COACHING STAFF & ATHLETES

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

confidence in him based on what I saw during a period that parallels my tenure as athletics director,” Burke said. “Still, when Coach Johnson stepped down, we went through a search process, the first head coaching search for the track and field program in 31 years.

“After vetting several candidates and then sitting down with Mike, I knew he was best equipped to take over. He had a good handle on the many good things going on within the program, and at the same time, was determined to continue to elevate the program’s status on all fronts – competitive, citizenship, academic. That has certainly proven to be the case.”

Heimerman has personally coached 13 of NSU’s last 27 All-American athletes in the throws programs.

Some of the other highly-accomplished competitors Heimerman has helped develop at NSU include four-time All-American javelin thrower Cody Fillinich, 1999 USA Juniors javelin champion Latrell Frederick, a three-time All-American, and two other USA Juniors javelin champs, Dawn Comeaux and Randy Fauntleroy.

“Mike was a tremendous athlete and has carried his competitive spirit into coaching. He’s been at my side for the past 16 years and has done a super job as an assistant coach, and a head coach,” Leon Johnson said in 2013. “Mike took over the women’s program and it’s never been in better shape. He deserves this and he will be very, very good at it.”

Under his leadership, the Lady Demon program set new highs for academic achievement, highlighted by Rew, an Academic All-American and the USA Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association 2011 Field Events Women’s Scholar-Athlete of the Year. Team GPAs are climbing.

Outstanding success in recruiting, steeped in relentless effort and a powerful product to pitch, has brought in a bumper crop of talented young competitors to the NSU program, especially in the last three years.

It helps that Heimerman has been in their shoes, and had great success as a student-athlete at NSU.

Heimerman capped his competitive career with an eighth-place finish at the 1998 USA Championships in the shot put. He won the shot at the 1996 Southland Conference Outdoors and owns the program’s second-best mark with a 62-4.5.

Seeing his athletes rise to the occasion in conference, regional and national meets has been a hallmark of his coaching career.

It happened again in 2013 when senior Janae Allen finished 10th in the discus at the NCAA Outdoors to earn All-America accolades.

The 2012 season saw yet another Heimerman-coached thrower rise near the top of the collegiate ranks as Ashley Aldredge lofted an NCAA 14th-best, and NSU second-best, mark of 166-0 and captured the Southland Conference Championship. Aldredge recovered from a serious injury to return to the NCAA Championships in 2015.

The 2011 season was spectacular for the Lady Demon track and field program, with Trecey Rew’s NCAA discus championship and the team’s best-ever finish, a runner-up showing, at the Southland Conference Outdoor Championships.

track & field

It was no surprise that Heimerman was voted women’s Coach of the Year on the All-Louisiana Team in 2011, sharing the honor with LSU’s Dennis Shaver.

Even before taking the helm of the program, he was a key factor in helping the Demons and Lady Demons make the most consistently high finishes at Southland Conference championships of any Louisiana team.

Since Heimerman wrapped up his own outstanding competitive career and joined the coaching staff, NSU has consistently produced nationally competitive throwers.

When Cody Fillinich won his fourth All-America award at the 2009 NCAA meet it was also the ninth time in 11 years that Northwestern had either a male or a female javelin thrower reach the NCAA Outdoors.

All of the athletes have been Louisiana prep products and four previously — Regina Roe, Latrell Frederick, Samantha Ford and Fillinich— won All-America honors by virtue of their performances at the national meet. Ford reached the 12-woman USA Olympic Trials Finals in 2008 and 2012.

The 2011 season provided the most unlikely member of the NSU javelin All-America contingent. Jessica Talley walked on in November, having never thrown over 130 feet in high school. She added almost 30 feet to her throw under Heimerman’s guidance, recording a mark of 158-6, and finishing 11th at the NCAA Championships to earn AllAmerica honors.

Aldredge’s 2015 and 2016 NCAA Outdoors appearances and honorable mention All-America honors were a testament to her grit, talent and persistence, and Heimerman’s faith in her and his guidance. Her comeback from surgery, along with marriage and becoming a mother, required a special level of commitment from athlete and coach, whose partnership was rewarded with a pair of Southland crowns and the NCAA appearance.

Heimerman helped Rew develop into a legendary competitor in school and Southland Conference history. She first achieved national prominence in 2007 as a freshman when she qualified for the USA Junior Nationals in two events and made the USATFCCA (coaches’ association) All-Academic Team. She capped her career in 2011 with All-America honors in the shot and discus, eight Southland titles, being named Academic All-America, USATFCCA National Field Events Scholar-Athlete of the Year and claiming the NCAA discus crown.

A junior college All-American at Hutchinson (Kan.) CC, Heimerman is a proud Wichita, Kan., native.