[Editor’s Note: Today we have a very special piece from our own Jamie Rathjen, who has a great little bit of uni news from his dad, who also happened to have a connection to a pair of notable athletes through his High School basketball team. Enjoy! — PH]

Uni Watch Show and Tell: 1965-66 Iowa Valley HS Boys’ Basketball
by Jamie Rathjen

My dad recently came across some pictures on Ancestry.com from one of his high school basketball teams, the 1965-66 edition of Iowa Valley HS’s boys’ team in Marengo, Iowa. As he puts it:

The first is a team photo [pictured above]. We were 20-2 that year. We lost in what I believe was the district finals to Iowa City Regina. Three of us were sophomores promoted from the junior varsity – Nos. 34, 20, and 42. So, we didn’t play that much, but did start one game when the coach was punishing the starters for some reason I have forgotten. My high score that year was 17 points. My best game was 31 points, I don’t remember whether it was my junior or senior year.

Here’s the full page on their season from the yearbook.

It took me a couple glances to notice the big I on the sides of the shorts, a nice touch on the otherwise nondescript uniforms pictured. The school’s colors are currently black and orange, so I assume that was also the case back then.

But the way more interesting part than the uniforms is who was on this team with my dad. You can see in these individual pictures (besides him) two names in particular.

I won’t make you guess which ones they are. The first was would-be Olympian Rick Wanamaker, who ended up getting a place in NCAA men’s basketball tournament lore instead. As my dad says:

Right above me dunking the basketball in the individual photos is Rick Wanamaker. He was both a track & basketball star. He is known principally for winning the decathlon in the 1971 Pan American Games and for blocking a shot against Lew Alcindor (now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) in the 1969 NCAA national basketball semi-finals. He went to Drake University, and they made it to the semi-finals of the NCAA basketball tournament where he famously blocked the shot. Rick was drafted by the Cleveland Cavaliers but decided not to pursue pro basketball. He was the 1970 NCAA national champion [in the decathlon], an All-American in [the] decathlon, and the 1971 AAU National Champion in [the] decathlon. He was one of the favorites, if not the favorite, for the 1972 Munich Olympics, but was injured prior to the Olympic trials, and did not qualify.

Wanamaker stuffing then-Lew Alcindor on national television was named one of the top 100 plays in the history of the NCAA men’s tournament by Bleacher Report in 2012. You can watch the entire game on YouTube (first and second halves).

The second was Del Miller, who had a long career as a football coach and is a member of the coaching tree of Hayden Fry at Iowa. If, like me, you’ve watched many Iowa football games, you’ve seen the picture and heard about the team’s 1983 coaching staff many times over, famous for the absurd amount of talent it ended up producing, including Miller and current Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz. As my dad says:

He played football at Central College in Iowa and was eventually head coach at Southwest Missouri State University—now known as Missouri State University—from 1995 to 1998, compiling a record of 21–23.  But his story runs through the University of Iowa.  Del was a longtime assistant at Kansas State University under head coach Bill Snyder.  He was the first assistant Bill Snyder hired in 1989 and served three separate stints with the program — he worked for Snyder at Kansas State a total of 20 years.  He was co-offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach at Kansas State from 2009 to 2016.  Now the Iowa connection, Del and Bill Snyder had previously coached together as assistants at the University of Iowa under Hayden Fry.

Miller also ended up marrying my dad’s cousin. It’s a fascinating story. Who knew that one mid-’60s small-town high school basketball team would produce two Wikipedia article-worthy players?