Alexis Heinz
The first phone call from the Briarcrest administration did not quite work out.
But the second one changed the lives of Alexis Heinz, hundreds of soccer players and the Briarcrest girls’ soccer program forever.
Now coaching girls’ soccer in Tennessee for 22 years, Heinz calls her path a “God thing.”
She’s also being called a TSSAA Distinguished Service Award winner for the 2026-27 academic year.
“I don’t know that I intended on coaching this long, it kind of just kept seeming to work out,” said Heinz, a former Tennessee Tech soccer player with previous coaching stints at both Evangelical Christian School and Arlington prior to this record-setting run at Briarcrest. “The A.D. at Briarcrest called me halfway through my first year at Arlington to talk about the soccer program but there wasn’t a teaching position.
“But the next year, he called again and I was worried to not take it. It’s the one place I thought about the job and thought I would love to go to Briarcrest. I loved the facilities, the opportunities, mission and female athletes there.
“It's the girls, you know? I keep thinking, ‘It’s time. It’s time (to perhaps not coach). Every year, I get a different group of girls and I don’t want to leave them.”
Undoubtedly, Briarcrest’s leadership and community do not want to see Heinz leave them. Under her leadership, the Briarcrest girls’ soccer program boasts a whopping 10 TSSAA State Tournament berths, with championships in both 2015 and 2019, as well as runner-up finishes four other seasons.
“In 2014, playing in the state finals, the week leading up to that we had lost two starters and in the game lost our goalkeeper, suffering just a heartbreaking loss on penalty kicks to Girls Preparatory School,” she said. “The very next year, 2015, we won it. And I don’t know if we’d have won it in 2015 if not for the experience in 2014, and I still hate it for those seniors in 2014 but they were in large part responsible for that next year’s title.
“The 2019 state championship, nothing like it that year. That year, the weather was awful, the trip to state tournament was delayed a week, it went into November, get there, play semifinal game in knee-deep water and win, next day, cancelled games, move us to this teeny tiny turf field.”
The rest is history, of course. And that’s the subject that Heinz majored in and was a large part of his teaching career for a dozen years before she transitioned into private industry while continuing to run one of the state’s preeminent soccer programs.
“I say it’s the girls, but I also have to say, my parents were all about sports because they felt that’s how you developed confidence, especially for women but even my brother, a golfer,” said the previous TSSAA A.F. Bridges Female Coach of the Year recipient whose first coaching job was working for her eventual father-in-law, Jim Heinz. “Steve Heinz, that Heinz legacy in sports. I love that I can talk to my husband about it because he coached baseball and football for 30 years.
“I love Briarcrest, love what it stands for and love the girls that come through our program.”
TSSAA is proud to recognize Coach Alexis Heinz for her dedication and contributions to student-athletes for more than 20 years.
