Former K-State star part of husband-wife duo leading Newman women’s hoops turnaround
A husband-and-wife duo who share head coach responsibilities, all while raising two children together, have helped the Newman University women’s basketball team begin trending in the right direction.
Life has never been busier for Valley Center native Drew Johnson and his wife, Nicole Ohlde, the former Kansas State star and WNBA champion, but life has also never been better for the couple.
The Johnsons are currently riding the high of leading the program to its first MIAA conference tournament appearance in program history, as the No. 9 seed Jets play No. 8 seed Northwest Missouri State at 6 p.m. Wednesday.
“It’s really a blessing to be able to do this with someone you care so much about,” Drew Johnson said. “But when you have a 1-year-old and a 5-year-old, that creates some challenges. Making sure they get the love and support from their parents is important to us. When we started coaching together, we talked about how important it was for us to still have family life. We want to be able to eat dinner with our children. You always hear it takes a village and that’s very true for us.”
Family time is important, but make no mistake, the Johnsons are a basketball family.
Their 5-year-old son, Dax, has become the team’s No. 1 fan. He sits behind the bench on road games and leads defense chants on his own. With Newman needing a win this past weekend to help earn a spot in the postseason for the first time since 2019, the first thing Dax told his parents when waking up on game day was how nervous he was. While Dax is able to come to the games, a mix of family and friends have helped the couple with babysitting their 1-year-old son, Cooper, on game days.
Since they serve as co-head coaches of the rising NCAA Div. II team, the couple spends “almost every waking second” together during basketball season. Separate offices at work helps, but the real reason why it has been such a successful working relationship is that their views on the game align.
“We have a lot of the same beliefs as far as things on the court go, so it’s always fun to do it with somebody you agree with in a basketball sense,” Ohlde-Johnson said. “And then to do it with your husband and to be able to have your kids in the gym and have this one big family at Newman has been so special.
“We both have our own things that we’re good at and things that the other person is better at. We work well together and there’s no ego because that gets checked at the door, so we’ve managed to work really well together.”
Before taking over at Newman last season, the couple coached together for four seasons at Bethel, where they had similar success turning around the program with Johnson as the head coach and Ohlde-Johnson as the associate head coach.
Ohlde Johnson, a Clay Center native who went on to become a two-time All-American at K-State, a first-round WNBA draft pick, a 7-year veteran and 2009 WNBA champion with the Phoenix Mercury, has been a natural transitioning to coaching.
“It’s such an advantage having Nicole on staff because she can relate to the players and she has that kind of experience and understanding of what it takes to be successful at a really high level,” Drew Johnson said. “And honestly, her ability to teach is really second to none. She does such a good job of teaching our posts with their skill work and footwork. And then just her name recognition helps us get that first phone call to recruits and get us in the door.”
Ohlde-Johnson laughs when asked if her current players still know of her accomplishments. Maybe after a Google search, she joked.
“I’m too old now,” Ohlde-Johnson said, laughing. “I tell most of them to not tell me what year they were born because then I realize, ‘Oh great, I was playing college basketball at that point.’ So we try not to talk about it. Maybe their parents remember, but the players are too young. They have no clue.”
Regardless of how modest Ohlde-Johnson is about her fame, her background as a small-town Kansas kid who made it big playing at a Kansas college still resonates with the current Newman players like Kansas natives Britney Ho (Wichita), Carissa Beck (Towanda), Lauryn Dubbert (Beloit) and Torri Vang (Goddard).
Ho, a 6-foot senior center, has benefited from working with Ohlde-Johnson, who was a skiller post player, in particular. The Bishop Carroll graduate earned third team all-MIAA honors after leading Newman in scoring (17.5 points) and rebounding (6.4).
“Britney is a kid who is just a sponge and she works so hard and listens and does all of the things that we ask her to do,” Ohlde-Johnson said. “She puts in the time and she wants to do everything she can to help her team win. Her footwork in the post, her patience, how she reads things is just phenomenal. Those are things you don’t always see from post players.”
While Newman was elated by its first MIAA conference tournament berth, the Johnsons acknowledge that is a small step in turning around the program. After a 3-25 season last year, the Jets improved to 10-17 this season and won the most MIAA games (7) they have in their short stint in the conference.
The Jets closed the season winning four of their final six games, which the Johnsons hope is a sign of things to come.
“We have players who are super bought in to our vision and we come to practice every day and we work to get better,” Ohlde-Johnson said. “These kids do everything that we ask them to do and the success here has been a credit to them for doing those things.
“Everyone in our program from the players to the staff to the support staff, everybody is working every day and grinding and that’s what it takes because the MIAA is so insanely hard. It’s going to take a lot of work hard and time and dedication to get this trending in the right direction, but we’re excited about where we’re going.”
This story was originally published March 1, 2023 at 6:00 AM.
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