A little bit about a lot of fall things
Forget football, fall women’s sports are thriving throughout the state
Back when I was a youngster sports copy editor at the Des Moines Register, longtime columnist Maury White had a regular feature called A Little Bit About a Lot of Things. It was as advertised, Maury just throwing out tidbits of information or random thoughts that were swirling around in his head.
Maybe he speculated on a coaching move, maybe he was complaining about flashlight batteries. Sometimes he provided his Incredibly Tough Quiz. Usually there were quips credited to My Neighbor Walt or Agro B. Arlo or maybe even My Roommate (actually his wife, Virginia). Making appearances as often as or maybe even more than Virginia was Toby Wing, a Hollywood starlet pretty much only Maury remembered.
I get it. Sometimes a columnist has to make a deadline with something. And before the interweb, those snippets of information (even anything about Toby Wing) weren’t at the fingertips of everyone with a phone or computer.
Sometimes, there is just so much to report. It was even worse with print and its finite space, but time can be a cruel foe on that too. More stories than you have time to do, more information than you can get a chance to develop.
And so it goes with some fall happenings with women’s sports in Iowa. Even in the shadow of the basketball stuff that has gripped this state for more than a year, a whole lot of other stuff is worth mentioning even more than a little bit.
Iowa soccer raising some eyebrows
The Hawkeyes are riding high, ranked No. 9 in the country. Not bad for a team picked to finish eighth in the Big Ten. They are 10-1-3, losing their first match of the season Thursday night against Wisconsin. They face No. 15 Rutgers in New Jersey on Sunday and are home again Oct. 17 against Washington and Oct. 20 against Oregon. The Washington match will be on BTN.
Iowa will be after its fifth NCAA tournament appearance, following bids last year, and 2020, 2019 and 2013.
Another perennial fall power for Iowa, the field hockey team, is ranked No. 12. They have two home matches this weekend, Friday, Oct. 11, against Indiana and Sunday against Monmouth.
A soccer pro to watch in Kansas City
It’s been an amazing season for the Kansas City Current of the National Women’s Soccer League. They turned around their fortunes and are in contention for a playoff spot. Their new stadium opened – CPKC Stadium, the first stadium in the world specifically built for a women’s professional sports team. And on Oct. 25, the Current will play NJ/NY Gotham FC in the final of the annual in-season tournament pitting NWSL teams against those from Liga MX, Mexico’s top women’s soccer league.
Enjoying part of that fun down in Kansas City is Regan Steigleder, who played at Iowa City West and then at Northwestern. After two seasons of pro soccer in Sweden, Steigleder signed with Kansas City in January. The left-footed defender has played in three matches this season, starting once in May. Her teammate, Temwa Chawinga, is the league’s leading scorer.
Two of the Current’s co-owners? Patrick and Brittany Mahomes. Maybe you’ve heard of them.
Iowans dot top volleyball teams’ rosters
While it isn’t a standout year so far for Iowa’s DI volleyball teams, that doesn’t mean Iowans aren’t experiencing elite volleyball success.
No. 4 Louisville has freshman Payton Petersen from Dike-New Hartford on its roster, where she’ll be joined next season by Mount Vernon’s Chloe Meester. A freshman from Iowa is on another team in the top 10: Kenzie Dean, a freshman outside hitter from West Des Moines Dowling Catholic, plays for No. 8 Kansas. And at No. 9 Wisconsin, Ankeny Centennial’s Devyn Robinson is finishing up her stellar career with the Badgers. Robinson is a two-time all-Big Ten player and played on the Badgers’ 2020 national championship team.
And if all of that is too far to watch top-tier volleyball and you can’t get a ticket to see Nebraska, head to Omaha to check out Creighton. The Bluejays are having their best-ever season, currently ranked No. 6. There are no Iowans on the team but I can take this opportunity to give some flowers to the best player to ever come from my alma mater, Mount Horeb (Wis.) High School: Elise Goetzinger, who transferred to Creighton for her fifth/COVID year after having been a member of Kentucky’s national championship team in 2021. (Trivia: Volleyball started when I was a freshman in high school at my school and they did not have a winning record until this player came along. That is a long dang time.)
Further north up in Orange City, Northwestern College is currently the No. 1-ranked team in NAIA. The Red Raiders are 20-0. They’ve long been an NAIA power but have yet to win a national championship.
Rough and tumble rugby teams
Did the Olympics pique your interest in rugby? You can watch it in Iowa, just not at the varsity level. Iowa, Iowa State and Northern Iowa all have club teams and all three play in the Midwest Collegiate Rugby Conference. (Even if there is also a Big Ten Conference. Go figure.)
Northern Iowa is No. 3 in the National Collegiate Rugby coaches’ poll, Iowa is 10th. UNI’s next home game is Oct. 19 against Minnesota, followed by Oct. 25 against Wisconsin-Eau Claire on a Homecoming weekend celebration of the club’s 30th anniversary.
(More trivia: My cousin’s daughter was on Quinnipiac’s 2017 national championship rugby team, and one of her teammates was breakout Olympic star and “Dancing With the Stars” contestant Ilona Maher.)
And OK, a little bit about basketball, too
Need a team with Iowa connections to pull for in the WNBA Finals between the Minnesota Lynx and the New York Liberty? Try the Lynx, and not just because they are close by.
Former Iowa State player Bridget Carleton, a Canadian Olympian, had a great semifinal playoff series against Connecticut. A starter for the Lynx, she had 17 points in the series opener and averages 10 points a game.
The Iowa connection extends to the front office. Des Moines native Clare Duwelius is the Lynx’s general manager, serving in that role since late 2022. Duwelius played at Dowling Catholic and it was her three-point records that Caitlin Clark broke there (at least that’s what Duwelius’ mom told me when I randomly sat next to her at a bar in March while watching Iowa’s NCAA regional final game against Louisiana State).
Duwelius played basketball at Wayne State in Nebraska. She joined the Lynx in 2014 as the team’s basketball operations coordinator.
If this were truly a Maury White column, though, he’d probably somehow know a weird New York Liberty detail, too, like Sabrina Ionescu’s grandmother lived in What Cheer for 3 months when she was in kindergarten. But I do have this: Liberty Coach Sandy Brondello, who is Australian, and Iowa Coach Jan Jensen played for the same German pro team, BTV Wuppertal, in the 1990s, but weren’t teammates (or at least Jensen doesn’t remember her).
How’s that for trivia? I think that’s worthy of Maury’s Incredibly Tough Quiz but no, I’m still not going to find a reason to talk about Toby Wing.
Jane Burns is a former sports and features writer for the Des Moines Register, as well as other publications and websites. She’s a past winner of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association’s Mel Greenberg Award for her coverage of women’s basketball. Over the course of her career she’s covered pretty much everything, which is why her as-yet-to-be-written memoir will be called “Cheese and Basketball: Stories From a Reporter Who Has Covered Everything.”
I’m happy to join fellow Iowa writers and journalists as part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. The collaborative is 60 writers throughout the state - likely some familiar names to Iowa readers - publishing on topics ranging from politics to food to sports and so much more. A subscription (paid or free) gets you a Sunday roundup of all the writers’ work that week. One of my colleagues described it as “Iowa’s Sunday newspaper.”
Meet the writers here, and see for yourself the great variety the collaborative offers.
Jane, thanks for an amazing download of sports trivia! Engaging all the way through!
‘Finding Toby Wing’ sounds like a great story on its own. Must have been some pre-internet wizardry there!