Monday, March 19, 2012

Julie Bigler (clap, clap, clap clap clap.)

OK, admit it -- 7 or 8 of you are singing it in your head right now.

For the rest of you: think of the popular chant at basketball games, "Let's go Falcons! (clap, clap, clap clap clap)" ["Falcons" could be replaced with any other two-syllable team name.]

I don't know very much about Julie Bigler. I do know that she is about the same age as me, give or take 2 years, and she played basketball for some high school team in Southeast Iowa -- perhaps Fairfield, Keokuk, or etc. She was fairly good at girls' basketball, as I recall.

So, in high school, basketball pep band was a lot of fun. Really - a lot lot lot of fun. You'll have to take my word for it. In one attempt to "get in the heads" of the opponents - or, maybe just be goofy - we started chanting "JULIE BIGLER!" during a game.

Well, Ottumwa tended to play the same teams fairly often. Probably a year or so after the chant was invented, another game with Julie's team came up. The girls' game ended and all the members of said team came out and sat behind the boys' team during the boys' game (girl-boy double headers were common). Someone dared me me go say something to Miss Bigler. One fellow band member dared me to go kiss her (I think) -- of course, I wasn't that bold, so I negotiated down to a high-five if they would give me some money. (One of those, "I'll give you $x if you can convince Julie Bigler to give you a high-five!" things.)

So, during a break of some kind, I mustered up my courage and did it. I walked up to the girls' team from the visiting school, and asked Julie if she would give me a high-five. She briefly hesitated, but then I just told her it was for a dare. She gave in, we had the high-five and I went back to the pep band balcony [where my peers were viewing my every move] and collected my $22.



  1. Julie played for Ft. Madison High School and went on to play at Valpariso University. She also was an exceptional track athlete.

  2. Phenomenal story Doug. Greatest high-fiver since Walter Payton

  3. also, why the heck did you include some random stock photo of valpo basketball? that is NOT julie bigler!!!

    1. I've pointed out elsewhere in my blog that I often include stock photos b/c I don't have photos of the subject at hand. It's just to help you think of girl's basketball in general. This story is from the mid-90's -- we didn't have cell phones to take pictures of everything! If you have a link to a photo of Julie Bigler, feel free to post that link and I'll update the page. Thanks!