Clarissa
LightNews LightNews
clarissayoung.bsky.social
Clarissa
@clarissayoung.bsky.social
51 followers 100 following 2 posts
Posts Replies Media Videos
clarissayoung.bsky.social
🔥🔥🔥
Screenshot from linked article with the following text: One example from Megdal’s research: Wellsburg, which had a population of 744, took home the state girls’ high school basketball title in 1949. Their caravan home was interrupted by 2,000 fans 30 miles from Wellsburg in Marshalltown, who demanded speeches from some of the winning players. The state’s largest arenas were sold out. In the early 1950s, championship games were televised and an estimated 160,000 watched the 1951 state tournament. I know for a fact that as late as 1977-’78, an undefeated girls’ basketball team at Catholic Central High School never had a chance to win a state title because there wasn’t an organized state tournament. The team went 20-0 and ended the season in a regional game in a packed gym in Central New York. So upstate New York was at least five decades behind Iowa in women’s basketball. “What I don't think people fully understand is that the appetite has always been there, always been there, and the dips come not from a lack of interest or a waning of that interest, but active efforts by folks who get in the way or stop it. And that was the case before, and that is the case now, and that is the biggest thing to guard against moving forward as it relates to women's basketball,” Megdal said in a phone interview.
June 6, 2025 at 4:32 PM