‘They need you on the street’: How Jen Kerns harnessed basketball career to become a force for Spokane Police

It’s Thursday evening, the last basketball practice before the Spokane Dawgs fifth-grade girls’ team competes in the 2024 Washington Middle School Basketball Championship. Head coach Jen Kerns, assistant coach Doug Byrd and team manager Christina Demke are all on hand at the Salvation Army gym in Spokane for their bi-weekly practice. The previous practice was canceled because several girls, as well as Kerns, had whatever crud was circulating in Spokane.

The girls are excited – smiling, laughing and chirping to one another in little groups.

Parents line up on one side of the gym – some standing against the wall, some sitting on the rock-hard gym floor, talking to one another quietly.

Kerns, across the gym, is comparing notes with Byrd. Soon, Kerns gathers the girls in a circle around her, in the middle of the gym, and her face lights up, illuminated by love for the girls – and the game.

Kerns’ circuitous path to coaching began after her last game as a star player for Washington State University. She played professionally in Europe for years after an early disastrous and dangerous stint in Turkey. She applied the lessons she learned along the way into a job with the Spokane Police Department and, then, as a beloved fifth-grade girls’ basketball coach.

Kerns grew up one of nine kids in a Coeur d’Alene Catholic family. Her father was a Spokane firefighter. Her mother was a teacher.

“My mom raised nine really cool kids,” Kerns said. “She worked hard. She taught mentally and physically challenged kids at the school. She’d have us come in, one at a time, after school and be with the kiddos in her class. And to serve them and be there for them. What an education, and a lot of that has stayed with me and my siblings through the years.”

Kerns played high school basketball for three years in Coeur d’Alene. She and her team won three state basketball championships before she attended WSU on a full-ride basketball scholarship. When she left Pullman in 2000, she ranked in the top 20 in school history in points as well as sixth in career assists and was seventh in three-point field goals.

Overseas whirlwind

After Kerns’ last game of her college career, a loss against nationally ranked Stanford, a man walked out of the stands to ask her a question that would change her life.

“I’m an agent for professional basketball in Europe,” Kerns recalls him saying. “I was here to offer a Stanford point guard a position on the team I’m looking to fill with an American player. But we feel you’d be a better fit for the team. I’d like to represent you. Do you want to play?”

Surprised, Kerns asked several questions, including when she needed to go if she took the offer.

“Next week,” he told her. She remembers thinking that she had already graduated with a degree in business and could, in fact, say yes. Without much hesitation, she accepted.

“I flew back to Pullman, packed up my entire four years there, and I was wheels down in Copenhagen, Denmark, a week later,” she said. “I was simply in the right place at the right time.”

On the flight overseas, she daydreamed about the future, thinking she would probably play for a year or two at most.

But she played for 12 years at the highest levels of the sport and coached for another four-plus years. She played in 41 countries, including Turkey, Greece, Russia, Belgium and Netherlands. When she retired from playing, she was offered a head coaching job in Germany.

Thrust into coaching

In the first seven months overseas, she played for the Women’s EUROLEAUGE and was based in Guree, Turkey, a little village at the time. Her mail, which included her pay, in cash, came on a donkey and a wagon.

“I’m not kidding. Right outside Istanbul. I had to walk 3 miles to use the only landline so I could call my parents,” she said.

Then one day she showed up to practice and there was no coach.

“I kept asking where’s the coach, and nobody is saying anything.”

Among her friends and teammates were two Russians and one Macedonian woman.

“One of the Russian women came over to me and said she thought the coach was in trouble. There were tons of people in the gym that day, including all the board members of the club.” She approached “one of the guys in a three-piece suit,” and asked where the coach was. He said, “the coach is gone … and he’s not coming back, and we need someone to run the practice. Will you coach the team?’” She agreed but requested a meeting the following day.

The next morning, she told them she would both coach the team and play, but they had to pay her two salaries. They agreed. Then they told her what had happened to the coach.

“He raped one of the youngest girls on the team, and the girl’s father found out and came in the middle of the night with his friends, and took care of the coach,” they told her. “Now, I don’t know exactly what that means, but I think I know what that means, and he was never coming back.”

Kerns’ team was an all-underage girls’ team. “These girls were all hand-picked from elite clubs. They lived on a campus inside this compound with the men on one side and the women on the other. There’s barbed wire in between and fences you don’t cross over. These girls are taken from their families at a young age, and they’re unprotected except by their coach and the management team,” she said.

After several months of coaching and playing, another coach was finally hired, but after a month that coach also disappeared. She received a message that police found a VHS tape full of child pornography, and he eventually went to prison.

“So, I’m coaching again, and I get on the phone with my agent. I told him what happened, and said, it’s a pretty messy situation over here. He asked if I wanted to leave, and I said yes. So, we concocted a plan.”

Typically, passports are taken from players and given to team managers to ease border passage on professional European leagues. Her agent, Kim Rasmussen, the man who had walked out of the crowd at Stanford, called one of the club managers and told them, “Jen needs to get out, so she needs her passport.” They unequivocally said no, arguing that she was contractually bound to stay.

Kerns went to her two Russian and Macedonian teammates and said, “We need to get our passports.”

They broke into the team manager’s office. Kerns stood on the shoulders of her very tall Russian teammate’s shoulders and crawled through a window. She had seen the team manager put the passports in his desk. With armed guards patrolling the compound, she walked out the door that was locked from the inside.

The great escape was to take place during a game. Her agent had arranged with the American coach of the opposing team that she would check in, warm up for the game and then say she had to use the bathroom. She walked out the back door of the facility wearing her uniform and basketball shoes, carrying only her phone and passport.

“We had a door that went outside from our locker room, so I went in and did half of the warmups, went into the bathroom, and walked out the door to where the opposing team’s bus was parked,” Kerns said. The bus driver was in on the plot. “He walked me to the back of the bus, told me to lay down on the bench seat, and put a blanket over me even though it was about 100 degrees on that bus.”

The driver then piled the girl’s luggage on top of the blanket.

After the game ended, the team piled onto the bus, and the driver told them he had to make a stop at the airport. Once there, Kerns nonchalantly rose up from under the blanket and walked into the airport. She was far from relieved, though. Her agent had told her she could be stopped at any point before, during or after the flight to Denmark where her agent would pick her up. He told her she also had to talk her way onto the plane because she didn’t have an exit visa. After an intense, nerve-wracking three-plus hours on the plane, she walked out of the Copenhagen Kastrup Airport and into a waiting car.

Her three other teammates who had hired a driver to get them out of the country ended up in a Turkish prison for 18 months.

“I love basketball. I wouldn’t have been doing those things if I hadn’t been in the profession I was in. I was following a passion and by doing so putting myself in uncertain situations. But I was willing to take the risk. Because of that I have so much life experience. My agent, Kim Rasmussen, is a dear friend to this day, and one of the best leaders I’ve ever been around in my life. I’ve had some good mentors along the way,” Kerns said.

When she returned to the United States, her future wide open, she considered becoming a firefighter. After all, her dad retired from the Spokane Fire Department and her brother, Tim Kerns, is a fire chief for the Yakima Fire Department.

But when she discussed it with family, one of her bothers suggested a different path: “You know, Jen, you are perfect for the police. You understand people, and … you can speak to people who are different and who are hard to communicate with,” Kerns remembered him saying. “They need you on the street.”

“I really wanted to do something that was going to impact a wider range of people. I really wanted to do something to bring back my life experience and my knowledge to my community, and that is why I went into the police department,” she said.

She spent her first decade on patrol. During that time, she and her partner were given a commendation for their intervention and saving a man’s life. Then she was promoted to SPD’s Hostage Negotiation Team. As the years flashed by, she yearned to coach basketball again. She couldn’t do that while working the night shift.

“I loved doing it, it was great, the people were great, but I didn’t have time to volunteer outside of my normal job. I had too much on my plate,” Kerns said.

“A lot of times when you’re on the hostage negotiation team, they call you in on your days off. There are so many intelligent, good communicators in the SPD, and so many other high-quality people on the Hostage Negotiation Team, I knew I could make a bigger impact by putting my energy on youth basketball as a volunteer. I have all this knowledge, experience and leadership skills, but what good is it if I don’t volunteer with the girls,” she said. “Volunteering is one of the best things a human can do for other humans.”

She requested a move and was transferred to the Community Outreach Unit, where she works the day shift.

Then she reconnected with Byrd, a coach for the Spokane Dawgs Association. Byrd, who owns Byrd Real Estate Group, LLC in Spokane, has known Kerns for 30-plus years and flat-out says that she’s “the best youth basketball coach in Spokane.”

“I don’t know anyone in Spokane who knows more about the sport and about the mental and psychological makeup of the kids. She has innate servant leadership skills,” Byrd said. “Basketball is so much more than basketball. It gives you life skills.

“She knows how to make assessments with girls on the court without belittling them. Kids in youth sports lose interest because they get bored. Not with Jen.”

The girls

Ava Snell, a fifth-grader from Brentwood Elementary in Mead, has been playing the game since about second grade. The Snell family moved to Spokane about a year ago from the west side of the state.

“I learned a lot even when I came to try out for the team,” Ava said. “Coach Jen is very positive and very excellent.”

Ava’s dad, Kyle Snell, said they were thrilled to join the Dawgs team from the get-go.

“It would be hard to find somebody who had a better playing background at WSU and coaching and playing professional basketball,” Snell said.

He and his wife felt as if they’d hit a gold mine getting Kerns as a coach for their daughter.

“What’s the most important thing for Ava is having someone other than her mom, who is a strong female, be coached by a strong female she looks up to; lots of sports are dominated by male coaches. We feel blessed,” he said. “The coaching piece is cool because she’s incredibly talented, but what separates her is her attention to little details that are critical. She teaches them things that are far above what most kids will get even up through high school.”

Paige Demke, one of the shortest girls on the team, attends Northwest Christian School. She said she loves the competition.

“I’m learning to shoot better, dribble the ball good, pass the ball and be a good competitor,” Paige said. “I also like getting to know my teammates, and I’ve had other coaches. But I’m not a fan of those coaches who yell at people. Coach Jen is always kind and funny. She makes practice enjoyable. She’s inspired me so much. I want to be a police officer and a basketball coach.”

“Competition,” said Alex Folsom, who attends Prairie View Elementary and has been playing since about third grade. “Competition is my favorite thing about basketball. I love competition. And I’ve learned so much since I’ve been on the team. Coach Jen is so kind.”

The Spokane Dawgs Association is unique in this area, according to Christina Demke, team manager. The organization has a team at every grade level from second to eighth grade, and they try to limit head coaches to those who don’t have kids on a team.

“Jen encourages the girls and lets them fail and learn from their mistakes,” she said. “I’ve never seen her lose her cool.”

The Spokane Dawgs Association was created in 2002 by Eric Bowton and Doug Brown, when both had daughters in elementary school. Bowton, now the sole director of the club, is an orthopedic surgeon who spends half his time in Southeast Alaska and the other half in Spokane. He flies back to Spokane for Dawgs games on weekends during the basketball season to coach.

Bowton said if there’s anything that drives girls out of basketball in Spokane, it’s the parents coaching from the stands.

“I watch our teams play, and some moms, dads or grandparents will be shouting instructions that conflict with what the coaches are saying,” he said. During a recent game where the coach wanted a certain passing pattern to get away from the pressure and, “this family was just screeching dribble the ball, dribble the ball, and that’s how turnovers happen. It puts the kids in a terrible conflict.”

Back at the Salvation Army Gym, the girls surround Kerns looking to their mentor for guidance. The potential of this group of girls is apparent on their shining faces.

Kerns truly believes in the power of team sports – especially for girls.

“Almost everything in basketball relates to real life,” she added. “That’s one of the biggest things between boys and girls when girls are off the court right before practice and right after practice … when you get them on the court, it’s unnatural for them to direct traffic or to tell another teammate where they should be if they’re out of place.

“When guys walk on the court, they’re the loudest people out there. All of them,” she said.

That difference for her, translates to coaching the girls in ways different from the norm. She puts the girls in a place where they have to be the leader of the drill, or the leader of the practice. She encourages them to speak and lead with confidence in a loud voice, making eye contact when they talk.

“For the girls, competing with other girls can be difficult,” Kerns added. “The aggressive gene isn’t necessarily in them like it is for little boys. It’s important to put them in exercises and scenarios on the basketball court … where they can be shown when to be aggressive and challenge themselves.

“They need to know you care about them, and that creates trust. I always go back to trust and care.”