Henning Happenings

Chad Koenen

Are you a past alumni of Henning School and recently received an award? Did you recently retire from your job and want to reconnect with past classmates from Henning School? Or has your child recently been promoted at work and want to share the news with people in the community? 

Each year the H-545 Foundation puts together a newsletter that is sent to all past alumni of Henning School. As part of that newsletter the hope was to include information about the accomplishments, no matter how big or small, from alumni at Henning. The hope was to provide a few short sentences to update past graduates about the accomplishments of some of their own.

These accomplishments can be as simple as an award in the workplace, a promotion or a new job, or a coach winning a conference title in a sport. Even if you recently retired from your job let members of the H-545 committee know what you are doing today.

Since alumni of the local school district are spread throughout the country, the hope was to let people know what some of the past graduates of Henning School are doing and provide people an opportunity reconnect with one another. We have doctors, teachers, business professionals and home makers that are doing great things in their hometown. Let the other past graduates of Henning School know about it. You can also email us the information on behalf of a past graduate. 

If you have information you would like to share with the H-545 newsletter please email news@henningadvocate.com by May 1 and we will make sure to include it in the next newsletter, which is scheduled to come out this summer. 

State basketball

Our family took an impromptu trip to the state basketball tournament on Wednesday morning at Williams Arena. I say impromptu because we literally decided to go about 8 a.m. on Wednesday morning. It was the first time I had been to Williams Arena since the Henning basketball team won the state basketball tournament in 2019 and it was nice being able to watch a game without a camera attached at my hip.

Now I realize that 2019 was prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, but our trip to Williams Arena last week really gave me a new appreciation for how many Henning fans turned out to the state basketball tournament when our Hornets made their trek to state. While the stands in the opening round of the Class A tournament were 3/4 full for the two games we attended, there were open seats on both sides of the arena. I don’t remember that being the case when Henning made it to state as, if my memory serves, our town of about 800 people essentially filled an entire side of Williams Arena. 

In fact, if I had to estimate we filled nearly an entire side of the Target Center which is a much larger venue than Williams Arena in 2019. Given that many of the schools we watched came from much larger towns than Henning, it really shows you how much of a basketball town we are in Henning.

Regardless of the attendance there is perhaps no better venue than historic Williams Arena for state basketball tournaments, even if the seating isn’t meant for “larger” people like myself.