Where Are They Now? Cassie Hager
Perry High School: Basketball 1998-2002
May 27, 2009
You may remember her as Cassie Hager, but since she was an All-State center at Perry in 2001 and 2002 she’s tagged on a Smith to her name.
Hager-Smith was married last December; it’s one of many life changes that have taken place since her Perry Blue jays won a state championship in 2002.
As a result of her magnificent prep career, Hager-Smith was offered scholarships to Northern Iowa, Creighton and a slew of other smaller schools. It was going to be division one or nothing for the All-State performer though, which shortened her list to the Panthers and ironically enough the Blue jays of Creighton.
“I just felt more at home at UNI, and all the coaches were very friendly. Plus the girls at UNI who showed me around were girls I already knew,” Hager-Smith said.
She played some her freshman season at UNI, starting in a handful of contests. Her sophomore year she spent on the bench for the most part. One of the starters was injured her junior year, which opened the door for her to play and improve. From there she started in every game her senior season and was named to the All-Missouri Valley Team in 2006.
Her teams at UNI made zero appearances in the NCAA tournament; however they were in three WNIT tournaments.
“I guess being a smaller D1 school I wasn’t very surprised that we never made a NCAA tournament,” Hager-Smith said.
After her playing career at UNI was done, she received a letter inviting her to attend a WNBA tryout in Boston. Just receiving the letter was quite an accomplishement, that letter is only mailed to forty girls a year.
And than life threw her a curveball.
“They do physicals before they let you try out. And so they did an EKG on my heart and found out that I had a heart condition, so they wouldn’t even let me tryout,” Hager-Smith said.
Fortunately for her she has been able to move on and see’s the glass as half full.
“It was pretty devastating at first,” she said. “But shortly after that happened I met my husband. So I look at it in the perspective that if it never happened I wouldn’t have met him, or, you know, have gotten to work with the kids I work with.”
When she returned from Boston she put her teaching degree to use and taught in Clarion for a year. She currently teaches special education at Perry and is working on her master’s degree as well, taking classes through Morningside.
Hager-Smith has known for quite some time that she wanted to be a teacher. she was lucky enough to have a very positive and influential person in her life as a young girl.
“My second grade teacher is who inspired me to teach. Her name was Carol O’ Hare, she was just a very loving teacher and she made you feel that everything you did was a major accomplishment,” Hager-Smith said. “I just wanted to do that too.”
Along with teaching and taking classes to get her master’s degree, Hager-Smith somehow finds time to coach eighth grade volleyball and to assist her high school coach Mike Long by coaching the JV girls basketball team.
It’s been an exciting past few years for the Perry native. But she seems to just want to lay low from here on out. Her husband’s parents own a farm in Humboldt, and she grew up on a farm in Perry. She said soon they’ll probably just move back to Humboldt to continue the small-town life that she knows and loves.
“Growing up on a farm in Perry taught me work ethic and it was great because it’s just one of those towns where everybody knows everybody, and that’s what I like,”
TJ Rushing, High School Playbook
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