Plymouth Magazine-Fall24-DIGITAL - Flipbook - Page 3
Plymouth’s Basketball Past
By Amy Elbert (she/her)
The boink-boink of bouncing basketballs
and the squeak of sneakers filled
Plymouth Church many weekends for
more than 50 years when the Rocks and
Pebbles competed in Des Moines area
church basketball leagues.
The Plymouth Archive Committee
recently stumbled on basketball trophies
and an old basketball while sorting
documents and artifacts in a cluttered
room serving as the church archives.
Later we uncovered black-and-white
photos of teenage basketball players
sporting Plymouth Rocks jerseys.
Curious to know more about Plymouth’s
sporting past and suspecting there were
more than a few old “Rocks” still in the
congregation, we went looking for the
back story.
Church basketball leagues in Des Moines
probably date to at least the late 1940s,
but the earliest basketball memorabilia we
found thus far at Plymouth was from the
mid-1960s. The March 27, 1966, Plymouth
Bulletin announced the senior high
team won the Westside Church League
championship under coach Dean Freese.
The league organization varied over the
years, from a Westside Church Basketball
League to the YMCA’s Greater Des
Moines Church Basketball League, but
the fundamentals stayed the same. The
intramural leagues were open to junior
high and high school kids who didn’t
play basketball for their high school but
wanted to participate in an organized
format with uniforms, coaches, referees,
and spectators.
The intramural leagues were loosely
organized around churches, although
players (or their parents) didn’t have to
be members – at least that was the case
at Plymouth. If you wanted to play, you
showed up for practice. There were no
tryouts, all were welcome, and everyone
got to play. Coaches were volunteers,
usually a couple players’ dads. A
Plymouth’s team make up depended
upon the number of kids participating
but generally the Rocks were the older
kids and the Pebbles were the junior
high age players.
Plymouth members Todd and Mary
O’Brien shared their memories when
Todd played for the Rocks from 1978 to
1984, and Mary (nee Sullivan) watched
games at her then-home church, First
Christian at 25th and University (now
Hope Lutheran + Elim). Years later,
O’Brien coached from 2012 to 2017
with Jim Spooner when the two men’s
sons, Jack Spooner and John O’Brien,
played for the Rocks.
As O’Brien remembers, kids played in
church leagues for a variety of reasons:
they didn’t make the high school team,
didn’t want to play at that competitive of
a level, or simply because they liked the
fellowship and exercise of a church league.
“Several of my high school friends from
Roosevelt, Dowling, and Hoover played
for area teams including Plymouth, First
Federated Church (the former Franklin
Junior High,) the Jewish Community
Center on Cummins Parkway, and First
Assembly of God on Merle Hay Road,”
O’Brien says. “The league was a fun
way to have friendly competition with
friends, and to play as a team without
the typical pressure that comes with high
school and club sports. There was lots of
friendly banter during the week about
whose team was superior.”
There were a few nods to the “church”
part of the league, with games beginning
with devotions at center court and coaches
trying to keep bad language and fouls to
a minimum. “But we are talking about
teenage boys,” says Spooner. “There was a
lot of male testosterone on that court.”
In the early years, the teams played games
– one or two a week – at participating
churches, although facilities were hardly
ideal. Often there were narrow-to-no
sidelines for spectators or space for fastpaced maneuvers. Some churches posed
special challenges such as Westminster
with its carpeted fellowship hall/gym
and Plymouth with a stage adjacent to
the basketball court. “The ball was always
bouncing up on the stage and you had to
like jump up there get it and then jump
back down, which was a pain,” recalls one
former Plymouth Rock.
Plymouth Magazine 3
