Note: This is the second of a three-part series highlighting notable women of Harrison County in honor of Women's History Month.
Getting started
Karen Jennings’ family moved to the small town of Persia when she was in sixth grade.
Originally attending Lewis Central in Council Bluffs, Jennings’ father purchased a farm in Harrison County and she started attending Tri-Center. Shortly thereafter, she was diagnosed with scoliosis.
“I started wearing a back brace, and my parents tried to not make a big deal out of it,” Jennings said. “They were just like, ‘this is temporary, it’s gonna keep it from getting worse, this will help you for the long haul.’”
Although it was “not fun” being the kid that always had to wear a brace, Jennings said that, since Persia is a small town, people got used to it.
“Everybody has to deal with something in their life, and I guess this is one of the things I have to deal with,” she said.
Because of that, sports became a very positive outlet for Jennings. Her doctor allowed her to take the brace off for two hours a day, and those two hours were often spent on basketball, volleyball and track practice.
Basketball took the driver’s seat in Jennings’ life for multiple reasons. Her father, Jim, was a college basketball player, and he also coached for 10 years in Illinois before he started getting into farming.
“My dad was very passionate about basketball, and he was very passionate about us giving 100% no matter what we did… he was very motivational,” Jennings said.
Jennings’ mother, Verna, was also competitive, but in a different way. With a focus on academics and insistence on her children being respectful to others, ___ filtered her competitive spirit into the areas of life outside of sports.
“We didn’t have a lot of resources, but we had a lot of effort and attitude, and I think that goes a long way,” Jennings said.
When the family was first considering a move to the farm in Persia, Jennings didn’t want to. Jim promised that if they did he would pour her a basketball court, and that promise was kept. Jennings and her brother played on the concrete pad with a hoop behind the farm every day.
Starting basketball in fourth grade, Jennings saw immediate success. With natural instincts for the game and a frame that eventually capped at 6 feet 2 inches, the decision to pursue a college basketball career was made when she entered high school.
“I just had that fire underneath me… when you have that fire it drives you every day, so I practiced every day,” Jennings said.
‘I wanted to play’
Jim and Verna would always set aside money for their daughter to attend basketball camps in the summer. Supportive of their daughter being independent, Jennings took her first plane ride before her senior year of high school when she was chosen for the Top 66 camp. They flew her to another camp in Virginia. Jennings also made the USA Olympic Festival team ahead of her freshman year of college, and she ended up playing on three of those, as well as the junior national team in 1991 and the national team in 1992.
But perhaps the most impactful camp Jennings attended came when, before her junior year of high school, she made sure to go to a camp that was run by the Nebraska coaching staff.
After winning Most Valuable Player of the whole camp, then Nebraska head coach Angela Beck asked to meet with Jennings and her father, which is when she offered the big from Persia a full-ride scholarship.
Jennings said she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do yet and that she wanted to think her options over, but the school was always after her following her performance that summer.
“When they came out to our farm, when Coach Beck and her whole staff came out for a visit, she said that if I came to Nebraska she guaranteed that I would play 20 minutes a game,” Jennings said. “No other college had guaranteed that, and I wanted to play. It wasn’t good enough for me just to get a scholarship and be on the team – I actually wanted to play.”
After that, the rest was history and the list of accolades for Jennings piled up.
A part of several firsts (first player in school history to record 2,000 points and 1,000 rebounds, first Husker to have her jersey retired, part of the program’s first NCAA tournament win and the first Nebraska female student-athlete to be inducted into the CoSIDA Academic All-America Hall of Fame), Jennings’ mark on the Nebraska’s women’s basketball program is unmatched.
“I never dreamt that I would go to the level I went to in basketball,” she said. “I never thought that I would be an All-American, I just really wanted to play as much as I could for the University of Nebraska. When I went as far as I did and received all of the accolades I did, I just felt very blessed and very surprised. I just wanted to outwork everyone and do my best.”
After college, Jennings had a short stint playing professionally in France. Starting every game as the second-leading scorer on the team, Jennings said she enjoyed the experience and the travel that went along with it, but her desire to be closer to family won out.
“I had always grown up with a lot of support within the Tri-Center community, with my parents, with my grandparents, then I went to Nebraska it was like another big family,” she said. “Those people at Nebraska are just unbelievably fantastic, and the fans are just the best. Then when I went overseas I didn’t have anyone - it was just me. It was a huge growth experience for me, but I always realized that, ‘you know what, I think I’m ready to do something else.’
“I think if it were like now where I had the internet, I’m able to FaceTime, we have laptops, computers and iPads, I think it would’ve been a much different experience today than it was back then. We didn’t even have the internet yet, we didn’t have email, and it was a time where you got one phone call to your parents once a week to let them know how the game went and that was it.”
After returning to Nebraska, Jennings applied for physical therapy school since she already fulfilled the requirements. She was accepted and attended for three years before practicing for almost four years and realizing that it wasn’t what she wanted to do.
From there, Jennings got her real estate license and “fell in love” with the real estate arena.
“I got that competitive passion for real estate, and I think it just drove me,” she said. “I felt like I had the right personality, and it was different every day, and I knew that if I worked really, really hard it would pay off.”
Those aren’t the only similarities between real estate and basketball that Jennings saw.
“The work ethic, fundamentals, be quick but don’t hurry, which is one of my favorite quotes from John Wooden,” she said. “In real estate time is of the essence, but don’t hurry your paperwork, don’t make mistakes, don’t wait to do something because someone else might get it before you. Building relationships, teamwork, coaching others, execution, giving your all – it’s crazy how many parallels there are.”
Blessed with support
Starting her basketball career at the YMCA in Council Bluffs, Jennings was dropped at the door by her mother who told her, “You’re gonna play. Go to the front desk and ask them where you need to go.”
At 10 years old, that’s exactly what Jennings did. They sent her upstairs, and in her first game she scored 14 points.
“That’s where it began,” Jennings said. “To think I ended up at Nebraska is pretty crazy.”
Jennings acknowledged the opportunities that have been afforded to her by the game of basketball, and thanked her parents for never saying no to them.
Back in the 80s, Verna worked as an elementary school teacher and Jim dealt with the challenges of farming, while also working as a salesman on the side. He would leave on Mondays and come home on Fridays, but when Jennings got to high school he adjusted his schedule so he wouldn’t miss any games.
Jennings’ grandparents, Vern and June Redinbaugh, lived in Harrison County, as well, and they never missed one of their granddaughter’s games all throughout junior and senior high, and never missed a home game at Nebraska.
On top of that, the town of Persia organized a bus full of people to go watch Jennings’ last game as a senior in college.
“I just feel extremely blessed to have grown up where I have grown up… It was a very nourishing environment,” Jennings said. “Some of the greatest people come out of small towns. I’m still pretty good friends with some of the Missouri Valley girls that I played against, so that’s kind of neat.
“We really have some great successful people that come out of these small towns, and I really believe it’s because of the quality of life they’re given, the amount of parental support that’s given and the amount of support they give teachers and administrators in these small schools. It’s really special, and as these smaller towns are dying it’s sad to me. They have some of the things that I think have made our country so great.”
