Newberry High names Katelyn Heard as volleyball head coach

NEWBERRY — The Newberry High School volleyball program will be getting a new head volleyball coach for the 2024 season. Katelyn Heard was recently introduced as the head coach for the lady Bulldogs.

The native of Yorktown, Va., got her coaching career started early. Heard tore her achilles at the beginning of her junior season. She worked hard to get back healthy only to tear that same achilles again in the spring semester of her junior year. After receiving the devastating news that her career was over, she then began to transition into coaching.

Heard started coaching her senior year of high school. She started off by helping out with her former middle school volleyball team. She helped coach those young ladies for the whole school season and throughout the summer before heading to Newberry College.

While at Newberry, she never was team manager nor was an assistant with the school’s volleyball team, but would regularly coach over the summer and during breaks back home in Virginia.

Heard went into full-time coaching and teaching after graduating from Newberry College. She has coached the Intense volleyball team in Lexington and recently was the head coach of the junior varsity Mid-Carolina High School volleyball team. Her coaching experience ranges from coaching young girls who’ve never touched a volleyball to coaching state championship level squads.

“I’m super excited to get this opportunity and I am ready for next season. I had a meeting with my new team to introduce myself and get to know the young ladies. It seems like a very energetic group, but this first year will be all about figuring each other out and growth,” said Heard.

The new head coach embodies the word growth. She had to quickly transition to her plan B after she suffering two horrific injuries that ended her playing career. She also is used to moving around and experiencing different things growing up as military kid who was constantly on the move. These experiences have all lead to her unique coaching style. Her coaching methods could be describe as a mixture of former Tennessee women’s basketball head coach Pat Summitt and current South Carolina women’s head basketball coach Dawn Staley.

“I feel like I’m in the middle of riding your players hard as a coach and knowing when to pull back some. If I see the girls have had a long, hard week then I won’t be as tough,” Heard said. “I also will push them if I see that they are falling behind and not doing their best. I think to be a successful coach then you have to be able find that middle ground.”

Heard will be looking to turn around a three-win program from a season ago and get them back into the playoffs. She is determined to do that will start her high school varsity head coaching career with one simple message for the upcoming year, which is “growth.”