The queen is dead. Long live the queen.

In a break with a 95-year tradition, the Iowa Girls Athletic Union Board voted Wednesday to end six-player basketball after the 1993-94 state tournament. The board also voted to implement enrollment classifications for the five-player tournament beginning with the 1993-94 season.

Classifications for the five-player tournament will not be determined until after the beginning of the 1993-94 school year, when the schools notify the union which game they will play that final year.

"It's not the end of the world," said E. Wayne Cooley, executive secretary of the union. "It's been a very romantic time, at least for the 39 years I've been here. We've reached the heights of every success you could imagine, and it's difficult to give it up."

"The (six-player) tournament was the grande dame of the whole nation as far as women and girls' basketball tournaments are concerned. It will cease to exist as of 1994."

Six-player basketball has been played in Iowa since 1898 in one form or another. It began as a three-court game, and the first two-court six-player tournament was contested in 1935. Five-player basketball began for girls in the 1984-85 school year, and schools have had the choice of versions ever since.

Mike Henderson, the information director for the union, said 134 schools play five-player basketball this season, and 275 play six-player.

"The difference next year is that the 134-275 could be exactly reversed, particularly if classification is involved, which it is," he said.

Cooley said his staff researched the question for four months The board discussed the issue for three hours Wednesday and was unanimous in its decision. The numbers indicated that enough six-player teams would be left in 1993-94 to make the final tournament representative.

"One of the things that came into the board's thinking is that there's no way that we could let that six-player tournament die as a second-class citizen after what it had done for the girl athletes in the state," Henderson said.

Of the 46 conferences playing girls' basketball, 14 play the five player game and five more are switching next season. Two have voted to switch without specifying the date of the switch, and 16 more have had meetings about changing or votes among administrators recommending such a change.

"I hate to see it, but I can live with it," Henderson said.

"We can develop some new heroes, and we are going to have to change some thinking."