Finally a Final Four for Iowa’s ultimate coaching power trio: Bluder, Jensen, and Fitzgerald

Lisa Bluder, center, with her Iowa coaching staff, display some of the hardware they’ve amassed in her 23 years as the Hawkeyes head coach. Could a national championship trophy be on the way?
Photo: Iowa Women’s Basketball Media Guide.

Excuse the teardrops on this column, but your friendly neighborhood paragraph stacker is crying tears of joy.

The Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball team made it to the NCAA Final Four.

They’re led by that wunderkind from West Des Moines, Caitlin Clark, the darling of all college basketball this season.

She shoots, she passes, she rebounds, and she fires up an arena like a nuclear blast.

I love Clark, but my happy tears fall for her coaches, specifically Lisa Bluder, Jan Jensen, and Jenni Fitzgerald.

I met them as a wee paragraph stacker at Drake, learning my trade.

I believe that if you had to rank the people of Iowa based on character, you start at No. 4, because Lisa, Jan, and Jenni are in a three-way tie for first.

I covered the women’s basketball team when the ultimate power trio coached my beloved Bulldogs.

Lisa’s Drake teams were the best show in Drake athletics when I was a student from 1993-97. The men’s team of my era remained mired in the same mediocrity that had hounded the team since Maury John left for Iowa State.

Center Tricia Wakely shook off defenders on the way to inside baskets like the rest of us shiver on a cold day. Left-handed guard Kiersten Miller had a way of snaking her arm around opposing ball handlers and popping the ball loose for steals and points.

Forward Kristi Kinne baffled defenders with her patented cross-over dribble, and guard Julie Rittgers swished three-pointers years before Steph Curry made it fashionable.

That team won the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament, beating Southwest Missouri State on their home floor in Springfield, Mo. They went on to the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

Watching those games remains the fondest memories of my paragraph-stacking career.

But there was more to my affection for Lisa, Jan, and Jenni than their teams’ breathtaking athletic ability.

I grew up in a chaotic household. My dad struggled with heart disease in his final years, making the strongest male role model in my early life fragile. He died in 1988 when I was 13.

My mom was even more problematic, the details of which I’ll spare readers other than to say prescription drug addiction didn’t just start with OxyContin. Mom died in 1990 after a fall downstairs.

My psychologist and I work to untangle the ramifications of those adverse childhood experiences to this day. But one thing I know for sure was there was an absolute, paralyzing fear of women. I struggled to relate to my peers.

It took years for Mom 2.0, the kindly east Des Moines hairdresser who raised me after my first mom died, to get me to accept her love as real and unconditional.

Yet with rare exceptions, up to the point that I started to cover Lisa’s teams, I had a real problem with women.

I viewed women as a threat that should be feared, avoided, and not trusted. This isn’t rational thinking, of course. And it led to some unpleasant behavior in both romantic relationships and friendships with women.

But covering Lisa’s Drake teams, I was exposed to strong, confident, skilled, passionate, and driven women.

I was surrounded by all these powerful women who were kind, genuine, and earnest. And they were led by Lisa, Jan, and Jenni, women whose character was obvious by both words and actions.

I often wondered what my first mother’s life would have been like if she had grown up in the Title IX era and had coaches like Lisa, Jan, and Jenni to show her a path for a young woman.

Lisa’s teams showed me that for all those dark, sad outcomes in the past, there were so many brighter, happier, and more realistic stories that I was missing because a collection of thinking errors drove me to dread interactions with women, rather than cherish these wonderful years with so many spectacular peers.

As a coach, Lisa knows your actions reach far beyond the locker room and court. She helps guide the futures of young people every day.

But the example Lisa set, the actions she took, and the kindness she showed helped heal a frightened, confused aspiring newsman nearly 30 years ago.

I will always be in her debt because you showed me a better way to be. Her teams gave me hope and helped me make peace with old pain.

I still struggle with my attitudes and actions as I relate to women and so many other things in this life. We’re all works in progress.

But thanks to friendships with people such as Lisa Bluder, that work is in a much better place than it ever could have been without her.

Now the eyes of the sporting nation are on my old friends. I couldn’t be happier. I wish I was there on the sidelines, scrawling notes on my steno pad, and talking plays with my buddy, Jane Burns, one of the best journalists and friends I’ve ever had.

But my days on the sidelines have passed. I’m in front of a classroom now, but when the Final Four games come, I’ll be in front of the TV.

Rooting for Lisa, Jan, and Jenni.

Oh, and that Clark kid? She’s good, too.

Middle school teacher Daniel P. Finney is a Marion County Express columnist.


Daniel P. Finney wrote for newspapers for 27 years before being laid off in 2020. He teaches middle school English now. He writes columns and podcasts for ParagraphStacker.com, a free, reader-supported website. Please consider donating $10 a month to help him cover the expenses of this site.
Post: 1217 24th St., Apt. 36, Des Moines, 50311.
Zelle: newsmanone@gmail.com.
Venmo@newsmanone.
PayPalpaypal.me/paragraphstacker.

Podcast 118: Talkin’ Caitlyn Clark, killer sandwiches, and the seaweed monster headed for Florida (where else)

118: Talkin' Caitlyn Clark, killer sandwiches, and the giant seaweed monster headed to Florida (of course) Talking Paragraphs

Dan and Paul meander their way through topics including the magnificence of Caitlyn Clark, how sandwiches are killing Americans, and the giant seaweed monster headed to Florida (of course). — Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/talkingparagraphs/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/talkingparagraphs/support
  1. 118: Talkin' Caitlyn Clark, killer sandwiches, and the giant seaweed monster headed to Florida (of course)
  2. 117: Things Paul is going to do while unemployed
  3. 116: AWOL Paul is off for lode management; Baseball bases should be even bigger; Will France's big cocaine find fuel a 'Cocaine Bear' sequel?
  4. 115: Paul shares his harrowing story of Tetris addiction and why he won't be watching the Apple+ movie; plus 'Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey'
  5. 114: Shower spiders are the scariest; How did Gen-X get through school without snacks; and Chik-fil-A sells fried cauliflower sandwiches

If I fall, will my Apple Watch catch me?

Image by pch.vector on Freepik

The teacher’s schedule is admirable in many ways. The school day is technically over at 3:45 p.m., at least by our union contract. I don’t know many teachers who make it out of the building on the dot every day. I seldom do, but I’m not a veteran yet.

We get nice breaks around the end-of-the-year holidays, a week for spring break, and, of course, summer vacation.

One way a teacher’s schedule is unenviable: There are no errands done during the day. I have a half-hour for lunch, during which I conduct all personal business including my lone bathroom break of the day.

So, the perceived rapture of spring break is blunted by the backlog of doctor appointments and tasks delayed during the session.

My spring break highlight was a trip to the McFarland Clinic in Ames to get cortisone shots in both of my arthritic knees. My previous shots had worn off and I moved powered by grunts and groans for the last month before the break.

My doctor’s needle hit the spot and my knees are now tolerable for walking. Make no mistake, I am not taking long strides down the hallway unassisted. I’m still using a walker. It just doesn’t hurt as bad.

The steroid treatment comes with its risks. The biggest, I think, is that eventually, it will stop working.

That will be a truly sad day because I will either need surgery or a wheelchair.

I’m not a good candidate for surgery. I live with diabetes, and I am morbidly obese. I also have high blood pressure and probably a few other problems I’ve forgotten.

I know physical therapy and exercise are potential remedies, but that will have to wait until summer break.

The limitations to my mobility come with their own form of existential dread. There are a lot of open-ended worries. If my legs fail, how will I take care of myself? My parents are elderly and, really, they’ve done enough.

Likewise, most of my close friends either have families of their own to tend to or are older than me.

I never married and have no prospects, let alone desire.

This kind of thinking makes a toxic mix with my longstanding anxiety. I started an ambitious — and larger than I thought it was — spring cleaning project in my apartment.

Part of it involved me getting on the floor to stack some books on a shelf.

The worst pain I get from my knees is when I put my full body weight on my knees to stand up. Even with fresh cortisone shots, the struggle to get off the floor left my joints screaming in agony.

I bought an Apple Watch a year or so ago. I hated to set aside my lovely Drake University watch, a graduation present. However, the Apple Watch has a feature that senses if you’ve fallen and calls 911 if you don’t tell it to stop.

I recall the “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!” commercials from my youth. We laughed at those then. Now I know the true terror.

I got up, of course. This column was typed from my easy chair.

The spring-cleaning project was completed, albeit with an overly generous assist from a dear friend.

The frustration and self-loathing that builds up inside me when I can’t do something on my own is something I need to work on in behavioral therapy. I don’t like the overused phrase “new normal.” I am reminded of the line from a Bruce Cockburn song: “The trouble with normal is it always gets worse.”

However, limited mobility is, for now, my new normal.

I need to be thinking about ways to change my life to fit that rather than being peeved that things are not the way they used to be.

To quote another song, this one by Fleetwood Mac, “Yesterday’s gone. Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.”

Middle school teacher Daniel P. Finney is a Marion County Express columnist.


Daniel P. Finney wrote for newspapers for 27 years before being laid off in 2020. He teaches middle school English now. He writes columns and podcasts for ParagraphStacker.com, a free, reader-supported website. Please consider donating $10 a month to help him cover the expenses of this site.
Post: 1217 24th St., Apt. 36, Des Moines, 50311.
Zelle: newsmanone@gmail.com.
Venmo@newsmanone.
PayPalpaypal.me/paragraphstacker.