Pat Ibeling and Iowa’s Six-on-Six Tradition

At The Village of Ackley, Pat Ibeling is “Pat”—always has been. “Nobody calls me Patricia,” she says with a grin. “My mom did when she got mad at me.” It’s classic Pat: warm, funny, and straight to the point.

Ask her about basketball, though, and you’ll hear a whole different kind of energy. Pat played in school during Iowa’s famous six-on-six era—when the game was split into two courts, with three forwards and three guards on each side of the center line. Players stayed in their roles and on their half of the floor, which made the strategy—and the teamwork—feel special.

Pat remembers that style with real affection. “It was six on six,” she says. “It wasn’t this run on the whole court… six on six, to me, made a better ball game out of it.” Her position was front guard, and she speaks about it like someone who can still picture the court, the movement, the pace, and the pride of doing your job well.

That pride fits right into the bigger story of six-on-six in Iowa. In the Iowa PBS documentary More Than a Game: 6-on-6 Basketball in Iowa, writer Chuck Offenburger describes how the sport became “a glue that cemented generations in families and communities,” noting that in Iowa you could have “five generations” of women in the same families who all played high school basketball. That’s the kind of tradition Pat carries—whether she’s talking about positions, rules, or how much she still enjoys the game.

And she really does still enjoy it. When the conversation turns to women’s basketball today, Pat lights up again. “I like to watch Caitlin, too,” she says. “She’s a good ball player, boy.” It’s admiration with a little Iowa understatement—coming from someone who knows what it looks like when a player can truly play.

Pat talking about her time playing 6-on-6 girls basketball in Iowa

Pat’s story isn’t just basketball, either. Like so many Iowans, she knows hard work that starts before sunrise. She and her family farmed and milked 21 cows morning and night, she recalls. It’s a reminder that the same grit that helped on the court also showed up in everyday life.

Iowa’s six-on-six chapter officially ended in 1993, but for Pat, it’s not really gone. It’s still there in the way she talks, the way she remembers, and the way she smiles when you ask about the game—because some eras don’t disappear. They live on in the people who played them.