By CHUCK OFFENBURGER
DES MOINES, Iowa, March 21, 2026 — On this “March Madness” weekend of college basketball hysteria, I’m probably like many of you, recalling my own playing days.
Yours were better than mine.
My real basketball effectively ended in the early season of 1963-’64 when I was “cut” from the varsity squad of my alma mater, Shenandoah High School in southwest Iowa. The “prospect card” the coaches kept on us, if there was such a thing back then, must have said of me: “Too slow. Thinks he’s a shooter. Not interested in defense.”
But I did go on to play in front of big loud crowds. I was in line-ups with such superstars as the Iowa Hawkeyes Jess Settles and Ryan Bowen; a solid former player at Northern Iowa, Jim Davis; and a giant of a former NFL star Ben Davidson, who was All-Pro for the old Oakland Raiders.
We played against such superstars as Jan Jensen, Lynne Lorenzen, Molly Tideback, maybe Mary Berdo, as well as the undefeated 1986 Class 2A state champion Washington High School Demons boys team in southeast Iowa. (We played the Demons in a special full-court set up on the courthouse square there. They remained undefeated.)
Co-captains of the “RAGBRAI All-Stars” basketball team — the bike ride’s co-hosts John Karras and Chuck Offenburger in 1989.
Our team was the “RAGBRAI All-Stars,” part of the huge mob of bicycle riders who, for more than 50 years now, have been pedaling 500-or-so miles across the state of Iowa in the last full week of July. The bike riding must have not been enough exercise for us. If we were passing through, or overnighting in, a town with a high school basketball heritage, we’d arrange a game with our cyclists against their hoopsters.
John Karras, the Des Moines Register columnist and the late great co-founder of RAGBRAI, always thought these games were an awful idea. He would regularly refuse to participate, although he’d usually relent if I threw a big enough tantrum.
I think he might have missed the first game I organized. As I recall, that was in 1986, a three-on-three scrimmage against Jan Jensen and her “Lady Dane” teammates from Elk Horn-Kimballton High School in southwest Iowa. We played them on a goal set up on the main intersection in uptown Elk Horn, or maybe it was neighboring Kimballton, I can’t remember which. It was just after they had captured state tourney glory.
Our RAGBRAI All-Stars saw up close and personal that day why Jensen was going to become an All-American at Drake University and then one of the best women’s basketball coaches in the nation — now for the University of Iowa. Her inside game was unstoppable against us!
Jan Jensen taught us a lot in Kimballton in 1986.
And Lynne Lorenzen (50) continued our lessons in 1987.
And I’ll never forget how surprised Karras was in 1987 after I had talked him into the line-up for what might have been a 2-on-1 game against Lynne Lorenzen, who had set a new national high school basketball scoring record at little Ventura High School way up in north central Iowa. She did everything but dunk against us. “Wow!” the shocked Karras said afterward, “she’s really good, isn’t she?”
The idea for such exhibitions, however, didn’t originate with me.
It could be blamed on another Register columnist Donald Kaul, the other late great co-founder of RAGBRAI. Part of Kaul’s column-writing schtick was wisecracking about how “slow” and “boring” Iowa’s legendary six-on-six girls basketball was, even though deep-down he was a great admirer of its fun and popularity.
In July 1980, when RAGBRAI passed through the little Greene County town of Cooper (yes, I wound up living there 24 years later), a team of local high school girls basketball stars and maybe some adult women, too, named a team the “Kaul’s All-Stars” and played a game on the outdoor court. The crowd hooted and hollered at Kaul, who took part in the game. Trust me, there is pictorial and video proof! (Cooper natives Terry Rich and Doug Lawton are searching for it now.)
So I merely continued the basketball tradition when I succeeded Kaul in 1983 and became co-host of RAGBRAI with Karras, thru the ride of 1998. I expanded it a little by appointing myself head coach of the “RAGBRAI All-Stars” basketball team and lining up our games.
The basketball games idea originated with Donald Kaul.
We’d have different games in different places — sometimes six-on-six, sometimes five-on-five. Or we might play “H-O-R-S-E,” or have contests for most free throws out of 10. All that would depend on how many local young stars we were showcasing.
We always had plenty of RAGBRAIers we could use, and a few of them were really good basketball players who were riding along with us for a day or two — sometimes the whole week. Those included, as I said earlier, Hawkeye basketballers Jess Settles and Ryan Bowen, the former UNI player Jim Davis, and the older pro footballer Ben Davidson, who’d become a RAGBRAI regular. I also remember a year when we had a couple of starters from Ball State Univerity’s men’s team in Indiana who were riding and playing hoops with us.
When I was “coaching” those real athletes — especially the first time they played for us — they’d sometimes balk at my instructions.
“Do all the fancy playing you want for a while,” I would tell them. “The local people watching will love it. So do some dunks, hook shots, whatever. Let’s see your showiest rebounding, passing and dribbling. But here’s our firm rule: In the end, the locals win and we lose. You got that?”
I’d make them agree before I’d put them in the game.
Another spot player for us was Don Benson, the “RAGBRAI Wagonmaster” whom we once put in a game just to shoot a couple free throws, which it seems to me he shot “granny-style.” Jim Green, who would succeed Benson as RAGBRAI director in the 1990s, played more often. So did Andrew Offenburger, who inherited his ol’ man’s foot speed, love of shooting and disregard for defense.
There were a few shining moments, a lot of bad basketball and some great fun. I loved it!
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You can comment on this column below or write the columnist directly by email at chuck@offenburger.com.
