Baseball. Soccer. Hockey. Bowling. Football.  People around the country are drawn to compete in these sports and many others. Still more gather on the sidelines to cheer for their favorite athletes and teams. Nowhere do Americans more intimately connect to sports than in their hometowns.

The Iowa Economic Development Authority’s Main Street Iowa (MSI) program in cooperation with Main Street Ottumwa will celebrate this connection as it hosts “Hometown Teams: How Sports Shape America,” a traveling exhibition from the Smithsonian’s Museum on Main Street program.

“Hometown Teams” will capture the stories that unfold on the neighborhood fields and courts, and the underdog heroics, larger-than-life legends, fierce rivalries and gut-wrenching defeats. For more than 100 years, sports have reflected the trials and triumphs of the American experience and helped shape the national character. Whether it is professional sports or those played on the collegiate or scholastic level, amateur sports or sports played by kids on the local playground, sports are everywhere in America. A short video about the exhibition can be viewed at http://s.si.edu/1bSRDZd.

“Hometown Teams: How Sports Shape America” is part of Museum on Main Street, a unique collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES), and Iowa Economic Development Authority’s Main Street Iowa program and local Main Street Iowa communities. Support for Museum on Main Street has been provided by the United States Congress.

To learn more about Hometown Teams and other Museum on Main Street exhibitions, visit www.museumonmainstreet.org.