ODEBOLT, Iowa | The year before Sioux City landed the NAIA Division II Women's National Basketball Championships, Al and Kathy Wilke traveled to Angola, Indiana, to watch the Briar Cliff Chargers compete in the tournament.
Their daughter, Katie Wilke, was a sophomore playing for Coach Mike Power's squad, which was ranked No. 1 and sporting a 35-0 record heading into the 1997 national classic. The Wilkes never missed a game.
"We'd gone to Angola for Katie's freshman year, when she played at Huron College (in Huron, South Dakota), and then went back for her sophomore year at Briar Cliff," said Kathy Wilke. "We stayed in a beautiful state park lodge."
The tournament venue, though, wasn't nearly as spacious as Municipal Auditorium, nor as glitzy or modern as the Tyson Events Center. The practice site for the team? It was in a church basement.
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Power had told the Wilkes that he sensed Sioux City leaders were making a pitch to host the tournament. The couple took notes about the host site and Al made a list of things he thought folks in and around the Woodbury County seat could improve upon if they were to host the tournament in 1998.
"I think it was announced in the 1997 tournament that the 1998 tourney would be in Sioux City," Al recalled. "Coach Power recommended Kathy and I serve on the volunteer committee."
Al took a list of ideas and recommendations to the first steering committee prior to the March 1998 national tournament at old Municipal Auditorium. He quickly learned he'd barely need that list. All the topics he wanted to address were already being tackled by someone, people like Tim Seaman, Roger Schultz, Dennis Gann and Corey Westra.
Wilke didn't fold up his list and go away, however. He and Kathy agreed to coordinate the efforts of dozens of volunteers. It was a position they held for the next seven years.
"The first three or four tournaments we helped with were in the old Auditorium," said Kathy, who remembered having people on the stage, including trainers, as games unfolded on the floor below. "We stayed on as we wanted to help as the tournament in 2004 moved into the new facility, the Tyson Events Center."
Al laughed and talked about giving up a week of work at Swanson Insurance & Real Estate back in Odebolt, where they reside.
"We weren't always the best delegators, so we stayed in Sioux City the whole tournament week," he said. "In the end, I guess you could say it kind of wore us out."
Exhaustion? Maybe. But the best kind of tired. The kind of tired that comes with rolling up one's sleeves and rolling out the welcome mats over the course of a six-day, 31-game, 32-team national classic.
The Wilkes recruited their first batch of volunteers by placing an ad on the sports pages of the Sioux City Journal. Responses flowed in. Nobody was turned away.
"People wanted to help in any way they could," Al said, disclosing how volunteers were awarded free admission to the tournament for their work.
Plus, workers received a free shirt they were asked to wear throughout the run of the event. Those shirts transitioned from a green short-sleeved T-shirt in the early years to brightly colored long-sleeve shirts, often in orange, light blue or yellow.
"People could pick the volunteers out pretty easily," Kathy said.
Volunteers could also dine for free at the Auditorium, and later at the Tyson Events Center, during the week of the tourney.
"I remember Dave Van Wechel, of Orange City, coming in to volunteer one year," Al said. "Dave had a clipboard and attached to it was the my letter about being a volunteer. I had him assigned to the stage in the old Auditorium, because I sensed he could be a take-charge guy."
When a group of students, including one fan who chewed tobacco, elected to sit on the old stage, it was Van Wechel who got them corralled.
Other volunteers met coaches and teams at the entrance and directed them to their lockers. Others handed out towels or made sure officials had what they needed during games. Some just stood by in case fans or participants had questions about the venue or the host city.
"Many of the volunteers worked year after year and it kind of became its own little community," Kathy said.
The Wilkes still receive Christmas cards from some of the friends they met while working together at the NAIA Division II Women's National Basketball Tournament in Sioux City.
When the men's basketball tournament site was about to change several years ago, a committee formed at Point Lookout, Missouri, the new host. And what did committee members do?
"They came to Sioux City," Al Wilke said with a smile. "And they looked at our blueprint."
