By Matt Browning
Head women’s basketball coach John Ontjes was chosen for the Hutchinson Community College profile for November.
Ontjes was a Hutchinson Community College graduate in 1993 before moving on to play basketball at Oklahoma, where he was named Big 8 Newcomer of the Year for the 1994 season.
After he graduated from Oklahoma, Ontjes then joined Kelvin Sampson and the Sooners’ staff, where he was a graduate assistant in charge of practice organization, monitoring academic progress, film exchange and on-campus recruiting.
Fast forward to his head coaching career, Ontjes became the head girls coach at Hutchinson High School in 2005 and led the Salthawks to the 6A Tournament in 2006.
Ontjes then took over the Hutchinson Community College women’s basketball head coaching position after two successful seasons with the Salthawks.
In his 15 seasons as head coach, Ontjes has led the Blue Dragons to 423-88 record, 10 NJCAA Tournament appearances, including three title game appearances in a span of four years from 2012-2015.
Ontjes took Hutchinson Community College to the NJCAA Tournament in just his second season in 2008.
He has been named the Jayhawk Conference coach of the year seven times and KBCA Junior College coach of the year six times and the Greater Wichita Sports Commission coach of the year in 2015.
Ontjes reached 100 wins (119 games) faster than any previous Hutchinson Community College coach. He posted the second-most wins (40) in his first 50 games as the leader of the Blue Dragons program.
