track & field
Mike Heimerman
(NSU, 1996)
Head Coach • 8th as head/13th as women’s • 23rd overall
Mike Heimerman has continued Northwestern State’s track and field prominence of which he was a part under his predecessor Leon Johnson. Heimerman, who enters his eighth season as NSU’s overall head coach after six seasons as the women’s head coach and 23 total seasons on staff. He has guided two national champions and 31 All-Americans either as head coach or throws coach, a capacity in which he’s served since 1997. Jasmyn Steels is the reigning NCAA Indoor National Champion in the long jump after she captured the 2019 crown. Steels, who took silver in the 2019 outdoor championships, didn’t have a chance to defend her indoor title in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a throws coach since 1997, Heimerman has supervised 13 AllAmerican throwers, including discus national champion Trecey Rew. Rew, also a shot put All-American, won NSU’s second-ever national title in an individual event in 2011. Although NSU is still seeking its first team title since 2001, Heimerman has catapulted the Demons and Lady Demons among the Southland Conference’s best. The men and women have a combined 12 top-three finishes at the SLC Indoor and Outdoor Championships since 2013. The women have been particularly close to a breakthrough in recent seasons, finishing second at the SLC Indoor Championships in each of the past three seasons, the program’s highest finish. Sprinter Natashia Jackson and Steels have led the way in the Lady Demons’ recent surge as Jackson was named the Southland Conference Athlete and Runner of the Year and Steels captured Field Events Athlete of the Year at the 2020 SLC Indoor Championships. Jackson has been the high-point performer at three SLC Indoor Championships while Steels added an All-Louisiana Field Performer of the Year to her slew of honors. Jackson has 16 gold medals in Southland Championship events, within reach of the conference best of 20 golds for a career. The NSU women recorded a second-place finish in the 2016 SLC Outdoor Championships, which tied a program-best finish (one other second place in 2011, also under Heimerman’s direction which earned him a Co-Coach of the Year in Louisiana).
As one of the most accomplished non-Power Five sprints programs in the nation, NSU has sent men’s relay teams to the NCAA Championships in 2016 and 2018. The 4x100 relay quartet of Micah Larkins, Amir James, Kie’Ave Harry and Tre’Darius Carr reached the NCAA finals, finishing seventh in 2018. James and Larkins were part of a 15th-place 4x100 crew in 2016 that also included Ty Shilling and George Flaviano. Emmanuel Williams joined the 2016 All-Americans with a seventh-place standing in the long jump as NSU’s five All-Americans was its highest in any one season dating back to 1982. There was really no doubt what to do at Northwestern State when venerable track and field coach Leon Johnson informed director of athletics Greg Burke about his retirement plans in May of 2013. “As a student-athlete, assistant coach, and head women’s coach, Mike has over two decades of experience with our department and specifically with the track and field program. I had a high degree of
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