50 Iowa moments since Title IX: Barb (Willis) Randall earns spot on U.S. national team

Editor’s note: This is eighth in a series counting down the Top 50 moments in Iowa Hawkeyes women’s athletics history in the 50 days leading up to the 50th anniversary of Title IX in June.

Barb (Willis) Randall did something in the early 1990s no other Hawkeye had done at the time.

She played on the U.S. national team after her Iowa volleyball career was done.

“Yes, I worked hard, but there is a component of luck involved and the timing,” Randall said in a 2021 episode of the athletics department’s HERkys’ Voice podcast. “I’m the only one in the nation my age to make it on the national team. That just happens to be timing of when you come out, what they have in place.”

Randall made it on the 1990 national team and then was on its “B” team in 1991. Both were firsts among Iowa volleyball alumni, and only two other Iowa alumnae have earned spots on the national team in the 31 years since.

While she was officially on the 1990 roster, she “rarely” traveled as one of the top 15 players. She attributed part of that to her mindset.

“If I got blocked at Iowa, my mindset was, ‘Well that’s not going to happen again,’” Randall said on the podcast. “I still believe that if I would’ve had the mindset I had at Iowa on the national team, I would’ve been an Olympian.”

As a member of the “B” team in the following year, she went to the Pan American Games and World University Games.

Her national team achievements aside, she also had quite the four years in Iowa City.

Randall remains Iowa’s all-time leader in blocks with 557. No other Hawkeye has more than 500.

In her four years in Iowa City, the Hawkeyes were a combined 42-30 in Big Ten play. (In comparison, Iowa has 41 Big Ten wins since in the last 13 seasons combined although another 14 were vacated in that span.)

“We were always in contention for a Big Ten championship,” Randall said. “Volleyball in the Big Ten was nowhere near what it is today, but we were always in the top tier.”

She especially cherishes the memories that are “all about the people.”

The setter on Randall’s teams Janet (Moylan) Ritter was a detail-oriented person. Randall? Not so much.

“She would say, ‘Hey, remember when we playing Notre Dame and in the 13th point this happened?’” Randall said. “And I always joked around that I’m like, ‘We played Notre Dame?’”

Some details still stick in Randall’s memory, though. The date she made it on the national team? April 29.

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