• March 16, 1987
• Vol. 27
• No. 11

Lynne Lorenzen, 18, Wins the Big One Handily with 6,497 Points

In the last home game of the season for the girls' basketball team of Ventura High, forward Lynne Lorenzen, 18 and 6'2", scored 54 points, leading the Lady Vikes to victory over Woden-Crystal Lake. Lorenzen's fans in the Iowa farming community of 600 were disappointed. Lynne, a senior, averages 63 points a game and had run up 100 points against this same team last year; the hometown fans wanted this to be the night on which she smashed an 18-year-old national career scoring record for high school girls' basketball. Oh well. Six days later, on the road, Lynne broke the 6,250-point total of fellow Iowan Denise Long, who was in the SRO crowd to see her do it. When Lynne's shot swished through the net, the game was halted for Lynne to accept a bouquet of roses, which she tearfully delivered to her mother and father in the stands.

Teams like the Lady Vikes don't often make national records but Lynne has been well prepped for her feat. Everyone in her family (she has three older brothers and two older sisters) is at least 6' and all have been hoopsters. More important, her dad, Russ, a hog farmer, and mother, Frances, who played on an Iowa championship team in 1952, have taught her that "nothing will ever be all positive," and they have been right. As record mania set in, fans and newspeople began scribbling down Lynne's every point and going crazy. Other folks have called her a ball hog. All in all, she admits, breaking the record "jumped in front of my main goal, which is to just have fun playing basketball." Then, with the record in hand, she went on to pump in 71 of the Lady Vikes' 83 points in the regional play-off game to qualify for the Iowa state championships this week.

Her next problem will be picking a college from a raft of those offering scholarships. "Basketball is paving a future for me," she says, which is one reason she sets strict priorities during the season. "It's just like the dictionary: basketball, books," says Lynne, smiling, "and then boys."