The Iowa town where basketball is king (original) (raw)

HULL, Ia. — Basketball hoops are everywhere here in Hull and Sioux County, bolted to barnyard poles and garages in the driveway. They tower over city parks and high school gyms.

These northwest Iowans are always aiming at the red metal ring, 18 inches in diameter, trying to fill it up.

Junior Gesink, 75, had two hoops in the hay mow, one for when the hay was stacked high, another for when it was low.

“I’d always be out shooting hoops,” he said. “I’d go to practice every night, and if my dad wasn’t there to pick me up, I’d hitchhike to Sheldon, then run a mile and a half home. I knew I didn’t shoot as well as everybody, but I could outrun anybody.”

Basketball is the passion of many small towns in Iowa, but it's part of the genetic code in Hull, handed down from generation to generation like the farmland across Sioux County. While college basketball's high-dollar, nationally-televised spectacle unfolds this week in Des Moines, the love of the game is fed out here on the Midwest prairie, one shot at a time.

Gesink's son, Kevin, and grandchildren followed his lead and played at Western Christian High School in Hull, including grandson Ben who helped them win the state Class 2A title at last week's boys' high school state tournament.

“We grow up watching older brothers and cousins playing, and we want to be like that,” said grandson Joel Gesink, 25, who played for two Western teams that won state titles in 2007 and 2008.

Western Christian has appeared in 18 state tournaments in the last 31 years and has eight state championships. Across town, the Boyden-Hull public school has captured three boys' state championships in the past 13 years. The girls team at Western Christian has won three titles in the last five years and dropped a heart-breaking championship game to Sioux County rival Unity Christian in the finals this year. The town of only 2,200 has a third high school, Trinity Christian, that also has basketball teams.

Men’s leagues and youth basketball take up courts in Hull and several nearby Sioux County towns. Hull’s community center is centered by a basketball court that can be accessed with a key, 24 hours a day. The city even tried to have a tennis court in a city park, but it wasn’t used. So the net was taken down and hoop put up, said Denise Keizer, who works in city hall.

Under the hoop, it’s no lollygag shoot-around.

“I have three kids so we play 2-on-2 in the driveway,” said Randy Feenstra, a state legislator who played for Western Christian and has a son (Taylor) who plays basketball for nearby Dordt College and a daughter (Erika) who played for Western’s second-place state team. “It usually ended with some kid crying because of the competitiveness. We don’t lose.”

AT THE BANK downtown, Gary Westra was chuckling at his good fortune. The new flat-screen TV in the lobby was hung in a direct line of sight to his bank vice president’s glass-walled office for NCAA Tournament games.

He loves the Iowa Hawkeyes and talks a lot of basketball at the water cooler.

“A lot of people think they can coach it,” he said. “And they’re even better at officiating.”

Try being a coach in Hull.

Jim Eekhoff, 65, has for 38 years at Western Christian and announced his retirement before winning the state championship last week. Former players and their children who also played for him consider Eekhoff the godfather of basketball in Hull.

He rarely heard small talk from fans after games.

“They ask me about the opponent switching to a zone defense,” he said.

During northwest Iowa's bitter winters, little kids to elderly showed up at the gym, which at Western seats 2,500, bigger than many small colleges.

The town has ownership in the school, Eekhoff continued, recently raising $7.5 million for updates the school, which includes putting in a new floor on a practice gym.

He says he doesn’t recruit or give scholarships, but attributes the success to work ethic and ancestors — people of Dutch heritage who flooded to the area in 1885 and formed the Reformed Christian faith still strong here.

“Dutch kids grow tall,” Eekhoff said. “That helps.”

One of his star players this year, Josh Van Lingen, is 6-foot-7. And he doesn’t exactly tower over the members of the girls’ team, many who reach 6 feet and taller.

Despite the team success, most players in these parts don’t go on to play in NCAA Division I programs like those in Des Moines this weekend. Most stick close to home and play for the small colleges in the county, Northwestern in Orange City or Dordt in Sioux Center.

“Northwest Iowa kids are unmatched in toughness and dedication,” said Dordt men’s coach Ross Douma, who played in high school for Eekhoff. “That said, they have perspective. Basketball is not everything to them, so the weight of the world is not on their shoulders.

“It’s a very unique pocket of the world where people love basketball, but it’s not everything. Playing basketball, getting an education and going to church on Sunday. Those are the three most important things in northwest Iowa.”

Western Christian fans at the girls’ state tournament earlier this month wore T-shirts that read “Give all the glory to God.”

MORE:

• Photos from the championships: Western Christian Boys | Western Christian Girls
• State tournament hoops photos: Boys tournament | Girls tournament

Payton Harmsen, daughter of Western girls’ coach Bill Harmsen and a senior on the team, said after the state championship game that “it wasn’t in God’s plan” that they win it all this year. She instead focused on what basketball gave to her.

“It taught me hard work and teamwork — learning how to help each other,” she said. “That will help me throughout life.”

Her dad was standing by in the corridor of the Des Moines arena. He smiled at the memory of coming to Des Moines to watch his first state tournament game at age 11, and how Hull residents pass that on to kids today, despite so many distractions vying to lure them from the hoop.

“We keep them interested in the love of the game,” he said.

THE HEROES OF games past were easily spotted by fans at both the girls and boys’ tournaments. Dave Van Essen, who helped Western to a state title in 1991, is bald and older now but still attends games, lives nearby and remembers the thrilling finishes on the court.

But instead his nostalgia is for the times without cheering fans.

“You go down the street and you see kids in driveways,” he said. “Shooting.”

In the flat, windswept countryside around Hull, there’s little talk of escape, like in many towns. Sioux County is one of the few rural Iowa counties with continued economic stability and population growth. Hull’s population has risen more than 400 people since 1990, while the majority of Iowa small towns have lost population.

Cattle farms are big here and you can smell them on main street, which the banker says smells like money.

Feenstra said basketball success and economic vitality are linked.

“It comes down to what we are taught at a young age. You’ve got to work hard if you want to have some success in life,” he said. “We don’t look for a lot of entitlement up here. If you want something in life, you have to work for it.”

Drive out in the countryside in Sioux County, past the barn painted with the words “Praise God,” and an occasional barnyard hoop stand ready, but these days one might also see a huge farm outfitted with its own gymnasium.

Carl Zylstra needed a bigger machine shed for his large farm equipment on a 2,500-acre farm outside of Hull, so he decided to attach a nearly full-size gym with adjustable hoops and a scoreboard, along with a lounge area, kitchen and game room for any kids who want to come out and play.

It’s tough to get gym time in town, even with all those courts, so he made one.

His dad Stan, 72, chuckled at the memory of begging his own father to put up a pole covered in creosote in the barnyard so he could shoot while dodging chickens. His three grandchildren now have a gymnasium that is geothermal heated with a security system and has 80-inch flat-screen televisions.

Instead of a lake home, Stan teases his son, he has a farm gym.

On a recent afternoon, girls from eighth grade through 12th at Boyden-Hull schools were out getting in a scrimmage, including his eighth-grade daughter, Brooke. Elementary-school sons Brent and Bryan also jump off the bus most nights and head right to the court.

“It gives the kids a place to go,” said Carl Zylstra. “How do you put a price on that?”

Bill Francis can put no price on basketball, either.

The boys’ basketball coach at Boyden-Hull took his team to three state championships. They lost before an expected return to state this year but still finished 20-4. During the title runs in 2012 and 2013, his wife, Sondra, battled cancer as she and the four boys got behind the team.

“What better way to pull a family together than having basketball in common,” Francis said from his basketball office.

Sondra died Nov. 15, 2014.

“Now it’s just me and the boys. Lot of basketballs flying around the house now. Mom used to keep them under control,” he said. “I need to clean that up.”

But in this town, a ball and hoop are always near, no matter what.

“We’re just basketball junkies,” Francis said.