The Guthrie Center girls basketball team enjoyed a 76 to 69 victory over Wellsburg in the 1963 Iowa Girl’s State Basketball Championship. Back then, there were twelve girls on the court, and back then there was one state basketball champion, not five like there are today.

Senior Karen McCool was a large part of Guthrie Center’s success in 1963, averaging over 45 points per game in the Tigerettes’ four games during the state tournament, including an emotional shot at the buzzer to beat Everly 76 to 75. McCool told the Associated Press at the time that she had waited her entire high school career to win the state title. These days, McCool is married and living in Springfield, Missouri, enjoying life as a grandmother.

A different Guthrie Center team would make it back to the state basketball final nine years later in 1972, against Roland-Story,  but the result wasn’t as favorable for the Tigerettes, as they lost by a score of 68 to 64.

A young Guthrie Center girls team this year won zero games, a far cry from their glory days of decades passed, but a talented, and promising team plays just seven miles down the road at Panorama, and has the potential to bring a girl’s state basketball championship back into the county limits for the first time in over five decades.