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Health & Fitness

Minnetonka High School Senior Spotlight: Joanna Hedstrom

After a record-setting five year varsity career on Minnetonka's girls basketball team, Joanna Hedstrom will play at the University of Minnesota this fall.

“My dad calls me the poster child for Gophers basketball,” says Skipper’s star point guard Joanna Hedstrom, a former Gophers ball girl who has attended their camps for years. In the fall, she will join the women’s basketball team on a full scholarship. When she got the head coach’s offer, Hedstrom says, “I realized I have wanted to go here my whole life.” Joanna’s mother Mary, MHS English teacher, played for the Gophers; both of her parents have also coached basketball for many years, and she is quick to give them credit for her success.

Hedstrom’s five year varsity Skippers career has been stellar, but as a senior, she hit the heights: she set a new school scoring record with 1,445 career points and broke the career assists record with 403 career assists. Averaging seventeen points per game and serving as captain for the second year, she was awarded All-Conference, All-State, and was a Top 10 finalist for Miss Basketball. Hedstrom says her senior season was a “perfect ending” in other ways, too: she appreciated playing on the same court as her sister Hannah, a freshman, and feeling much support from family in the stands, including her four grandparents.

Head coach Leah Dasovich says Joanna is a rare player: “She is a highly intelligent leader, a student of the game who knows where to go and how the game is played.” Driven by a strong work ethic and desire to succeed, Hedstrom gets right back at it after defeats. After a tough season-ending sectional loss to Hopkins this year, she turned her focus to college, hitting the weight room to build strength for Division 1 ball.

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She brings her intensity and willingness to put in the work to her academics as well, excelling in IB and AP classes, earning AP Scholar with Honors designation, and maintaining a 4.166 weighted GPA. At the U, she’ll enter the Carlson School of Business Honors program—and relish the fulfillment of her dream as she moves from the Gopher's stands, where she watched every home game this year, to center court.

Written by Maggie Shea

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