The NCAA News - Briefly in the News

September 30, 1996

• Woman coach joins men's staff
• Football for relief workers
• 1,000th football game
• Sports sponsorship

Woman coach joins men's staff

Head coach Charlie Bruns made the unlikely a reality for Hensen, who had dreamed of coaching men but felt the sports world would resist.

In accepting the coaching position, Hensen joined a select group of women who have leaped the gender barrier. Officials of the NCAA and the Women's Sports Foundation can recall only two women who have held coaching jobs with men's basketball programs. Kerri-Ann McTieran is head coach of the men's team at Kingsboro Community College in Brooklyn, New York, and Bernadette Locke-Mattox was an assistant coach for the University of Kentucky between 1991 and 1994.

Hensen renewed her aspirations to coach men's basketball when Locke-Mattox was hired at Kentucky.

"That definitely sent the spark out there, after she was doing it, " Hensen told the Anchorage Daily News.

Men long have coached women at the highest levels of basketball, but the reverse has been rare.

"It's our society," Hensen said. "It's unfortunate, but that's the way it is."

Hensen joined the Alaska Anchorage staff late last year, overseeing conditioning and supervising shooting and ball-handling drills for the women's team.

Bruns became aware of her coaching abilities while working with her at basketball camps during the summer. He said he considered her for the assistant coaching position even before she applied.

Hensen is an achiever, as her high-school career in Alaska demonstrated. She was named high-school player of the year for Alaska in 1991, and she played on a state-championship volleyball team and won three state cross-country titles.

During her collegiate basketball career at Northern Arizona University, Hensen averaged 10 points a game. She also played for Athletes in Action, competing in South Africa in 1993. Earlier this year, she played for a touring team that traveled to England. She considered an offer to play professionally overseas but decided coaching was her future.

Hensen said she doesn't view herself as a barrier-breaker so much as a hungry coach who wants to work her way into a college head coaching job.

Athletics director Timothy J. Dillon said Alaska Anchorage hired the best-qualified person for the men's staff.

"If that's considered forward-thinking, that's what we want to be part of," he said. "You try to put the best person in the position. If it winds up being a Martian, that's who it is.

"I think she's going to do a super job here."

Head women's basketball coach Jerry McLaughlin, who has coached in several parts of the country, said Alaska is more open-minded and had fewer rigid divisions between men's and women's basketball.

"It (Alaska) doesn't have the mind-set that women are for women's basketball," McLaughlin said.

To help Hensen along, Bruns has made it clear to team members that Hensen's word carries the same weight as that of the other assistants. And most players are veterans of last year's 19-9 team, and thus familiar with Hensen.

"She'll earn their respect," Bruns said. "Our team already understands if she talks, they listen."

Football for relief workers

"I know all the people of Wake County and the rest of the state join me in thanking the national guard and the Department of Transportation for all their efforts that have touched so many lives," North Carolina State athletics director Les Robinson said.

"They've made a big impact as we continue to recover from the hurricane. We want to salute them and thank them for being there, as they always are, when we are in need."

At the peak of operations following the September 6 hurricane, about 1,800 national guard troops and transportation department workers used the North Carolina state fairgrounds -- located just across Trinity Road from the Wolfpack's Carter-Finley Stadium -- as their base for the cleanup.

1,000th football game

This is the 102nd season for Alabama football. Alabama's first game was in 1892, when coach E. B. Beaumont led the Crimson Tide to a 56-0 win over Birmingham High School. The Tide didn't play football in 1898, 1918 and 1943.

The 1994 season was marked by celebrations of the landmark 100th anniversary of football at the school, but this year's milestone has crept up quietly.

"I didn't know we were getting up on the 1,000th game," coach Gene Stallings told The Associated Press. "That kind of snuck up on me. Sometimes I feel like I've coached 1,000 games here myself."

Mississippi State University has played Alabama the most times -- 80 -- and the Tide has made its most-played opponent its most frequent victim, going 65-12-3 against the Bulldogs.

Of its first 1,000 contests, 47 have been bowl games and 287 were coached by Paul "Bear" Bryant. Alabama has a 707-250-43 record overall.

-- Compiled by Sally Huggins

Sports sponsorship

Women's softball at Texas Woman's University, discontinued in 1981 after the successful program won the 1979 AIAW/ASA Women's College World Series, is back with hopes of regaining its winning tradition. The team, coached by Dianne Baker, has been a year in the making and was formed around a combination of transfers, all-district and all-state freshmen, and a few athletes who came to the university and sat out last year. The team has been participating in the nontraditional season and will play its first regular-season game February 7.

The University of Illinois at Chicago announced it has dropped men's ice hockey. Illinois-Chicago competed in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association.

Women's tennis is returning to California State University, Dominguez Hills, after a 20-year absence. "We have been looking at ways to offer more opportunities for women to participate," said athletics director Ron Prettyman, "and this is certainly one of the avenues that will increase that opportunity." Intercollegiate play will begin in the spring.

La Roche College elevated its women's tennis team from club to varsity status, giving the college 11 varsity teams.

The University of Missouri, St. Louis, has dropped swimming as a varsity sport. Swimming is not a conference sport in Missouri-St. Louis' new conference, the Great Lakes Valley Conference. Swimming was founded as a varsity sport at the university in 1971. Funds from the swimming program have been reallocated in an effort to strengthen and solidify the remaining sports to make those teams more competitive.

The University of the South has elevated its equestrian team to varsity status. The team, which has functioned as a club team since 1978, will participate in intercollegiate competition this fall and next spring.

The Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference added soccer as a men's sport beginning this fall.

Women's soccer will become an intercollegiate sport at Kent State University effective with the fall 1997 semester. The university plans to hire a head coach this fall and begin recruiting to be prepared for competition next fall.

Brown University became the third Division I team to sponsor equestrian as a varsity sport when it established a team this fall.