The Resurgence of Iowa Baseball
“Be present, give your best effort, try to improve, stay focused.”
These are all things you might hear during a practice led by Iowa Head Baseball Coach Rick Heller. The Iowa Hawkeyes baseball team is preparing to start its 8th season with him at the helm and the program has taken large steps back to relevance during his tenure. I feel his success at the University of Iowa is something that has not gotten the national attention it deserves.
Coach Heller was able to take some time to sit down and talk with me earlier this week about his time at the university and how he has turned this program around.
But before that a little background about Coach Rick Heller. Heller is a native of Eldon, Iowa and played collegiate baseball at Upper Iowa, in Fayette, Iowa. He was hired as head coach at Upper Iowa in 1988, where he won 289 games and sent his team to 3 DIII NCAA Tournaments, including a DIII College World Series. He took his next job at Northern Iowa in 2000, coaching 10 years and leading the Panthers to 1 NCAA Tournament. In 2010, Heller took over at Indiana State, where he coached for 4 years, winning 131 games, including a 41-19 2012 season. Coach Heller took over an Iowa program, in 2014, that had not made the NCAA Tournament since 1990 and had finished 8th or worse 12 times in that same span.
“Being an Iowa kid…. There was obviously a source of pride there,” said Coach Heller on whether or not there was extra motivation upon arrival at Iowa.“(I wanted to) get everything established that I wanted to be important at Iowa, that I wanted to be important to the players…. Establishing a culture of good teammates.”
Heller and his coaching staff spent the early part of their first season trying to build a solid culture within the program.
“I wanted the expectations to be higher for everyone around the program,” said Coach Heller.
The Hawkeyes were coming off a 22-27 season and an 8th place finish in the Big Ten. Heller mentioned that at their arrival, the Iowa program, may have had one of the worst situations of all the “Power” conference schools.
The first season was a very busy one for the coaching staff, as they tried to build trust with players, renew fan interest and upgrade the baseball facility. They did just that, as received enough money through fundraising to upgrade to a turf field, as well as add a new scoreboard at Duane Banks Stadium.
“(It was) really important that we show the baseball community that it wasn’t just a new coaching hire, but a commitment to the entire program,”
The fan support for Iowa baseball was quickly evident in the donations that they received. Heller and his coaching staff built trust the first season by not cutting anyone from the 2013 squad, thus leading to quick buy in by a lot of players. The Hawkeyes went 30-23 in 2014 and while their conference record (10-14) was unchanged from the previous year, it was evident that there was something special coming for 2015.
The 2015 team returned 23 sophomores and juniors from the previous season, making them a very experienced group.
“(Guys) were coming back into the summer feeling like that next season could be a really special one.”
The Hawkeyes had just that, a special season, going 41-18, finishing 2nd in the Big Ten and receiving an at large bid to the NCAA Tournament. I asked what the reaction was from players and coaches when they received the bid, to which Coach Heller said, “It was fantastic, lot of fun, lot of positive energy.”
Another product of a breakout season was the emergence of the Iowa baseball fanbase. As the Hawkeyes surged into the Top 25, fans were filling Duane Banks Stadium and one of those fans was me, a sophomore in high school. From experience, I can say it was really exciting to see Iowa baseball cared about again and to see Duane Banks full and loud for 9 innings.
In 2016, the Hawkeyes fell to 30-26, but quickly rebounded with a 39-20 record in 2017, including a Big Ten Tournament Championship and another NCAA Tournament appearance. In the last 3 seasons the Hawkeyes have gone 74-48, including a 10-5 start in 2020, before Covid ended last season. Coach Heller said that he thinks the baseball program went from one of the worst situations to one of the best situations among “Power” conferences in just a couple years.
So how did Coach Heller and his staff orchestrate this resurgence in such a short time frame?
“Our style of how we take the player development approach…. Building around unselfishness and good teammates.”
Focus on not only on the field performance, but academic performance and other off the field items are important to Coach Heller. They try to recruit guys that are going to come in and work to improve not only themselves, but ones that “care about the program, their teammates (and) the coaches more than their personal agendas.”
This is where you can draw a comparison to the Iowa football team and how Coach Ferentz runs his program in a similar fashion. Going after not necessarily the top-rated recruits, but ones that fit perfectly into the type of program they want to build and both coaches receive excellent buy in from their players.
The Iowa baseball team, much like the Iowa football team, seems to outplay its preseason projections and finish higher than expected. Coach Heller kept going back to player development and making sure that everyone on the team stays unselfish.
“I believe very strongly that the only way you get people to overachieve is to make sure you have plenty of people who are humble.”
The whole process seems fairly straightforward, but when you get a whole team of 30+ guys buying in to a coaching staff like they did with Coach Heller, a team can play very well together and it has showed over the last 7 seasons.
As for recruiting, it’s an integral part of building any college sports program and you must be able to sell your program and university to a recruit. I believe many would agree that the cold and snow for roughly 4 months a year would be a disadvantage in recruiting, but Coach Heller was quick to tell me that I was wrong.
In terms of indoor facilities, Coach Heller said that Iowa has better facilities than most southern schools. With the Hansen Football Performance Center right next to the baseball stadium, the Hawkeyes can spend the entire winter training at a state-of-the-art indoor facility. Coach mentioned that during the recent plunge in temperatures across much of the country many schools in the SEC and ACC were forced to cancel games and practice, while his team was working in the football practice facility. What seems like a disadvantage in recruiting, actually becomes a positive for the program.
When I mentioned that Big Ten baseball isn’t thought of as a top conference, as a recruiting disadvantage, Coach Heller was quick to tell me again that I was wrong. He pointed out that the Big Ten is putting more and more players into the MLB Draft every year, which is a great look for overall player development within the conference.
Another point was that the Michigan Wolverines were within a game of defeating Vanderbilt, a southern school, for an NCAA Tournament Title in 2019.
“The commitment to baseball in our conference the last 10 years has been amazing.” Coach Heller said.
They can sell their indoor facilities and the overall improved play of the conference, as well as the fact that Iowa has put a very respectable number of players into the MLB Draft themselves. One final quote stood out to me and that was when Coach Heller said, “I don’t know that there is a better player development program in the country.”
Coach Heller wholeheartedly believes in his system and the players in the program. It has led to them landing one of their best recruiting classes in school history in 2020 and has turned them into one of the more respected programs in the country.
He and the coaching staff have implemented a culture focused on being unselfish and improving daily. That culture has taken hold and has resulted in a resurgence of Iowa baseball. Fans are now presented with a program that will contend in the top half of the conference and for an NCAA Tournament bid every year.
When you sit down to watch Iowa play its season opener on Saturday vs Michigan, take a second to think about what Coach Rick Heller has done with this Iowa program since he arrived in 2014. It’s easy to see why many believe Rick Heller is one of the best coaches in all of college baseball and the Iowa Hawkeyes are fortunate to have him as their head coach.