- Dempsey Hovland
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Dempsey Hovland (born in Beloit, Wisconsin on December 11, 1918 - died in 1979) was a well-known national baseball and basketball barnstorming entrepreneur and promoter and multiple sports team owner. He also founded the 20th Century Booking Agency, a sports booking management for arranging and marketing of barnstorming events and booking of venues. He and his wife Florence Holder Hovland owned the Miss American Teenager beauty pageant shows in the 1960s and 1970s.
Hovland started his sports promotion career as a member and manager of the barnstorming House of David basketball team in the 1930s. He was respected as a barnstorm icon being the only sports team owner to operate both male and female basketball teams teams throughout the United States. He also founded the baseball barnstorm team Caribbean Kings.
Hovland's world-famous barnstorm basketball team Texas Cowgirls (1949-1977) (full name Dempsey Hovland's World Famous Texas Cowgirls Basketball Team) originating from Chicago, Illinois touring worldwide in similar fashion to the Harlem Globetrotters were the first female team to share double billing on the men's National Basketball Association game schedules. Texas Cowgirls also broke ground and opened for the Harlem Globetrotters in the 1950s and 1960s, on their barnstorm tours. Hovland dismissed the racial barriers for female barnstormers, integrating his teams.
The world famous Texas Cowgirls were invited to play U.S. service bases overseas by President John F. Kennedy. The team received an honorary ambassador award from Robert McNamara, United States Secretary of Defense 1961-1968. CBS's Roger Mudd featured the team in 1974. The colorful sports commentator Heywood Hale Broun travelled with the team, documenting the life of young women living on the road in a profession dominated by males. The team called quits in 1977 just two years before the death of its founder Dempsey Hovland.[1]
The New York Harlem Queens, an African-American female basketball team and yet another Hovland team barnstormed against off-season NFL teams and men's basketball teams like the barnstorming Texas Cowgirls.
Barnstorming basketball was the opportunity for women to play men's rules against men. At halftime the females would entertain the crowds with their ball handling expertise. As an international barnstorm promoter, Hovland also carried barnstorm entertainers on the road tours to entertain at halftime. Satchel Paige, a Negro League and Major League Hall of Fame baseball pitcher travelled with the Texas Cowgirls providing exhibition pitching during halftime. Eddie Gottlieb was instrumental in securing pre games for Hovland's female Texas Cowgirls on the National Basketball Association schedules.
Personal life
Dempsey Hovland is married to Florence Holder Hovland since 1955. He had recruited her to the Texas Cowgirls when she was 17. They fell in love and he married her years later and they raised 7 children, some also involved in barnstorming sports.
References
External links
Categories:- 1918 births
- 1979 deaths
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