Randi Henderson Happy to Be Home with Hawkeyes

Iowa Alum Discusses Joining Coaching Staff

Randi Henderson. (Photo: washubears.com) /

Randi Henderson said it was a difficult decision to leave a head coaching job at a successful women’s basketball program to be an assistant on Jan Jensen’s staff at Iowa.

But the former Hawkeye knew it was the right choice.

“It was not seamless,” Henderson said Tuesday. “But I think it was impossible to say no.”

Iowa City was home to Henderson. She played for the Hawkeyes from 1998-2001 and was part of Lisa Bluder’s first team at Iowa. Henderson’s husband, Duez, played for the men’s basketball team.

Those memories came back when Henderson arrived on campus.

“I don't know if we're yet fully connected, but when we first drove here, after I accepted the job, I was like, ‘Wow, this place is so small compared to what I remembered,’” Henderson said with a laugh. “It was just like a lot of realizing that this is different now. This is Iowa City, as a mom, this is Iowa City as a wife, this is Iowa City as a coach. And so I think we're really looking forward to that.”

Henderson comes back to Iowa after being the head coach at Washington University in St. Louis for the last seven years. Her teams won 103 games and made four NCAA Division III tournament appearances.

The chance to be a part of Jensen’s staff at a program that has made back-to-back national championship appearances was the deciding factor.

“(There were) a lot of discussions back and forth, about Iowa being a great place and Jan being a great person,” Henderson said. “Things that I knew were true and things that I had to leave behind, including a really good team that I really love.

“I don’t think any decision is easy, but when you put getting closer to family for us, when you put being back at your alma mater at a time when women’s basketball is on the rise with someone like Jan, who believed in me when she first started to coach me and led me to be an All-Big Ten post player and led our team to a Big Ten championship. This is a really great opportunity to join alongside somebody that has believed in me for a long time, someone who is important to me.”

Henderson’s resumé is deep with experience — she was a head coach at Coe College for nine seasons, was a head coach for one season at Minnesota-Morris, and was an assistant for two seasons at Charlotte.

“Being a head coach is very different than being an assistant coach, even though it seems similar,” Henderson said. “There's just a lot of changes in decision-making and organization of everyone, managing a lot more people. I think all of that, my experiences as a head coach and an assistant coach, I think just give me a really good perspective on the people that I work with, and how to support a new head coach also.”

Henderson will coach the post players — returners Hannah Stuelke, Addison O’Grady. A.J. Ediger and incoming freshman Ava Heiden — something that Jensen was an expert at as an assistant under Bluder.

“I think that they’re going to be good,” Henderson said of the frontcourt players. “If we continue to develop the post players as we have in the past, I think all of them are capable of making an impact in different ways.”

She also knows who she is following in that role.

“I’m going to learn from the ‘post whisperer,’” Henderson said, referring to the nickname Jensen received because of her success over the years developing Iowa’s post players. “And we’re going to be great.”