'Man, look at what we've got'

Jensen assumes new role in an exploding sport

by Monica Thomas

One day in April, I clocked into my usual shift at Scooter's Coffee in Coralville, then balancing my duties in the back with an eye for customers at the register — when one approached. Towering over me, cleanly dressed, a patient expression across her face, I recognized Jan Jensen in a heartbeat.

I was starstruck. Suddenly, I completely forgot how to work the register system. I struggled through getting her her coffee, knowing I couldn’t fumble the Iowa women’s basketball head coach’s order. And I handed it to her, hands shaking. 

Before March of 2023, never in my life had I watched women’s basketball — or really any basketball at all. But I was swept up by the Caitlin Clark effect. Soon, I was watching every Hawkeye women’s game and obsessively following their every move. I was captivated. Hook, line, and sinker, I was in. And so were millions of others.  

After the end of the history-making 2024 season, with notable players such as Caitlin Clark, Kate Martin, and Gabbie Marshall graduating, head coach Lisa Bluder announced her retirement after 24 years at Iowa.

And in came associate head coach Jan Jensen to fill her role. It felt like fate. With her development of the famous Hawkeye posts from Megan Gustafson to Monika Czinano, the program couldn’t have dreamed of a better replacement.

Jami Martin-Trainor, fourth-year honors student and executive editor at The Daily Iowan, had the chance to shadow Jensen during a pre-season practice and get to know her on a deeper level. 

“The biggest thing I was able to observe was the appreciation she had for the people around her,” Martin-Trainor stated. “From her players, to her coaching staff, to the practice team, Jan treated everyone with the utmost respect and showed they played a pivotal role in the program through her actions.”

Jensen has also been influential off the court. She is a massive fundraiser for United Way of Johnson County, raising over $2 million in 2006 and over $2.5 million in 2014. Also in 2006, she received the Corridor Business Journal Forty Under 40 Award. In 2007, she received the Drake Double D Award for outstanding achievement in a given field. In 2014, Jensen was awarded the Corridor Business “Women of Influence” Award, being recognized as a role model in her field and community. 

Such wider efforts still trickle down to basketball, though, the way she lives her life equaling the way she runs her team.

“We chatted about how Jan navigates interpersonal relationships with her team and the emotion she brings into her day-to-day life,” Martin-Trainor stated. “She said that being the head coach of this program is a dream come true and is trying to take things one day at a time with her players.”

After record-breaking attendance with a near-celebrity status team, the Hawkeyes have sold out season tickets for a second year in a row. Carver-Hawkeye Arena will again be filled to the brim with fans excited to support these athletes, this time with Jensen at the helm.

“We are so excited about the next chapter and trying to do it all again in a different way that we don’t spend much time on what we’re missing,” Jensen said on media day Oct. 10. “We’re just really focused on, ‘Man, look at what we’ve got’.” 

Raised in Kimballton, Iowa, Jensen graduated from Drake University in 1991 with a degree in public relations, followed by a master’s in higher education in 1996. At Drake, she played basketball for Bluder, head coach of the Bulldogs at the time, and the two formed a lasting relationship culminating in the success they’ve seen today.

After college, Jensen played in Germany for the European Professional Basketball League, leading her club to many notable accolades. And upon returning to the United States, Jensen returned to Drake to be an assistant coach to Bluder.

Together, they led the Bulldogs to five 20-win seasons and eight Missouri Valley Conference Tournaments. So when Bluder made the transition to Iowa in 2000, Jensen followed in stride. Knowing they made a powerful team, she became Bluder’s associate head coach. 

There, the duo took the Iowa women’s basketball team to 22 postseason appearances. These included five trips to the Big Ten Tournament Championship, three of these in the last three seasons. 

She made the program the first team in Big Ten conference history to play in back-to-back NCAA National Championship games and, thus, took it to its first national title appearance in program history in 2023. Following this season, Jensen was awarded the WBCA’s Assistant Coach of the Year.

After serving as associate head coach for 24 years, Jensen received her biggest promotion yet, and she has great ambitions for the program. But given the tremendous rise that Caitlin Clark and her class led women’s basketball to, it’s hard not to ruminate or have a bit of anxiety regarding starting fresh. 

“It’s so easy to look back on the last three or four years [and say], ‘Oh my gosh, that was awesome,’” Jensen said at media day. “Well, there were some times where it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, are we ever going to get this figured out?’ But that’s the beauty of what coaching is.

“We want to live up to that respect, so we’re working like crazy,” she added. “I don’t know if we needed the extra motivation, but I certainly know … we want to make sure everybody continues to have a really great experience when they come to Carver [Hawkeye Arena].”

“I don’t know what I did in my life to get to have that opportunity, but I just feel really blessed because … it isn’t like there everywhere,” Jensen said at media day. “How blessed are we to get to play here and I get to coach here?”