Catching up with...Former Notre Dame basketball walk-on Tom Hansen

Tom Hansen may not have seen the court all that much during his time as a Notre Dame basketball player, but the walk-on during the Digger Phelps years was a pretty good baseball player for the Irish.
We caught up with Hansen, who was a member of the teams that had a 24-game Joyce Center-winning streak, this week.

Insights: So what are you up to now?
Tom Hansen: "I'm teaching high school in Erie (Pa.). I coached basketball for a while. I have a (son), a senior at Notre Dame now. He played for me and he's playing as a practice prep squad member for Muffet (McGraw's) team. I coached for five years at McDowell High School in Erie.

Insights: Why did you leave coaching?
TH: "It's a different type of game and demands so much on you. It's a year-round thing. I have a kid in college and another a sophomore in high school and another (younger than that). I'm not the reason I was coaching. I was sharing some of the stuff I was fortunate to learn."

Insights: What do you teach?
TH: "I teach senior English."

Insights: How did you come about teaching?
TH: "I played baseball at Notre Dame and was a captain in 1974. I wanted to pursue a career in professional baseball. I played a year for the Tigers in their farm system in Clinton, Iowa and Lakeland, Fla., and got released. Then my mom got cancer so I had to come home and help out. We had six kids in the family and I had to take care of them. But it worked out. I was able to teach my son and he was able to do well enough to get into Notre Dame and he's an architecture student."

Insights: What were the minors like?
TH: "That was a great experience, too. Ronnie LeFlore was the biggest name I played with in Lakeland, Fla."

Insights: Do you keep in touch with a lot of the basketball guys?
TH: "The nicest thing Mike Brey does is every two years he invites everyone back for a reunion. You see how they are doing and the success stories. We have a doctor, a businessman in Massachusetts, a banker. It's amazing how that Notre Dame thing carried on in their lives after college."

Insights: What was your role on the team then?
TH: "I played very little. I played the other team. When somebody needed to be the opposition's point guard or defensive player who was going to guard our best player, I got that responsibility. I was OK with that because I was a walk-on and I was around that type of talent. Those kids I played with, they went to the NBA."

-By Michael Rothstein of The Journal Gazette