Dempsey Hovland

Who is Dempsey Hovland?

Dempsey Hovland 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 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. 1940s He was respected as a barnstorm icon being the only sports team owner to operate both professional male and female basketball teams at the same time throughout the United States. He also founded the baseball barnstorm teams Caribbean Kings and Havana Cuban Giants

Hovland's world-famous barnstorm basketball team Texas CowGirls 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, on their tours.