My mother was sure right about Jan Jensen being special
By Pat Harty
IOWA CITY, Iowa – My faith tells me that mom was looking down and smiling as Jan Jensen was introduced as the new Iowa head women’s basketball coach on Wednesday.
My mother was a Jan Jensen fan long before Hawkeye fans had reason to be.
This goes back to the late 1980s when Jensen was a rising star on the Drake women’s basketball team.
Jensen lived in a dormitory in which my mother served as the head receptionist.
My mother worked as a head receptionist at two different Drake dormitories for over 20 years from the early 1970s to the early 1990s.
She began working once I was old enough to be in school all day.
She did it, of course, for the money, and for the benefits, which included free college tuition for her children through a tuition exchange program.
But I think the reason she did it for as long as she did, and long after I had graduated from Drake in 1986, is the people she met along the way, namely the students.
Mom loved the students, especially the student-athletes because mom loved talking about sports.
And Jan Jensen was one of her favorites.
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I finished at Drake a year before Jensen enrolled, but I was very much aware of her exploits in basketball dating back to her days as a scoring machine for Elkhorn-Kimballton High School in western Iowa.
I then became more aware of Jan Jensen because my mother would often talk about her at the dinner table. She would bring up a conversation they had that day at the front desk of the dormitory where mom worked.
Part of mom’s job was to give students their mail each day as they were heading to and from class.
But another part of mom’s job was conversing with students, and that’s the part she enjoyed the most.
Mom knew most of the students were living away from home for the first time in their lives and she wanted to help make the transition more comfortable for them.
I couldn’t begin to tell you how many times a former Drake student has said how important my mother was to their college experience.
She was known as Mrs. H, and the students were almost like a second family to mom.
My mother was a good judge of character and everything she said about Jan Jensen as a person has turned out to be true.
Mom was convinced that Jensen was destined for success because she saw how Jensen interacted with people, and she saw how serious Jensen was about being a student-athlete.
Jensen treated my mother with respect and kindness, and I’ve told Jensen before how much that meant to mom, and to our family.
Mom always looked forward to those daily conversations with Jensen, and she also looked forward to sharing them with us at home.
So, after learning that Jensen had been promoted to replace Lisa Bluder as the Iowa head coach, I immediately thought about how happy my mother would have been for Jan.
Mom passed away in Feb. 2021 at the age of 91.
She had a good life, and she met some interesting and caring people along the way, people like Jan Jensen, who led the nation in scoring as a senior at Drake with a 29.6 per-game average.
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Jensen was a star on campus, but she always had time for my mom. I think they both just made each other feel better.
Jensen’s senior year was also Lisa Bluder’s first season as the Drake head coach.
Bluder and Jensen would go on to become lifelong friends and coaching colleagues for over three decades.
They both share a passion for basketball and for mentoring young women.
Jensen is a conversation waiting to happen. She has a gift for gab and she loves getting to know people and that’s just one of the reasons she excels as a recruiter.
Jensen makes the person with whom she is conversing feel so important, and that’s a gift from having been around the right people.
Jensen credits much of her success to her family and friends because they helped to show her what really matters in life; things like loyalty and treating people with kindness.
“I’ve really had a lot of people that have been in my corner,” Jensen said in her press conference. “I just really believe in doing the right thing all the time.
“Integrity is big, and loyalty is big.”
My mom was proud to be in Jan Jensen’s corner.
Mom was the first person I called after having received a sympathy card from the Iowa women’s basketball coaching staff following the death of my dog in 2019.
The act of kindness made us both cry over the phone.
I remember thinking that Jan Jensen still was making my mom feel good all these years later just from being kind.
And for that, I will forever be grateful.