Celebrating Women in Sport and Physical Activity - Profiles
Kim Hansen, '80 - 2016 Honoree
Kim Hansen laughed when she said her career has taken a rather backward path.
Hansen, who graduated from Grand Valley in 1980, has coached women's basketball at the Division I level, then a Division III college and then at a high school. But she wouldn't have it any other way.
Hansen played for Laker coaches Joan Boand and Pat Baker. The Unity Christian product is tops in the Laker women's basketball record books for most rebounds in a career (1,362) and second for most points in a career (1,969).
Her talents caught the attention of the Women's Basketball League. "It was my senior year and Joan Boand told me I was drafted, and said, 'Drafted by who?'" Hansen said. "I wasn't aware that there was a women's league."
It was the San Francisco Pioneers, and Hansen laughed and said she was a true pioneer in the two-year-old league that went bankrupt a few years later. "I would do it again for the peanuts we were paid," she said.
From the pro leagues, Hansen went to Beaumont, Texas, where she enrolled in Lamar University's graduate program for health and physical education. "Many of my friends who graduated from Grand Valley moved to Texas to look for jobs in physical education, so I thought it would be a good place to go," she said.
After earning a master's degree, Hansen was hired by Wichita State University as assistant women's basketball coach. After five years with the Shockers, she coached and taught at North Central College in Illinois.
"That coaching position included teaching full-time and I found I fell in love with teaching," she said. Hansen stayed at North Central College for eight years, and then took a job teaching health and physical education and coaching girls basketball at Hawken School in Ohio, then at two other schools before being hired by Cleveland Heights in 2009.
She retired as the Cleveland Heights girls basketball coach last spring but is coaching an eighth-grade team this year.
"I tell my students that playing basketball is what got me to care about what my education would look like. I absolutely loved playing basketball. I enjoyed the sport and the camaraderie of the team.
"It was those friendships that got me to Grand Valley in the first place," she said.
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