The University of Iowa women’s basketball program had an amazing season, reaching the national title game in 2024 for the second year in a row. Along for the ride was a team of photojournalists from The Daily Iowan — and the result is a keepsake book.

More Than a Moment: Elevating the Game With Iowa Women’s Basketball, published in May, is the culmination of six months of in-depth coverage of the Hawkeyes’ 2023–24 season, starting in October at Crossover at Kinnick, with a record-setting attendance of more than 55,000, and ending with the NCAA championship game in April. The project is a collaboration between the Daily Iowan Documentary Workshop, The Daily Iowan, and the UI School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Two photojournalists — Grace Smith, senior photojournalist at The Daily Iowan, and Ayrton Breckenridge, the newspaper’s managing visuals editor — spent hours with the Hawkeye players and coaches, flying with the team to games, spending time in the locker room, and even playing video games with the student-athletes in their downtime. Six additional student photographers covered tournament watch parties and the WNBA Draft as well as Iowa high school girls basketball.

Together, the photo team captured hundreds of thousands of photographs, with about 320 images published in the book. Interspersed with the photos are articles written by UI journalism students and essays from notable figures such as tennis champion Billie Jean King and ESPN reporter Holly Rowe.

“We knew the Hawkeyes would try for another historic season, and we wanted to document that in a deeper way,” says Smith, a May graduate from Indianola, Iowa, who earned a degree in journalism and mass communication and cinema. “The book features action shots from games and practices, behind-the-scenes moments, and day-in-the-life stories, but it also documents the growth of women’s sports through the lens of Iowa women’s basketball and through stories of Iowa high schools, including West Des Moines Dowling, Dike–New Hartford, and Solon. There are stories about the fans; the media frenzy surrounding Caitlin Clark; and name, image, and likeness as well as a number of powerful essays.”

Smith, along with Daily Iowan publisher Jason Brummond and Danny Wilcox Frazier, director of the Daily Iowan Documentary Workshop who also contributed photos, pitched the book project to the athletics department at the start of the season, and it was approved. The resulting publication includes intimate portraits and rare glimpses behind the scenes. Capturing those moments required effort that Smith says will pay off for the rest of her career.

“With any in-depth story, you have to build a connection before you can shove a camera in someone’s face, and we were able to do that slowly,” she says. “By the NCAA Tournament, I was with the team for 12 days straight, following them on their historic run.”

Breckenridge, a May graduate from Monroe, Iowa, who earned a degree in journalism and mass communication and cinema, echoes that sentiment. He says learning to build relationships was invaluable.

“Whether after a tremendous win or a very low loss, we had to have the trust of our sources for them to allow us to come into the room and take photos and document the experience. We’re students just like the student-athletes on the court, so we had that mutual connection with them,” says Breckenridge, who is starting an internship with the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. “Working on this book was a special opportunity — even the national media outlets didn’t get the level of access we had. The athletics department welcomed us with open arms, and I’m glad that they did.”

Retiring head coach Lisa Bluder says allowing student journalists to document the season was a no-brainer.

“We couldn’t be more grateful for the job Ayrton and Grace did behind the scenes; they were truly a part of our team,” she says. “We were blown away by their professionalism and appreciate the relationship we’ve developed between Iowa women’s basketball and our student journalism program. I think Iowa fans are going to love this book.”

More Than a Moment is not the first publishing endeavor of The Daily Iowan. There were books about the 2002, 2009, and 2015 football seasons, for example, and more recently the staff documented the defining moments of 2020 in a book that covered the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, the derecho, the Iowa caucuses, and more.

Brummond says these long-form projects, along with the feature-length documentary films produced within the Daily Iowan Documentary Workshop, offer students a deeper connection with subjects and an opportunity to work side by side with professionals.

“More broadly, we see our job at The Daily Iowan as recording what happens on campus and what impacts this university,” says Brummond, a UI graduate who earned a BA and a BBA in 2008 and an MBA in 2014. “This was certainly a unique moment in time, and we felt a responsibility to record this season and the transformational impact it had on women’s basketball and women’s athletics.”

When Sahithi Shankaiahgari was invited by Smith to join the project team, she was participating in a photo workshop through the journalism school and The Daily Iowan and had little experience with a camera. She jumped at the opportunity, however, and says it has changed her life.

“Being out in the field and getting this hands-on experience contributed so much to my experience at Iowa. When I first started in journalism, I thought I was going to go into writing, but working on the book completely shifted that,” says Shankaiahgari, who is from Des Moines. “I attended my first basketball game ever, and it was crazy. I didn’t know it would be that big of a crowd. I was never part of a book project or a longer-form visual story as big as this, and I feel like I’ve grown a lot as a photojournalist. I’d like to pursue a career in photojournalism, and I’ve established a good portfolio through this project and the DI workshop.”

Shankaiahgari graduated in May with a degree in journalism and mass communication and international relations and a certificate in nonprofit leadership and philanthropy. She accepted a job with a nonprofit in Atlanta.

After shooting some 3,000 photos per game, Smith, who is starting an internship with The Washington Post, says she feels like she’s polished her sports action photo skills. Her favorite moment working on the project, however, came after Iowa won the Big Ten Tournament. She was capturing images of the coaches as they cut down the net.

“Coach [Jan] Jensen and Coach Bluder were whispering to each other, and I wondered what was going on. Then they walked over to me and said, ‘Grace, you should cut down a piece of the net. You’re a part of our team this season.’”

Smith says she was hesitant to accept, not knowing if it would be considered a breach of ethics, but she ultimately obliged: “I don’t think they would’ve asked me if I hadn’t built that trust and established those connections with the team. It was a special moment for sure. It’s something I’ll remember forever.”

Publishing the book — and covering the 2023–24 basketball season — was a winning way to end her college career at Iowa, Smith says.

“I started covering the team four years ago, when there were cardboard cutouts in the stands due to COVID restrictions and only a few photographers going back and forth on the concourse,” she says. “Going from that to sold-out games for every game was really special. I was super happy to be able to document it and am excited for people to see the book.”