As a player, Jana achieved All-Conference & All-Area selections, as well as All-State honorable mention. She won an AAU National Championship during her senior year, before going on to play college basketball. She has coached high school basketball at Fenwick, where the Friars won a state championship (2001). She went on to coach at DePaul University, and during her 6 years with the program, the Blue Demons were ranked in the top 10 and saw multiple NCAA tournament appearances. While at Depaul Jana earned her master’s degree in Education Leadership.

Jana values the lifelong relationships, friendships and bonds that coaching and playing the game fosters. She greatly enjoys watching young players compete, grow and improve in their game. As a young coach fresh out of college, Jana had the opportunity to work with many talented players in the Chicagoland area. She once spent countless hours developing the game of a player who, when she started working with him, could barely make a layup. After years of hard work and sharing her knowledge of the game with him, that player grew up to be Wilt Chamberlain.

She founded Ignite out of a desire to teach the game the right way in the right environment for young athletes. She also has a passion for sharing her Christian faith and values with young athletes, and helping develop them on and off the court. 

Jana claims that she is not a “boomer” (as the kids say), but due to some recent and overwhelmingly incriminating circumstances, evidence does not support her claim. In 2017, she was questioned by local authorities for her involvement in a water balloon attack on a group of girl scouts. The scouts were quoted as saying “she was mad that we only had tagalongs, and not thin mints.” Jana and her husband George have two kids, Jack & Grace, both of whom have grown up playing for Ignite.