Coach’s Corner: Heather Barney

Sometimes one “no” can change your life.

That’s what Heather Barney, the head coach of the women’s rowing team, found out her freshman year at Williams College in Massachusetts.

Though she had been swimming for seven years, the coach of Williams’ swimming team didn’t accept her into the team. She met someone who was on the rowing team and encouraged Barney to try out. She rowed for the rest of her time at Williams.

After graduating, Barney started working in the field of education research policy. However, after discovering she didn’t enjoy the job, she called her rowing coach at Williams, and he offered her a chance to come back as a volunteer. When she took work home and stayed up late, she knew she was where she belonged.

“I remember going back to my apartment, and I was up until ten o’clock playing with a spreadsheet. I was like, ‘I never enjoyed taking work home with me from my old job and now I don’t want to go to bed.’ So that was a nice hint that I was doing the right thing for myself,” Barney said.

After a while, Barney wanted to have a full-time job and took an opportunity to go to Georgetown University in Washington D.C.

“It was a very different experience because Williams was a team that had been really high performing for a long time, so I was there to sustain their success to some extent,” Barney said. “Georgetown was a place that had been unsuccessful and our job was to make them more successful so I felt my impact a bit more.”

She eventually became the assistant coach of the rowing team at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. Barney had heard of NSU’s two NCAA national championship wins. When former head coach Stephen Frazier-Wong took a job at Clemson University, Barney took the chance. Bucknell had competed against NSU at the Dad Vail Regatta.

“I was aware of when Coach Frazier-Wong was hired at Clemson and knew they had an opening, so I watching every day, ‘When are they going to post that job because I know I want to apply for it,’” Barney said. “I wanted to jump on it as soon as I could.”

Barney is already feeling the Shark spirit at NSU.

“All the students that I’ve interacted with so far are so enthusiastic about NSU and really excited to be here and there’s just a really positive energy on campus that is really impressive,” she said.

Though the rowers’ main season starts in the spring, they are currently getting ready to compete during fall. Though Barney knows that there are no guarantees, she also knows the team has potential.

“I feel that we’re going to work as hard as we can everyday to put on our best possible performance on May 31 [at the NCAA championships] and I feel like if we do that we’re going to have a very, very good shot of being one of the best teams in the country if not the best team in the country,” she said.

Barney sees her role as being a teacher and an educator. She wants to link the lessons the athletes learn while rowing to the things that will stay with them after they leave NSU such as being a good teammate, being a leader and being accountable for actions, attitudes and choices.

“I want to use rowing as a venue to help them to be better people at the end of the day than they were when they came in,” Barney said.

For now, Barney said she’s in a “learning phase” as she gets to know the team.

“They’re a ton of fun to be around,” she said. “They’re energetic. They’re engaged. They’ve got a lot of pride not just based on who they are but what they do. They’re really proud of being a hard-working group and involved on campus. I definitely want to maintain and build on that culture.”

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