Still got game

With their feet planted firmly on the floor, five local teams duked it out during a tournament this spring at St. Francis of Assisi in West Des Moines.

Writer: Jane Burns
Photographer: Duane Tinkey

They’ll come to Central Iowa for a tournament, just like thousands of other basketball players whose club teams arrive every summer. They’ll lace up their sneakers, warm up and size up their opponents.

And they’ll tuck in their shirts and hike up their bloomers to make sure no skin is showing.

Welcome to the Granny Basketball National Tournament, coming to Ankeny’s Prairie Trail Sports Complex July 17-19. It looks a little different than the game Caitlin Clark plays. For starters, all the athletes are at least 50 years old. They’re not allowed to run, but they can “hurry.” They’re limited to two dribbles. Jumping is forbidden, even for a layup. And if a uniform shifts just enough to reveal a bit of skin — a “flesh foul” — the refs treat it like a full-on technical foul.

This vintage version of the sport harkens back to the 1920s with rules that were designed to keep the competition ladylike and less taxing. Now the rules help keep the Grannies safe. If a player falls, shouts of “Granny down!” ring out through the gym.

The 1922 state champs from Audubon High School. Photo: Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union

An Iowa player in the 1920s sported the typical uniform, which included a kerchief and roomy bloomers. This photo is one of many in the archives of the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union.

Iowa is a fitting place for the national tournament, since this is where girls’ basketball first took off. And now, many of those former high school players are back at it.

“It’s a lot of fun. You meet a lot of people,” said Lynda Goodrich, a member of the Iowa Gold Stars since 2006. “Since the league has gotten so big you meet people from other states and they all love basketball.”

The Gold Stars are co-hosting the 18th annual tournament with the Ankeny Honey Bees. The Cedar Rapids Sizzlers are the defending champions, with five national titles. They’re the UConn of Granny Basketball.

The Sizzlers have been there from the beginning. Granny Basketball began in 2005 in Lansing, Iowa, more as a lark than any plan for a national league. When Barb McPherson Trammell began helping her father write his memoirs, he described the style of play and uniforms of Iowa high school girls’ basketball he remembered from the 1920s. Intrigued, Trammell rounded up friends for a local six-on-six tournament, partly as a fun way for older women to exercise and partly as a fundraiser. The old-school event raised money to preserve an old schoolhouse.

The idea grew from there. The Granny Basketball League was founded as a nonprofit in 2008 and now includes 57 teams in 11 states and one in Canada, with more than 800 players and volunteers.

Some teams take on regional names like the Cowtown Heifers of Texas or the Grant Wood Gothics of Monticello. Others have fun with their age, like the Indy Pacemakers of Indianola or the Late Bloomers of Cedar Rapids.

Many, if not most, of the Iowa-based Grannies played six-on-six high school basketball, an Iowa tradition that continued until 1993. But when their high school days ended, so did their playing days — until the Granny version came along.

“I loved basketball when I was in school. I thought about it all the time. I probably drove my parents crazy,” said Goodrich, who played at BGM of Brooklyn in Eastern Iowa.

The Grannies play games and host tournaments throughout the season and, true to their nonprofit mission, raise money for designated charities through ticket sales and raffles.

This season the Gold Stars played exhibitions at halftime of Drake and Iowa State women’s basketball games, where the contrasts between the old-fashioned and modern games were stark.

“[Not] jumping was the hardest thing to change. If you were shooting a jump shot, now you have to have a set shot,” Gold Stars co-caption Patty Dyar said. “I sent a picture to my mom of us playing at halftime at Drake, and she said, ‘I think your toe was off the ground.’”

If there’s one team that has cracked the Granny code, it’s the Cedar Rapids Sizzlers. Last year they picked up some players from the Ankeny Honey Bees (summers are a tough time to field a full roster) to win their second title in a row and third in four years.

Diana Siguenza, 75, who has played with the Sizzlers since 2005, says several factors contribute to their success. All but one of the teammates played high school basketball, and four are current or former physical education teachers. Some have played together for more than a dozen years, and the team holds regular practices at a church gym from October until the national tournament in July.

“Everybody’s in good physical condition for their age, despite some people having bad knees or bad shoulders,” Siguenza said. “I try to walk two miles every day, because you can’t do well in any sport if you’re not in good physical condition.”

The ladylike rules from the allegedly genteel 1920s protect players and help them stay active longer. Whenever a player falls, even in a minor skirmish, she has to sit out for at least one play.

“We’ve had a few broken bones here and there,” Dyar said. “League games don’t have many injuries, but tournaments are a little different. You’re playing more games during the day, getting tired, and you might have injuries.”

As for being ladylike, well, the referees from a century ago might be a little surprised.

“It was so strange because I’ve always been competitive, and now you can’t do this and you can do that,” Goodrich said. “Now, even though you’re playing for fun and you love your opponent, you really gotta give me that ball.”

It’s not just the rules that make Granny Basketball so retro; it’s the uniforms, too. The top is a white shirt of any kind — Goodrich wears one of her husband’s dress shirts — and a collar that goes over it with their number on the back. Socks add a bit of flair.

And then there are the bloomers, made true to 1920s style by a Granny in Kansas.

Not all the players love them, but they wear them nonetheless. “I remember being on the road to a game with one of my friends, and we had to go to the bathroom and we wanted to get something to drink, so we thought, ‘OK, here we go,’” Goodrich said. “We went in with our uniforms on, and I don’t even know that anyone noticed. Sometimes people do look at you kind of funny but, you know, people dress in anything anymore, so we blend in.”

Gold Star Jean Minahan, 80, doesn’t mind the uniform, even if people aren’t sure what she’s wearing. “Somebody once asked me if I was a clown,” she said.

Some of the original Grannies are hanging up their sneakers, though players still compete in their 80s and even some in their 90s. Now, 50-year-old Iowans entering the league are just like players from other states: They never played the six-on-six game in high school. That means their older teammates have to teach them to slow down, plant their feet on the floor, shoot underhanded and find ways to channel their competitiveness into rules that were created to discourage it.

The older players have to impart their wisdom, gained from years of experience. But then, that’s just what Grannies do.

GRANNY RULES
Most of the rules of Granny Basketball originated in the 1920s.

A team consists of six players: 2 forwards, 2 centers, 2 guards. Players cannot move out of their designated areas.
No bare legs or upper arms. Infractions are considered a “flesh foul” and treated like a technical foul.
Only two dribbles are allowed per player per possession.
An underhanded shot from anywhere on the court scores three points.
A player fouls out after three fouls.
A defensive player must stay 3 inches away from and cannot touch an opponent. The ball is considered part of a player and cannot be touched when a player is holding it.
No running or jumping, but players can “hurry.”