Spunk and style

At 5’2”, Lorene (Dick) Goering may not look like a trailblazing basketball star, but the statistics tell the story.

When she was a senior at Turpin (Okla.) High School, Goering and her team were the runners up for the 1958 Class B girls’ state championship. She scored 101 points in the tournament’s four games, a record that still puts her among the top scorers in Oklahoma girls’ basketball tournament history.

During the 1957 girls’ state tournament, Goering had seen a player do a jump shot, then extremely rare for a girl. She remembers telling herself, “I could do that,” and then going home and teaching herself over the summer. That jump shot was largely what enabled her high scores and was a major reason Turpin went to the state finals in 1958.

Goering was then invited to try out for the well-known Wayland Flying Queens from Wayland Baptist College in Plainview, Texas. Although she was offered a spot on the team, she chose instead to attend Bethel College.

However, there was no women’s basketball program when Goering arrived at Bethel. In fact, girls didn’t play basketball at all in the state of Kansas.

But Oklahoma girls’ basketball had a long history, and Goering found herself one of a number of “Okies” at Bethel who missed playing the game.

“Most of us had a real identity associated with playing basketball in high school,” Goering said. “Serious athletes don’t want to just quit cold turkey.”

Mildred Beecher, director of women’s athletics at that time, organized Bethel’s first intercollegiate women’s basketball team in 1958-59 and convinced football coach Milt Goering to coach the women.

“I think Miss Beecher must have noticed in P.E. the way all the Oklahoma girls knew how to play basketball,” Goering said. Eight of the 14 players on that first team were from Oklahoma.

Goering played for three years and was leading scorer for the team all three. The “Thresherettes” had a 27-1 record, including two consecutive
undefeated seasons. The single loss came mostly because several of the players, including Goering, were not able to be at that particular game.

“I can’t even remember why I wasn’t there,” Goering said. “It wasn’t like there was a schedule for women’s basketball. Once the season started, they’d just call us whenever they could get a game together.”

Bethel played teams from Bethany College, Lindsborg, Kan.; Kansas Wesleyan University, Salina, Kan.; McPherson (Kan.) College; Sterling (Kan.) College; Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kan.; and Wichita (Kan.) University. In those days, women played “six- on-six,” half-court basketball.

In Kansas, women were limited to only three dribbles before they had to shoot or pass. But there was no rule against the jump shot, and fans watched in amazement as Lorene Dick sent off what one newspaper reporter called her “stylish [one-handed] jump shot.”

At the end of her junior year, Lorene married Mel Goering from Moundridge, Kan., who played on the Bethel men’s team. While Mel went to graduate school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., Lorene earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education from George Peabody College in Nashville.

She was on the Bethel faculty from 1979-99 as a professor of education. Goering never really returned to basketball. However, she said, “When I retired from Bethel, Mel bought me a basketball goal.” He set it up in the driveway of their country home near Halstead, Kan., and the two play together occasionally. “I say that I’m coming out of retirement.”

Goering, who was inducted into the Bethel College Hall of Fame Class of 2002 at Fall Festival this year, comes from a family with a basketball tradition that continues into the present. Her mother, Hulda (Dirks) Dick, played Oklahoma girls’ basketball in the 1920s. Her two older sisters, Florence Regier and Shirley Kroeker, played high school ball. Kroeker also played on intramural teams at Bethel and her daughter Tinese played at the college in the early 1980s. Regier’s granddaughter Brandi played at Bethel in the late 1990s.

And today Goering’s mother, age 91 and living in North Newton, Kan., still accompanies her to Bethel College basketball games, where both cheer
enthusiastically for the Thresher teams.