It’s been more than a month since the final buzzer sounded in the NCAA championship game, but Monday proved a pivotal day for the future of women’s basketball at the University of Iowa. First, Lisa Bluder announced her retirement after 24 years as head coach of the Hawkeyes. Then, UI Athletics announced associate coach Jan Jensen, who has worked in tandem with Bluder for 28 years, is the team’s new head coach.
“After several conversations with Coach Bluder and President Wilson over the last few days, it is clear that everything that we are seeking in a head coach, we have found right here,” UI Athletics Director Beth Goetz said as part of the statement announcing Jensen’s appointment.
Bluder announced her retirement in an open letter to the “Hawkeye Nation,” published on the UI Athletics site shortly before Jensen’s selection was announced.
“After the season ended, I spent time with our student-athletes and coaches reviewing the season and preparing those moving on for what comes next,” Bluder wrote. “With that also came personal contemplation about what this journey has meant to me, how to best champion this program, and what the future looks like for my family and me. After then taking some time away with my husband, David, it became clear to me that I am ready to step aside.”
Bluder’s first head coaching job was at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, where she led the Queen Bees for six seasons. Bluder then moved onto Drake University, where she was head coach of the Bulldogs for a decade, before taking the job at UI.
Bluder retires with a record of 528-254, making her the winningest women’s basketball head coach in Big Ten history, and NCAA’s 10th winningest women’s basketball head coach ever. Bluder has also won many honors, national (the Naismith Coach of the Year in 2019), conference-level (named Big Ten Coach of the Year three times) and the very local (in 2008, she was inducted into the Hall of Fame at Linn-Mar, the high school where she played six-on-six basketball). In 2015, Bluder was honored by the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association with the Carol Eckman Award, which is given to a coach who exemplifies “integrity and character through sportsmanship, commitment to the student-athlete, honesty, ethical behavior, courage and dedication to purpose.”
Bluder didn’t mention any of those honors in her letter to Hawkeyes, and instead focused on the athletes she’s coached.
“It has been the honor of my career to be a part of the Iowa Hawkeye family, and to lead a women’s basketball program filled with so many talented and remarkable young women, who have gone on to do great things in their careers and, more importantly, in their lives,” she said.
In addition to thanking “each and every young woman who believed in our program and in our values for nearly a quarter of a century, and who proudly wore the Black & Gold,” Bluder also thanked Goetz and the other UI administrators she’s worked under, as well as her family, “the incredible fans” who gave her teams “the greatest home court advantage in all of women’s basketball” and the “assistant coaches and operations and support staff who each played an integral role in our journey.”
“I specifically want to acknowledge the work of Jan Jensen and Jenni Fitzgerald whom I have had the pleasure of working alongside for the past 32 years,” she said.
Jensen, who grew up in Kimballton, Iowa, was a senior on the Drake women’s basketball team when Bluder took over as the team’s head coach. Jensen went on to become part of the coaching staff at Drake under Bluder for eight years. When Bluder took the job at UI, Jensen was offered the head coaching position, but declined it to follow Bluder to Iowa City.
“Jan could’ve been the head coach of Drake University,” Bluder later recalled. “But we had a dream — we wanted to go to a Final Four, we wanted to fill Carver.”
They not only did both, they also set an all-time attendance record for a single women’s basketball game last fall by selling out Kinnick Stadium for a special outdoors scrimmage against DePaul, a charity event which raised a quarter million dollars for the UI Stead Family Children’s Hospital.
Bluder’s influence, and the impact of the team culture she created, has been felt well beyond the walls of Carver or Kinnick. In the current issue of Little Village, Editor-in-Chief Emma McClatchey, an Iowa City native and lifelong Hawkeye fan, explores the “Bluder effect” and how her teams have helped foster a sense of community in a fragmented state.
The announcement of Bluder’s retirement at the height of her career surprised many, including former Hawkeye Kate Martin, who recently made the roster of the Las Vegas Aces following six years on Bluder and Jensen’s squad. After learning the news from a reporter during an Aces press conference, Martin said she was “so shocked I have the chills right now,” but congratulated Bluder.
“She’s coached at Iowa for as long as I’ve been alive so she deserves a break … family time, relaxation. Lord knows we put her through enough,” Martin said with a smile. “She’s one of the greatest of all time.”
“Simply no one better at building a team,” Hawk-turned-Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark posted in a reaction to the news on Twitter. “Thank you for believing in me more than anyone. Enjoy retirement, coach. Very much deserved.”
This was quickly followed up by another post about Jensen’s ascension: “The only option there ever was!!! You deserve this more than anyone. Can’t wait to watch you lead this program!!!”
Bluder finished her letter on Monday by saying that even though her coaching career is over, her involvement with UI women’s basketball isn’t.
“It is my hope that now with more time and energy, I can be an asset to our basketball program and this athletics department in any way that I am able,” she said.
