PING!BASEBALL
SPOTLIGHT COACH
Dan Heefner
Dallas Baptist Patriots |
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The Dallas Baptist baseball team is kinda
like the Winston Zeddemore of Texas baseball. For those who
need a reminder of who Zeddemore is, Winston was the fourth,
blue collar Ghostbuster hired to help Peter, Ray and Egon
tackle the increasing paranomaral activity in New York City.
While he’s a critical member of the team, often driving
the Ecto-1, blasting with his proton-pack and being voice
of reason for the team, he’s often overlooked - on posters
the actor’s name who plays him (Ernie Hudson) is left
off, and in video games and other media, often just the original
three parapsychologists-turned-ghost exterminators are featured.
The same can be said of the Patriots.  Start
naming top baseball teams in the Lone Star State and casual
fans will be quick to recite Texas, Rice, Texas A&M and
several other clubs before adding DBU to the list. This despite
the Patriots having a 33-16 record as of late with a pair
of wins over both Rice and Louisiana Monroe this season as
well as victories over Oral Roberts, Texas A&M and Baylor.
The Patriots have a century old tradition
of baseball excellence. DBU, who joined the NCAA in 2003 after
a long and successful stint NAIA member, also haven’t
had a losing baseball season since 1978. They were the NAIA
National Champion-Runner Up in 1985 and 2000, and won back
to back National Christian College Athletic Associations World
Series in 2003 and 2004.
Ever since playing their first season as
a Division I provisional member in 2004, Dallas Baptist has
continued to be a force to reckon with. They hit the ground
running and went 44-16 in their debut and haven’t slowed
down since. Wining seasons continued as the Patriots went
32-23, 33-23 and 30-28 in their following years. This season,
under new head coach, Dan Heefner, the Patriots have continued
to succeed, earning three wins over teams in the top twelve
and subsequent national rankings consideration for their efforts.
Heefner was the DBU hitting coach for three
years before being anointed the top Patriot and guided the
lineup into becoming one of the most offensively potent teams
in the nation. Each year Dallas Baptist has been nationally
ranked in several major offensive categories. Last season
the Patriots were thirteenth in the country in scoring at
7.6 runs per game and ninth in the nation in home runs per
game at 1.25 per contest. Additionally DBU ranked in the top
thirty in both doubles and triples per game which also placed
the Patriots in the top thirty in slugging percentage as well.
In 2006 Dallas Baptist ranked in the top ten in both homeruns
and triples per game as well as scoring. This season the team
is continuing to excel at the plate, batting .327 as a team
with a .493 slugging percentage and .403 on base percentage.
Heefner came to Dallas after first coaching for a pair of
Missouri Valley teams, Creighton and Northern Iowa. At Creighton
in 2004 he was an assistant coach with a focus on hitting
and catching. While under his watch the Bluejay batsmen made
a statistical improvement in nearly every category from the
season before and improved their batting average 24 points.
In the field, his coached catchers contributed to Creighton’s
nation leading .982 fielding percentage, which was the second
highest rating of any team in NCAA history. At UNI, where
he also had played two years and received his master’s
degree, Heefner coached the Panther hitters who led the MVC
in 10 offensive categories in 2003 and lead the conference
in batting in 2002.
The Patriots, who are not affiliated with
a conference, will close out the regular season by taking
on Texas Tech in a pair of games on the 15th in Lubbock and
will then travel to San Francisco for a three game series
with the Dons. From then, it would take disaster of biblical
proportions with cats and dogs living together, to keep the
Heefner and the Patriots from making their first appearance
in the NCAA postseason.
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