The Daily Iowan WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24, 2024
THE INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA COMMUNITY SINCE 1868
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SERIES: SPORTS CUT SHORT
Dynamic duo on different paths
After Iowa discontinued men’s tennis, former players sought other opportunities.
Casey Stone | The Daily Iowan
Iowa’s Will Davies hits the ball during a men’s tennis match between Iowa and Minnesota at the Hawkeye Tennis and Recreation Complex on March 14, 2021. Minnesota defeated Iowa 4-3. In the last season, the team chose to wear shirts without Iowa logos. Matt McGowan Sports Reporter
matt-mcgowan@uiowa.edu
Four years have passed since former University of Iowa athletics director Gary Barta announced that University of Iowa Athletics would cut four varsity sports. The Daily Iowan has spent the past several months tracking down the student-athletes whose NCAA careers were forced to move elsewhere or were stopped altogether. The following story is the third of a four-part series documenting the lives of some of these athletes since that point. Beneath the beaming sunshine in Orlando, Florida, the Iowa men’s tennis team played out its final match before
INSIDE
the program went dark. Representing the Hawkeyes in the 2021 NCAA Championships that May afternoon were Oliver Okonkwo and Will Davies, the first Iowa doubles pairing to qualify in over three decades. They were also the last. Dashing across the blue-toned, hardcourt surface, the 17th-ranked Okonkwo and DaOkonkwo vies battled the third-ranked duo of William Blumberg and Brian Cernoch from North Carolina, falling in straight sets. When the final point was awarded to the Tar Heels, Okonkwo and Davies embraced, savoring the poignant culmination of three years as teammates.
“I was gutted,” Okonkwo recalled. “I had a lot of friends watching the match, and a lot reached out to me. I don’t think I responded to anyone for two days. It was an emotional time.” After taking a photo with their coaches, the pair laid down a uniform at the court’s baseline, marking the final pin in their journey Davies with the Hawkeyes. The English-born players traveled across the Atlantic to play for Iowa. In the coming months, Okonkwo and Davies would hit the road again, embarking on separate paths to different careers.
TENNIS | 2A
Dane’s Dairy passes the cone The Iowa City ice cream business changed owners after over 60 years.
Fatima Salinas News reporter
fatima-salinas-gutierrez@uiowa.edu
Taking the Olympic Trials Spencer Lee hopes to punch his ticket to the 2024 Paris Olympics. SPORTS | 1B
Digging into the weeds of gardening More Iowa gardeners are prioritizing native plants in their gardens. 80 HOURS | 1C
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After 64 years in the Dane family, Iowa City ice cream shop Dane’s Dairy, will pass on to a new generation of owners. Donna Dane, the store’s first owner, recently decided she was ready to retire and sell the business. The new owners, Joshua Luerkens and his wife Mariah Ritter, share a longtime connection to Dane’s and are working to maintain the local legacy of the drive-in ice cream shop. Luerkens and Ritter have both worked for the Dane family previously. Jim Dane, Donna Dane’s brother, wrote in an email to The Daily Iowan she purchased the store from her parents in 2009. After 64 years, the Dane family sold Dane’s Dairy to Luerkens in January. “I am so glad to pass on the torch of Dane’s Dairy to Joshua’s family. Mariah was a former manager and helped us out many times. They have kept Dane’s Dairy products and menu the same. The store is in good hands,” Donna Dane wrote in an email to the DI. Dane’s Dairy, located at 1430 Willow Creek Court, is a popular ice cream shop that has served Iowa City since 1960.
DAIRY | 3A
Isabella Tisdale | The Daily Iowan
Joshua Luerkens is seen in front of Dane’s Dairy in Iowa City on April 18. Luerkens bought Dane’s Dairy in January after 64 years of ownership by the Dane family.
From hoops to hashtags, edits light up TikTok
Fan-made basketball edits have blown up since the start of the season. Grace Olson News Reporter
grace-olson@uiowa.edu
As Caitlin Clark’s last season with Iowa ends and her career with the Indiana Fever begins, the basketball star continues to inspire countless teenagers across the internet. Many fans’ TikTok pages have been flooded with short fan videos, or “edits,” of Clark and her fellow teammates, particularly Kate Martin. These edits feature game highlights of Clark or Martin and other clips of the players off the court, many of which come from Kylie Feuerbach’s vlogs on her YouTube channel. The short clips are stitched together with popular songs
and quotes from the athletes. Martin often reposts these videos of her on her own TikTok account and has commented on them in press conferences. “It’s cool that fans take the time to make those types of videos, and it’s actually been really fun this year being able to see all that because it’s helped us reflect back on the run year we’ve had,” Martin said during a press conference before the team’s Final Four match-up against UConn. “It’s also been able to show us what special friendships we have among this team.” Although these videos only last around 30 seconds, they require a lot of craft and mastery. Anna Maass, a 17-year-old from Raleigh, North Carolina, has watched Clark and the Iowa wom-
en’s basketball team since Clark’s first year of high school. She said editing her videos can take anywhere from four to five hours. The hardest part is gathering all the game clips, she said, but editing them together is easy — so easy, she said, that she often works on them during class. “A lot of time goes into it,” Maass said. “I enjoy making edits because I like the process. The players make it very easy to edit.” Although she’s only been editing women’s basketball videos for about a year, Maass has already accumulated over 25,000 followers on TikTok. Her most-watched Clark edit was posted in De-
EDITS | 3A