Sports
Central -- and Eastern -- Iowa Star Comes Home
A product of Walnut Creek YMCA and West Des Moines Dowling Catholic, Jennie (Lillis) Baranczyk is coming home to coach Drake.
Jennie (Lillis) Baranczyk — who honed her basketball skills at the and starred for West Des Moines and the Iowa Hawkeyes — is now the new Drake women’s basketball coach.
She was to be introduced yesterday, and her mother couldn't have been more pleased.
“We’re really excited,” Joyce Lillis, Jennie’s mother, told the Des Moines Register. “It’s not a surprise. She’s very driven and she has a great background.
“I think she’ll do an outstanding job.”
Drake's athletic director, Sandy Hatfield Clubb, praised her new coach as right for the job.
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“I am thrilled to confirm that we have hired Jennie Lillis Baranczyk to be our new women’s basketball head coach,” Hatfield Clubb said in a release. “She is an outstanding coach and is the perfect fit to lead our women’s basketball program.
“It is exciting to welcome Jennie back to Des Moines.”
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