Dates

• Existence: 1956-

Biography

Julie Goodrich was an accomplished high school athlete in the early 1970s from Adel, Iowa. She was actively involved in the fields of basketball, track and field, cross-country, and softball. In basketball, admittedly her favorite sport, she was a forward on the Adel Tigerettes girls' varsity team for four years, and her team's number two shooter. She received numerous awards from the Adel Community Schools and local sponsors, and was chosen to participate in the all-conference basketball team two years in a row. She was also an all-conference softball player and track star. Her name and picture frequently appeared in the Des Moines Register and Dallas County News, where she even received fan mail. The Dallas County News described her as "a very determined girl who doesn't know what it is to quit or give up." As testimony to this description, in 1973, her junior year, she was a pitcher on her softball team, a quarter-mile runner in track, and a forward on the basketball team, as well as being inducted into the National Honor Society, performing in shows as a tapdancer, and teaching swimming with the Red Cross. This was the year her basketball team made it to the Girls' State Tournament, where they came in second. When she returned from the Tournament, sick with measles and strep throat and afraid of missing out on the State Track and Field Championships, she told a Dallas County Reporter, "I gotta get going. I haven't been too hot this spring." Larry Niemeyer, her coach for both basketball and track, said that the track team's chances of winning the state title improved with Goodrich being there. She was appreciated by her teammates not only for her prowess, but for her unselfish team spirit. In an article Goodrich wrote, called "Adel Tigerettes Live a Dream Come True" (see Box 1, Scrapbooks, Photocopied, 1973 State Tournament), she recounts in the style of a fairy tale the history of her basketball team in 1972 and 1973, which culminates in their performance at the State Championship, then "living happily ever after."

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