(Photograph)
Fun and fitness: Members of the Center Point Curvaceous Chicks granny basketball team opened with a chorus line at a recent game in Alburnett, Iowa.
mark hirsch/special to the Christian Science Monitor
Shooting hoops for fun, fitness, and sisterhood

These grannies take it to the hoop

In a throwback to the 1920s, a senior basketball league flourishes in Iowa. It's all about fun, fitness, and the bond of sisterhood.

Page 1 of 4

Henry Uthoff's daughters loved basketball, played it in the days when kids rushed from chores on the farm to hoops on the hardwood. But on Nov. 20, 1950, their love of the game gave way to tragedy. Mr. Uthoff, a hard-working farmer, collapsed and died in a gym while watching two of his daughters play.

One by one, the Uthoff sisters gave up the game, got married, raised families, and doted on grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Yet, even as their hair grew gray and more than a half-century rolled by, somewhere, tucked away, their love of basketball remained.

And now, four of the Uthoff sisters are back on the court playing "granny basketball" in Iowa. "If our dad is looking down, he'd be so pleased," says Delores Rawson, 81, the oldest of the sisters. "He was so proud of his girls."

Iowa's Granny Basketball League is a far cry from college basketball's Final Four or the NBA's long postseason playoff run.

It's a throwback to the 1920s, a reminder that girls' basketball runs deep in Iowa, even if the girls are now grannies and if the rules have changed. They used to play six-on-six basketball around here years after the rest of the country let the girls play five-on-five just like the guys. In the girls' game, there were three players on offense, three on defense, and the half-court line divided the game into two.

Long before Title IX helped girls and women gain equal opportunity in organized scholastic and collegiate sports, before soccer moms ferried their daughters to practices, Iowa girls were encouraged to play basketball.

"We all think we're 16," says Barb McPherson, 62, a retired psychiatric nurse from Lansing who dreamed up the league.

That's the beauty of this game. Years roll away. Dreams are renewed. There is an only-in-Iowa aspect to this, too. Pull into almost any town square, wander into a cafe, and you'll usually find seniors gathered around tables, sipping coffee in the morning or eating lunch, remaining social.

Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Next Page

Get Monitor stories by e-mail:
(Your e-mail address will be protected by csmonitor.com's tough privacy policy.)
(Mary Knox Merrill/Staff)
EDITOR'S PICK Five cities that will rise in the New Economy
From Seattle to Huntsville, Ala., five cities are poised to prosper in the New Economy because of exports, innovation, clean technology, and healthcare.
POLITICS Patchwork Nation
The American voter beyond red and blue

Daily podcast

Monitor Reports

Discussions with Monitor reporters from around the world


Today

Pat Murphy

Kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit could be on his way home.




Making a difference
Making a Difference

What happens when ordinary people decide to pay it forward? Extraordinary change. See how individuals are making a difference, finding solutions, overcoming adversity, and giving back globally.

Richard Berry stands in a former Sunday School classroom in the basement of Trinity Evangelical Free Church. The room has been turned into a men's homeless shelter.

Sarah Beth Glicksteen

A church that is home to the homeless

Pastor Richard Berry lives the motto 'faith without works is dead'