“One day he will be eating a steak with Coach K in New York City and the next day he’s driving the school bus to West Chester – and it’s the same Donnie.”

Marc Pennington, former Mid-Prairie girls basketball coach, from “Cornfields to Gold Medals”

The passions of an eastern Iowa farmboy still resonate strongly within Don Showalter.

Clearly, it’s basketball, family and steak with this Mid-Prairie alum and legendary basketball coach who is now recognized internationally for his work with basketball teams, programs and camps.

One day, Showalter is in Waverly, Iowa, to run the annual Snow Valley Basketball Camp at Wartburg College.

The next day, just last week, he is in Memphis, Tennessee, having a steak (what else?) while in town to watch the USA Basketball US Open championships.

A couple of days later, he’s in Lithuania.

Showalter, who is Director of Coach Development for USA Basketball, has won 10 gold medals with USA Basketball’s youth national teams over the years. He won more than 440 games as Mid-Prairie’s basketball coach. He has dined and shaped USA basketball with famed Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, among many others. He has coached and mentored players ranging from Duke’s Quinn Cook and North Carolina’s James McAdoo to Mid-Prairie’s Tanner Miller and Kelby Bender, and Lone Tree’s Steve Forbes, who is now the head men’s basketball coach at Wake Forest University.

For years, he was a coach and instructor at famed UCLA coach John Wooden’s camps in California.

“Don Showalter is, without question, one of the best coaches and, more important, one of the best individuals I’ve met in my 40 years in college basketball,” Iowa men’s basketball coach Fran McCaffery says in the recently released Triumph book, “Cornfields to Gold Medals.”

Oh, yes, the book. Written and researched by Pete Van Mullem, a professor at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho, “Cornfields to Gold Medals” hit the book stores this summer and is already a hit with basketball lovers.

But there are also those personal pieces.

The steaks. Without vegetables. The delights, and pressures, of coaching basketball at Mid-Prairie. The recruiting battles and games between Mid-Prairie and Iowa Mennonite School (now Hillcrest Academy). The day he got lured out of high school coaching retirement by Iowa City High. The farm.

“It’s kind of scary,” Showalter said during a break one day at the fast-moving Snow Valley Basketball Camp he has directed for 27 years in Waverly. “You’re opening up your whole life for people to read about. At the same time, it was really done well.”

The book was not Showalter’s idea. It came from Van Mullem, who has co-authored two other books and has 14 years of basketball coaching experience.

“It’s not something I ever envisioned that would happen,” Showalter said.

Van Mullem conducted hundreds of interviews with Showalter and others to research the book. The national figures, you’ll immediately notice: Coach K and Wooden and McCaffery and Forbes and ESPN college basketball analyst Jay Bilas.

And then there’s Dwight Gingerich, principal and basketball coach at Hillcrest Academy. And Chris Kern, Showalter’s longtime assistant at Mid-Prairie. And Mark Schneider, the retired Mid-Prairie Schools Superintendent. And Pete Cavanagh, Mid-Prairie’s current athletics director and former head football coach who also coached basketball. And Bender. And Marc Pennington, a former girls basketball coach at Mid-Prairie whose son, Jack, was on the 2021-22 River Valley Conference championship team and whose daughter, Nora, is a rising senior on the girls basketball team.

“Very well written. Pete did a great job on it,” said Dave Schlabaugh, a Mid-Prairie alum and former assistant to Showalter who is now the head men’s basketball coach at Cornell College in Mount Vernon. “It really tells the story of coach Showalter. He’s done so much for so many people. I know the people that were fortunate enough to coach for him at Mid-Prairie, he’s been the mentor that anybody would be super fortunate to have. Luckily, some of us guys have been able to have that.”

“Show was a great mentor to me,” Pennington told The News. “Everybody knows what a great basketball coach he is. He is even a better person. He and Vicky (Showalter’s wife) were so supportive to Emily (Marc’s wife and a Mid-Prairie teacher), myself and our entire family.”

The book not only traces Showalter’s path into international basketball with Team USA, but dives into local basketball rivalries and the powerful effect produced by both Showalter at Mid-Prairie and Iowa City High, and Gingerich, who has won more than 700 games at IMS and Hillcrest.

The stories still touch Showalter’s heart closely.

“It’s something that I’m very proud of, but at the same time very humbled by,” Showalter said. “To hear my former players in the book talk about things that I don’t even remember. It’s not so much even wins and losses, that’s the neat thing. It’s about the relationships that are built and those kinds of things. That’s really humbling as a coach.”

The Coach Show story is incredibly rural local. He grew up on the Showalter farm in rural southwestern Johnson County, not far from Frytown and just 2.5 miles north of IMS/Hillcrest Academy. His grandfather worked at Kalona Turkey. His wife, Vicky, is from West Chester, a small village of less than 200 south of Wellman.

“We all have a different path,” Showalter told The News. “It’s interesting for me to listen to other coaches, how their path evolved. Pete thought it would be great for coaches to see and people to hear how my path evolved.”

A portion of that path is coaching the Golden Hawks to the Iowa state tournament six times. Another portion is leading City High to a victory over No. 1-ranked and rival City West. Then, there are the 10 gold medals.

And, of course, the steak.

Don is a steak and dessert guy. Nothing green. According to a story in the book, he would order a wedge salad simply to make Vicky, his wife, happy.

“If the vegetables are touching the steak,” Jay Demings, USA Basketball’s Director of Youth & Sports Development, says in the book, “he almost has to throw the steak away.”