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Kim Johnson earned several athletic honors throughout the course of her junior season, but Wednesday afternoon she earned an honor that topped them all.
Johnson, a junior on the Dakota Wesleyan University women’s basketball team, earned NAIA All-American Second Team honors, it was announced Wednesday by the NAIA. This is the first All-American honor for Johnson, a 5-foot-11 forward from Sioux Falls, S.D. She is just the eighth All-American in Tiger women’s basketball history, and the first women’s basketball player to earn the honor since the 2003-04 season. Randi Morgan earned first-team honors and Victoria Drefs was named to the second team that year.
Johnson – a Roosevelt High School graduate – earned All-Great Plains Athletic Conference First Team honors earlier this spring, becoming the first DWU women’s basketball player to earn a spot on the first team since Morgan and Drefs in 2004. She also earned three GPAC Player-of-the-Week honors in 2012-13, and is one of just a handful of athletes to earn the honor three times in one season in GPAC basketball history.
Johnson led the GPAC and her team in scoring at 18.5 points per game, and she finished second in the league in field-goal percentage (.527) and 12th in rebounds per game (5.5). She finished her junior season 10th in the NAIA in total scoring (574), 12th in field-goal percentage and 13th in point per game. She led the team in scoring 20 times, including a career-high 35 points against Northwestern College on Feb. 13. Johnson also led the Tigers with 27 blocked shots and finished fourth on the team with 76 assists. She scored the 1,000th point of her college career with a 20-point performance against Briar Cliff in the final game of the regular season Feb. 16 at the Corn Palace.
Johnson became the 17th player in Tiger women’s basketball history to score 1,000 career points, and enters her fourth and final season with the team with 1,019 points.
Johnson is the only player from the GPAC on the second team, and is one of nine players from around the league to be honored by the NAIA. Northwestern College senior Kendra De Jong was named the NAIA Player-of-the-Year and earned first team honors along with Concordia’s Kirsten Conahan and Morningside’s Chelsie Trask. Briar Cliff’s Kelsey Evans earned third-team accolades and Mount Marty’s April Winne, Concordia’s Katie Rich, Dordt’s Kara Van Dyke and Morningside’s Ashlynn Muhl all earned honorable mention status.
Courtesy: Leah Rado, DWU
