By Brayden Carlson
According to IGHSAU's history, the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union can be traced to an argument at a Des Moines Presbyterian Church. That argument changed everything for high school girls’ sports in Iowa.
Dating back to the 1920’s Iowa was one of the few states in America that supported high school girls' basketball. According to the IGHSAU, many larger schools in the state did not find basketball a safe sport for girls to play because it was too “strenuous.”
Disputes among the communities eventually culminated during a 1925 Iowa State Teachers’ Convention held at the Central Presbyterian Church in Des Moines. According to the IGHSAU, the annual meeting of superintendents and principals decided that competitive sports before paying crowds were good only for boys' activities, not for girls', and girls' basketball would no longer be a state-sponsored interscholastic activity.
After this meeting, most coaches worried about the harm they had done encouraging girls to play physical sports. However, according to the IGHSAU one Superintendent, John W. Agans responded to the decision of disbanding high school girls' basketball with the comment, “Gentlemen, if you attempt to do away with girls' basketball in Iowa, you’ll be standing at the center of the track when the train runs over you!”
Agans’ message led to a group of men from rural schools in Iowa to organize a meeting about girls’ basketball. The meeting resulted in the decision of that if the Iowa High School Athletic Association (who oversaw all high school athletic activities at the time) was not willing to sponsor girls' basketball, then they would form their own organization which today is known as the IGHSAU was born.
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