Tag: Veterans Memorial Auditorium – Des Moines

Kurt Warner and teammates on the cover of the 1996 Iowa Barnstormers Media Guide from the Arena Football League

Iowa Barnstormers (1995-2001)

The remarkable story of Kurt Warner, who rose from supermarket stock boy to Super Bowl Champion and NFL Most Valuable Player over the course of five years, is one of the great legacies of the now-defunct Arena Football League. Warner, undrafted out of college, famously signed on with the Arena League’s Iowa Barnstormers in 1995. He led the Barnstormers into back-to-back Arena Bowl title games in 1996 and 1997, before earning his shot at the NFL with the St. Louis Rams.  By 1999, he was the NFL’s MVP and quarterback of a Super Bowl championship team in his first season as a starter. Warner’s fame briefly made the Iowa Barnstormers an object of cult fascination, if not quite a household brand name. So what became of the Barnstormers?

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1979-80 Iowa Cornets team photo on the cover of a Cornets program from the Women's Basketball League

Iowa Cornets

They can rightfully claim to be the first women’s professional basketball team ever formed in the United States.  They travelled the small cities of Iowa and beyond in a custom 1964 Greyhound bus known as “The Corn Dog”.  Team members co-starred with Pistol Pete Maravich in a box-office flop from the auteur who brought you UFO: Target Earth and Bloodbath in Psychotown.  And they were pretty good too.  During their short two-year history, the Iowa Cornets appeared in two championship series and produced one of the earliest stars of the women’s game.

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