened him up a bit. Then I told him one other good thing had happened with the lopsided rout. “What was that?” he asked. I told him he got the monkey off Shenandoah’s back for worst loss in a state tournament game. He chuckled, winced and said, “Glad to be of help.” advertisement It was during the ’92 girls’ state tourney that Lee Hughes, then sports director at KMA, was broadcasting from the booth KMA always used high up in the balcony at Vets, instead of down on “Press Row.” Hughes, like KMA broadcasters before him, loved that location because southwest Iowa kids at the tourney had a tradition where they’d climb all those steps and say hello on the air to their homefolks. So, Hughes looked up from the game to see a Fremont Mills senior player he recognized, Nikki Nelson, come into the booth. During a break in the action, Hughes had her step up to the mike. She said her hello to the fans back home, but then she said she wanted to add something. Before Hughes could react, she said, “And I still don’t have a date for prom. I’m available, and I’m very good looking!” Many remember the great Sara Stribe, from Carroll, who is being inducted into the Hall of Fame tonight during the 2009 girls’ state tourney at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines. In ’96 and ’97, Stribe led the Carroll Tigers to back-to-back state championships. In her senior season, ’98, Carroll got beat short of state. But I wrote in a column it wouldn’t seem like a state tourney if Sara Stribe wasn’t there, and got permission from the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union to add her as my broadcasting partner, helping me do the crowd interviews. Turned out Stribe was as good at broadcasting as she was at basketball! In 2002, I was shadowing E. Wayne Cooley, the then 80-year-old executive director of the IGHSAU, as he was directing his 48th and final girls’ state tourney before his retirement. He had ordered his staff that there be no special recognition of him, that the tourney be “business as usual.” But as Perry fans were whooping it up, celebrating their championship in the last game, several people sought out Cooley to shake his hand and thank him for all his efforts in promoting girls sports. Then the two of us climbed the back stairs at Vets and walked down a deserted hallway to the room he used as his tourney office. That was nice, I said to Cooley, that little bit of recognition. “Yeah it was,” he said with a happy sigh. “But all I’d really like right now is to sit down in a nice soft chair with a good cigar.” Tourney time! It’s been a good run for a lot of us. |
| Want to be in touch with Chuck Offenburger? He’ll be glad to hear from you, and e-mail is the best way, chuck@offenburger.com. |
| Friday Mar 6th, 2009 |
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You said it!Comments, reactions & ideas from you readers.So what can Villiscado for RAGBRAI when the riders do a morning pass-thru? Donna Robinson, of Villisca, sends a long a note that she’s been reading me for years, and she took special note of a column here in the KMA Advantage Club Newsletter on February 6, giving my tips to communities that will be overnight host towns for RAGBRAI this summer. The Des Moines Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa is set for July 18-25, starting in Council Bluffs with its first two overnight stops in Red Oak on July 19 and Greenfield on July 20. So people across KMAland will be seeing a good deal of the big rolling folk festival. “We have learned that RAGBRAI will be passing thru Villisca on Monday, July 20,” Robinson writes. “I went back and copied your column from February with insights and information for host towns. My question is this: What are good suggestions for morning pass-thru towns to serve the riders? I know pie is a big hit. I am wondering about egg casseroles, anything with eggs or pork – remember, we were the Pork Capital of Southwest Iowa at one time!” She concluded, “Our group had fried green tomatoes just outside of Villisca the last time the ride went through this area. We have concluded that we are not going to do an encore of that performance! I would appreciate any suggestions or insights you could pass along.” Actually, I’ve always liked fried green tomatoes, the few times I’ve found them on a menu. (Wasn’t there a café in Moorhead, Iowa, that used to serve them?) But I suppose they are a little “out there” for most people. You couldn’t go wrong with made-to-order eggs and whole hog sausage, especially if you can make and serve them in a hurry. I do know that “breakfast burritos,” generally made with both eggs and pork, have been a big hit on recent RAGBRAIs, coming close to replacing pancakes as the preferred breakfast among the bicycle riders. There are some traveling vendors that specialize in those. Meanwhile, if somebody in the Villisca area is famous for his or her homemade cinnamon rolls, I’d find good help for that person and make as many as possible. Have those and good coffee ready to go – the closer you can come to no-waiting the better off you’ll be – and you’ll sell out. RAGBRAIers really like espresso-based gourmet coffees, too, if you can figure out a way to make them in a hurry. Or, how about something few others will think of? Have homemade oatmeal, with brown sugar and raisins available on request. Early in the RAGBRAI week, like the Villisca visit will be, bananas sell well in the mornings. And speaking of fruit, you’d sell as much hand-squeezed orange juice as you could make, especially if the riders can see your people squeezing it right there in front of them. Most important of all, don’t gouge the riders. Charge a friendly Villisca price, and the big RAGBRAI crowd will talk about Villisca for years to come. – Chuck Offenburger Now there’s a New Age titlefor a top job in today’s media! You’ve heard and read me talking about Steve Buttry, the 1972 Shenandoah High School graduate who is one of my protégés in the news business. I gave him his first job in journalism when I hired him as a sportswriter for the old Evening Sentinel in Shenandoah when he was in high school. Buttry last June was named editor in chief of the Cedar Rapids Gazette, and I noted that made him the highest ranking journalist ever from Shenandoah. He is also one of the most savvy news people I know today when it comes to mastering the various communications tools that information technology has given us. So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised last week when Buttry told me he is changing titles at the Gazette. He is giving up the illustrious title of “editor,” because he says the editor is someone who leads a newspaper. He is now the Gazette Communications Company’s “Information Content Conductor,” which he says better fits his job of directing all the various communications products the company is producing. That job includes some continuing supervision of the traditional newspaper, but also “databases, videos, audio, slideshows, text messages, blogs, tweets, interactive multimedia, comments, questions, live chats, interactive maps and more that we can’t yet imagine,” as Buttry wrote in his blog. And to think I used to edit this guy’s stories about high school basketball games! He didn’t make the White House but what about the bowlers’ tour? John Klein, a friend from years ago, has recently moved to Carroll to go to a work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture advising the area’s RC&D (that’s a “resources, conservation & development” agency). In packing his files for the move, he came across a November, 1977, story in the Des Moines Register about the interesting races in Shenandoah’s city election that fall. Incumbent Mayor David Childs, then 33, was being challenged by City Councilman Kaye Norton and by former council member Jack Henshaw. I believe Norton won that race. Just as interesting, Ward 3 Councilman Bob Creighton, then 55 and the high school band instructor, was being challenged by an 18-year-old SHS senior, Leslie Smith. The Register story, written by my old colleague John Karras, quoted Smith saying he loves politics, and that a goal he had then was to be president of the United States in 1996. Well, he didn’t make it to the White House. But he also noted that if he didn’t become president, he’d “probably seek a career as a professional bowler.” Well? Anybody know? What became of Leslie Smith? Klein and I are both curious to know. Comments from you readers Rev. David McCracken, a Shenandoah native in Sonoma, California, referring to the February 20 KMA Advantage Club Newsletter column on different religions we’ve enjoyed experiencing: “Thanks so much for your latest column, on religious diversity. This is an issue I have taken a strong stand all through my ministry. My youngest daughter, now 35, has become a Muslim here in the Bay Area. It has really changed her life.” |