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In a recent Iowa women’s basketball team meeting, after the Hawkeyes had dropped five straight Big Ten games, first-year head coach Jan Jensen told the story of Florence Chadwick, an American swimmer.
In 1952, Chadwick attempted to become the first woman to swim the 26 miles from the Catalina Islands to the California coastline. Fifteen hours into the swim, a heavy fog settled on the open waters and the 34-year-old began to doubt herself. An hour later, convinced she couldn’t make it, since she couldn’t see the coastline, she pulled herself into a boat. She was less than a mile from the shore.
“The shore is closer than you think,” Jensen told to her players. “You’re closer than you are far. Don’t get out of the water.”
It’s a message that Jensen has reiterated to her team and herself throughout this season.
Iowa’s vaunted history is so recent, and the current team — sitting at 14-7 and 13th in the Big Ten — hasn’t achieved the success that’s become expected in Iowa City. As it stands, Iowa is on the outside looking in for the NCAA Tournament, but that’s what happens during a rebuilding season.
Former assistants who become head coaches often talk about the challenges of moving “one seat over,” how losses hit differently. Even among the longest-tenured assistants-turned-head coaches, there’s so much they don’t see until that designation falls on their shoulders. This year, the Hawkeyes have lost as many regular-season conference games as the last two seasons combined, and that’s still with three top-10 opponents remaining in their final eight Big Ten games.
Sunday will encapsulate this season’s journey for Jensen and these Hawkeyes — the past and the present, in conjunction and in contrast. Jensen knows she can hold gratitude for both while pushing the program closer to where she wants to be.
“It’s easier when you focus on gratitude, and you focus on why you do what you do,” Jensen said. “Before everybody was paying attention, my same motivation was then as it is now. … When you keep the main thing the main thing, then you can still navigate and move in your challenges, the highs and the lows, and all of it.”
She keeps coming back to this thought: Don’t get out of the water. The shore is closer than you think.
It might be different from a season ago, but different isn’t necessarily bad.
When Jensen went on a recruiting trip last summer, Brenda Kral, the women’s basketball office secretary, went a bit rogue. Jensen had only recently moved down the hall into her new office, and her belongings were still in boxes and files.
Adjustments needed to be made, but there were only so many options. The room is a unique shape, half of the room being windows. On the only two walls devoid of windows, wall units are affixed, and the massive desk sits just above the main power source, so that really couldn’t go anywhere, either. But the couches and coffee table that had sat in the exact same position for the last 14 years — those could move.
Kral got to work. She reorganized the chairs and couch, shifting them closer to the curved windows. She added a display bookcase for Jensen’s photos and memorabilia. Moved the peace lily plant from one side of the room to the other. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
When Jensen returned, she called down the hall to Kral. She loved it. It was different. Certain chairs sat in better lighting now, and others were in a position that would take some getting used to, but it felt fresh and different, and that — Jensen knew — she could work with.
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