Flagler College Athletics

Brian Heffernan will begin his season year as the head volleyball coach at Flagler. He is the sixth head coach since 1992 and started on Feb. 2, 2012.

In his first season at the helm, the Saints finished second in the Peach Belt Conference with a 12-2 record and went 22-11 overall. It was the 12th consecutive season Flagler post 20 or more victories. That team produced an AVCA honorable mention All-American (Dianna Craine), a Daktronics All-American player (Casey Gnann), to go along with four AVCA All-Region and five Daktronics All-Region honorees. Four players earned all-conference honors and Gnann was picked as the PBC Defensive Specialist/Libero of the Year Award for the second consecutive season. 

Heffernan comes to Flagler with a wealth of coaching experience at the NCAA Division I level, including the past four seasons as an assistant coach at the University of Wisconsin. In his previous coaching positions, Heffernan’s trademarks have been excellence in the classroom, successful recruiting, and tenacious defense.

In his four-year stint at Wisconsin, he coached student-athletes who earned 26 Academic All-Big Ten honors and five were named to the Big Ten’s All-Freshman Teams. While at Wisconsin, he recruited the No. 7 recruiting class (2011) and the No. 8 recruiting class (2010) according to Prep Volleyball.  Wisconsin played in front of the third-largest average attendance in NCAA Division I with better than 3,700 fans per home match in each of his three seasons.

As a head coach, he posted a record of 39-87 at Washington State University from 2004-07. He coached one CoSIDA Academic All-America, three Academic All-District selections and 12 Academic All-Pac-10 Conference selections. Heffernan coached one player to All-Pac-10 honors and five to Pac-10 All-Freshman Teams. His 2005 club led the league in blocks per match (3.50) and block assists (604). Heffernan’s 2006 team posted the highest grade point average in the history of the program.    

Prior to his time at Washington State, Heffernan was an assistant and associate head coach at the University of Minnesota (2000-03). The Golden Gophers won the Big Ten crown in 2002, and went to the sweet 16 in the same year. Minnesota advanced to the final four in 2003. In his time at Minnesota, Heffernan helped coach two Big Ten Players of the Year, the Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year, 10 All-Big Ten Conference selections, six AVCA All-Americans, one CoSIDA Academic All-America, and two eventual Olympians.  

He also has a wealth of international coaching experience. In the summers of 2009 and 2010, Heffernan served as an assistant coach at the USA High Performance Championships. From May-July of 2003, he was a training assistant for Team USA’s women’s volleyball team, under Minnesota head coach Mike Hebert, who were preparing for the Pan American Games. In the summer of 1999, Heffernan was the head coach of the United States Junior National Team who participated in the World Championships in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.  

Heffernan earned his bachelor’s degree in secondary education, biological sciences from Pennsylvania State University in 1993 and his Masters in applied kinesiology from the University of Minnesota in 2006. He lettered on the men’s volleyball team for three seasons (1991-93) and earned the Penn State Scholar-Athlete Award. Heffernan helped the Nittany Lions to a pair of Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association (EIVA) championships and berths into the NCAA final four. He began his playing career at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., and was on the team that won the 1989 Midwest Intercollegiate Volleyball Association title. Following graduation, he served as an assistant on Penn State’s 1994 National Championship team – the first volleyball team, men’s or women’s, to win a national title from a school east of the Mississippi River. Brian has three daughters – Kate, Jane, and Lucy.

Brian Heffernan Year-by-Year
Year	W-L	Pct.
2004 (at Washington State)	5-26	.161
2005 (at Washington State)	10-21	.323
2006 (at Washington State)	15-17	.469
2007 (at Washington State)	10-22	.313
2013	22-11	.667
2014	21-13	.617
Totals	83-110	.430