Organized basketball began in Marion in Oct. 1903. One of the bigger surprises for visitors seeing the current exhibit at the Marion Heritage Center, "150 Years of Marion Sports," is learning that it was the Marion H.S. GIRLS who introduced the sport here. The first public games occurred in the Spring of 1903. Four teams played, with five players each. It was the rough-and tumble "boys" game, and everyone loved it! "The hall was filled to its capacity with spectators--about 125--who cheered almost constantly during the two games." (Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette; May 2, 1903) The girls' basketball interest had been sparked in the Spring by reports of Coe and Cornell College co-eds playing in public for the first time. It's likely the girls' coach and teacher Fannie Spry (MHS, 1897), and Cornell grad (1901), had seen the game played. "Basket ball is getting to be quite a craze with the young people of our town. The girls of the high school played a game Friday night composed of Seniors and Freshman who played one game and the town team played the high school. All the players showed good practice and some did fine work." (Marion Pilot; May 7, 1903) Basketball probably started as a fun private activity for members of the Daisy Club, one of the many social clubs that occupied Marion girls at the time. They were not public events initially. Communities that condoned the sport still often wanted the young ladies shielded from prying eyes of the opposite sex and the rude comments boys commonly made about their athletic costumes.

On Sep. 30, 1903 the Marion girls met and took the first formal step toward forming a permanent team, and organized a basketball association, which allowed them to raise money, lease space and incur debts. Mabelle Leahy (MHS, 1903) was elected Business Manager; Susie Floyd (MHS, 1903), Treasurer. Both had served in similar positions in the Daisy Club, and played in the Spring game. Juniors Madge Alderman, Secretary; Byrd Snyder, Manager; Bertha Williams, Director, and; Beth Busby, Director, formed the nucleus of a team that continued playing through graduation in 1904 and started a winning tradition that continues today.

The MHS boys only had football on their minds that season and fielded two teams. Their focus on the gridiron wouldn't change until after the death a team-member, John Francis Snyder, a Junior, and the school finally took serious action to ban the sport (c.a. 1906). Then the boys needed to borrow an "official" ball. The girls were kind and loaned the boys a new model "M," provided they weren't using it and promised to treat it gently. (Quill; January, 1907)

This was the era of "club" basketball--the teams were managed by the members and self-funded, with a formal board and officers--in this case, all MHS girls or recent grads, but the teams were widely recognized as representing Marion High School and covered as such in the school and town newspapers for over two decades. As with other clubs, there was an element of Rooney-and-Garland, "Hey kids, lets put on a play" stuff in this . . . enthusiasm waxed and waned from year to year, depending on the participants and the other teen fads, but when the girls played, it was serious. By 1906 other schools in the area had taken up the sport, and intermural competition began. Now it was the tamer six-on-six game.

Among Marion's pioneer girls' basketball teams, the one that stands out is the 1907 powerhouse, widely known as the D. D.'s, or "Double-D's," --the origin of the nickname is unknown, they picked it up early--at least by 1906. The core of the team had started playing together in 1904 as Freshman, and by their Senior year in 1907, they were pretty much invincible. This was many years before any official State Championship contests, but some observers credited them with being the second-best team in Iowa. (Quill; March, 1908) The veterans included Mary Ives at center, Ella Gould at forward, and guards Mary Lucille Marshall and Mabelle Woodward. They were joined in 1907 by Goldie Nichol, Bertha Harlan, Edith Marjory Clark, and Juniors Esther Davis and Marie Donner. The D.D.'s continued playing after graduation, minus the expected number of college, career and marriage-dropouts, and offered stiff competition for the H.S. squad and wildly popular entertainment for the town. The newspapers still recalled them five years later!

Marion stopped girls' intermural sports competition in 1925 after the Iowa High Schools Athletic Union voted to drop its support for girls' athletics due to the growing medical alarms about the danger of over-exertion. About 100 small-town schools, including several in surrounding communities, left the IHSAU and formed their own girls-only association, and continued playing six-on-six. By the time the MHS girls resumed playing basketball in 1972--after passage of the federal Title IX legislation, the early history had been forgotten and almost everyone assumed the young cagers were the first ever. . . pioneers, to be sure, but following BIG footsteps. More about the famed Double D's in the current exhibit: 150 Years of Marion Sports. And remember admission and guided tours are always free courtesy of the McIntyre Foundation. ... See MoreSee Less

2 days ago  ·  

Help with the removal of "old decorations" Clean-Up day at Oak Shade Cemetery is this Saturday, Oct. 20. Come out at 9 A.M. and have a lot of fun with Friends of Oak Shade Cemetery. We hope to see you there! ... See MoreSee Less

6 days ago  ·  

Organized football came to Marion for the first time October 10, 1896 when the Marion YMCA football team played the Cedar Rapids Y here. The team would soon become the famed "Carl N. Owen's" or "CNO's," after their sponsor, the C. N. Owen drugstore, but it was commonly known as the Marion High School team--famous for their play, its players and a tragedy that all but ended football in Marion for a generation.

CR triumphed 6-zip in the first game, though the results are disputed--we called it a 6-4 squeaker. The reporting discrepancy isn't explained. The CR reporter praised his hometown boys for their good conduct and "manliness." (Cedar Rapids Gazette October 12, 1896) The game was played on the John Oxley property on north Eleventh St., the old baseball field. Admission was ten cents. The traditional return game on October 23 in CR, played on the Coe campus, exposed our weak kicking game and we lost that one too 16-8.

Good conduct not withstanding, many Marion YMCA members were very unhappy seeing the Y promoting football. For the same reason they objected to boxing, they condemned the sport's brutality, its unsportsmanlike play, and the heavy gambling that often accompanied the contests. Defenders claimed football was a gentlemen's game when played by Christian gentlemen, and "honor and square dealing" could redeem the game and lift it from the "mire" of violence that threatened to engulf it. (Marion Register; October 7, 1896)

When the team played its next game on Nov. 14 it had a new sponsor. Historian Marvin Oxley records the boys had approached Marion School Superintendent J. J. Dofflemyer for support and been firmly rebuffed. The "Super" had attended a game between Cornell College and the State University of Iowa in Oct. 1894. . . players had to be carried off the field after nearly every whistle. Play wasn't as tightly regulated by conferences then as now. Teams played whoever they could line up and it wasn't unusual for a high school to compete against an older, heavier and more experienced college club. H.S. eligibility rules were lax too and it wasn't unusual to find a few 20-somethings on a team. Given the absence of helmets, pads and other safety equipment, and none of the rules that would come later guarding against unsafe actions, serious injuries and even deaths were common among early football players.

Where Dofflemyer saw unspeakable brutality in the S.U. I.-Cornell contest, a CR Gazette reporter saw only normal manly sport, albeit more one-sided than even the 60-0 final-score indicated. No one was injured badly enough to have to leave the game, and timeout only had to be called 2-3X to give players a chance to recover from "hard jolts." (Iowa City Herald; October 20, 1894). A Cornell College reporter, however, noted two weeks later one player still sported his class colors (purple and black) around his left eye, and another would need to wear a plaster bandage on his face for a while, "to keep his nose in place." (Cornellian, October 27, 1894) As President of the reorganized Marion YMCA, Dofflemyer was as concerned about the liability and risk to the image of the Y as he was the high school's. The footballers had to find another sponsor and found it in Carl N. Owen.

The boys didn't have to look far. Fully 1/3 of the team were members of the Mentzer Hose Company, Marion's leading volunteer fire company, including Don Rathbun, the team manager, William Smyth (left end), Nate Starbuck (running back), Lowell Daniels (right end), Preston Daniels (quarterback), George Busby (running back) and Ed Leahy. Owen was the hose company's business manager. He bought his new team the best safety equipment available, counting on increased patronage of the store and a cut of the gate receipts. 300 enthusiastic fans watched his champions beat Mt. Vernon H.S. 10-0 in their first game Nov. 14. Five days later they played a return game in Mt. Vernon and beat a mixed squad of college and town boys 10-0. So the winning tradition was started, and so too a legend.

The roster of the 1897 team (pictured here) lists the names of Marion's leading families, sons of prominent businessmen and pioneers. Many went on to have successful careers themselves in business, public service and the military; a few went on in sports--first among them, quarterback Preston H. Daniels who graduated from the high school in 1899. Daniels went on to quarterback and captain the Coe College team in 1900. He transferred to ISU in Ames in 1901 to study engineering. He played football there too, quarterback, of course, and was elected Captain in 1903. Experts credit him with leading the 1903 Cyclones to one of their best seasons ever. Under Coach A. W. (Shady) Ristine they finished with an 8-1 record. (Ames Daily Tribune; October 15, 1953) Grid-historians credit Daniels with making the first-ever field goal in ISU history. (ibid.) Daniels moved to Chicago after graduation and later Des Moines to work in the heating and ventilating industry.

The Carl N. Owen/"Marion High School" football team disbanded in 1904 after the death of a player the previous season. The Marion School Board voted to ban the sport. They couldn't stop students from playing on their own, but they could bar them from representing that their games were associated with the school in any way. Carl Owen ended his sponsorship. . . scandals were bad for business. The boys organized some limited play and for a while, despite warnings, even under the high school's banner, until the school expelled the team captain. He sued but the school's disciplinary rights were upheld by the Iowa Supreme Court in 1906. Eventually the newspapers learned to call the team the "Independents" and ceased linking them to the high school. Intermittent play continued for several years, sometimes just on Thanksgiving . . . that's a hard tradition to break. Marion High School didn't resume playing football officially until 1922.

More about our early football team and its tragedies in the future. Catch a "sneak" preview in the current Heritage Center exhibit: 150 Years of Marion Sports. Free admission and tours always available thanks to a grant from the McIntyre Foundation again this year. ... See MoreSee Less

1 week ago  ·