Softball
Favorite athlete: Hunter Pence
Favorite team: Phillies
Favorite memory competing in sports: My favorite memory of my career was playing in front of my dad.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened when competing in sports: We were in a game against Council Rock South and we were tied in the seventh and there was a runner on first. I hit a ball in the gap and the runner in front of me missed second base and did an awkward move to attempt to go back to second. She was out by a mile. We ended up winning the game.
Music on iPod: Mostly country music. Favorite song is “Bless the Broken Road” by Rascal Flatts because it was mine and my dad’s father-daughter dance.
Future plans: Attend school at La Salle University for nursing and play softball there.
Words to live by: “God gives his toughest battles to the strongest soldiers.”
One goal before turning 30: Married and have a family
One thing people don’t know about me: In the minimal free time I have, I help coach younger kids in softball, and I train to become a firefighter.
By Mary Jane Souder
Jackie Heim has a simple ritual before every at-bat. To the casual observer, it might look as though the William Tennent senior is doing nothing more than rearranging the dirt in the batter’s box before she steps to the plate, but it’s much more than that.
“I write my dad’s initials in the dirt every time I go up to bat, so I always remember him that way,” Heim said. “I always pray to him a little bit before I go in the batter’s box. I focus on it and say, ‘Dad, this one is for you, no matter what happens.’”
David Heim – Jackie’s biggest supporter – lost a courageous battle with cancer on May 1, 2015.
Two days after his funeral service, Heim stepped to the plate in the 10th inning of her team’s game against Abington with a runner on second in a tie game. What happened next was straight out of a movie as Heim – who had been encouraged to take some time off – ripped a one-strike pitch over the right center field fence for a two-run home run, propelling the Panthers to an electrifying 10-8 win.
“He wouldn’t have wanted me to miss playing for anything,” Heim said. “I go out there and I don’t play for myself, but I play for him because he was my biggest fan, my biggest inspiration.
“He told me never to give up, so I go out there for him.”
Heim, who also has a tattoo with her father’s initials, has certainly done her father proud. The senior shortstop wouldn’t be the standout athlete she is today if it hadn’t been for her father.
“Me and my dad were the only two athletic people in the family,” Heim said. “My dad played football when he was younger.
“He traveled the country with me (to softball tournaments), he drove me to practices, he played out back with me, he took me to the field when I needed extra help. He was a sports dude.
“All my (older) sisters were more toward the artistic and education side. Me – I was more toward the athletic side. “
Heim has turned her athletic talents on the softball diamond into a scholarship to La Salle University. Over the course of a stellar high school career, she has earned the respect of opposing coaches.
Central Bucks South coach Dan Hayes – after his team earned a 5-4 win over Tennent in a game that saw the senior shortstop rip a two-run home run – said simply, “I’m glad we don’t have to play Heim twice a year.”
And after Neshaminy edged William Tennent 2-1 to clinch the SOL National Conference title, coach Dave Chichilitti offered some unsolicited praise as well.
“We had to walk Heim once – the kid is out there playing on one leg,” he said. “She has her leg in an air cast and you see this kid swing the bat and I said, ‘I’m certainly not going to let her beat me.’ What a tough kid, what a great player.”
It’s the kind of praise that follows Heim, a special talent who knows only one way to play – all out.
“She’s real, real competitive,” Tennent coach Biz Keeny said. “She’s somebody that comes to practice and wants to compete, somebody that comes to practice and wants to learn.
“She plays 100 percent all the time. Her intensity level is extremely high. She’s fit the mold of what we’ve had over the last number of years in our players. That Nikki (Alden), that Sara (Keeny), that ‘I’m not coming out here to waste time. I’m coming out here to win, I’m coming out here to play hard.’ She’s a great kid.”
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Heim got her first taste of competitive sports playing soccer.
“I didn’t like it because I couldn’t use my hands,” she said. “So I switched over to t-ball. That’s when the whole thing started.”
The ‘whole thing’ included playing softball, basketball and even field hockey in eighth grade. She continued playing basketball through her sophomore year, but softball was always her passion.
“I think it was more just the competitive side of it,” said Heim. “A lot of people underestimate it. I thought I could be one of those who proved people wrong who said girls can’t do this, but they can actually do it.”
Heim laughs when she talks about her short-lived career as a pitcher.
“That wasn’t the greatest time – I was actually pretty awful,” she said. “I only pitched for a couple of years and then I realized I was not very good and I probably wouldn’t get any better so I gave it up and switched around to different positions on the field to see where I could play.”
Travel softball entered the picture when she was 11 or 12, and the summer after her sophomore year she joined Sports Connection at the suggestion of friend and former teammate Sara Keeny.
“You could see very early on she was athletic with good feet, and she liked to compete,” coach Keeny said. “She can play any spot in the infield, and her lateral movement allowed her to move over to shortstop. Some kids don’t have that lateral movement – slide steps. I saw she had the ability to move laterally.”
Sidelined with concussions at the start of both her freshman and sophomore softball seasons, Heim still earned a spot on the varsity both years.
“I actually got them from basketball at the end of the season,” she said. “My concussion symptoms kept lingering for a couple of months. That was a tough time. I had to fight through it.”
By this time, Heim was pursuing her goal of one day taking her game to the collegiate level.
“Ever since I started playing travel, I’ve always wanted to play in college,” she said. “I always watched softball on TV with my dad, and I was like, ‘Dad, that’s what I want to do.’
“My ultimate goal was to take it to Arizona State. That was my dream school, but that kind of fell apart when I realized I’m from the East Coast and that doesn’t usually happen.”
A visit to La Salle at the beginning of her junior year convinced Heim it could be the perfect fit.
“(Coach Ron Shoemaker) gave me an offer,” she said. “I took it home for a few days and thought about it, talked it over with my parents.
“That’s when my dad was still here. It was close to home in case something did happen, and they have a nursing program.”
Heim committed in December of her junior year, and her voice takes on a pensive tone when she recalls that difficult year.
“My mom was working and my dad was sick,” she said. “I have a little sister who is also into sports, and it was my junior year which is the most important year of high school.
“It was definitely hard coping with it, but I had a good support system around me so they helped out a lot. My team and coaches all texted me, called me and said if I needed anything they were always there for me.”
As for her career choice, Heim is following in the footsteps of her mother, Joanne Heim.
“I always loved the medical side of things,” she said. “I always watched the shows on TV with my mom.
“I don’t know what it is, but I’ve always wanted to be a nurse. My mom was a big inspiration for that because she’s worked for 30-plus years as a nurse at Doylestown (Hospital), and she’s just an amazing woman.”
And it was her mother who nurtured Heim’s childhood dream of becoming a firefighter.
“I was never your typical little girl growing up,” she said. “I never played with Barbie dolls, I never dressed up like a girl.
“I was always out there playing sports and stuff like that. One day we saw a fire truck driving down the street, and I just thought it was the coolest thing ever. I told my mom I wanted to be a firefighter when I grew up. She bought me a whole bunch of firefighter toys, bought me all the clothes.”
The dream of becoming a firefighter didn’t end there. Heim took part in a cadet program offered by the Hartsville Fire Company. When she turned 16, she joined the Warminster Fire Company and has been with them ever since.
“Right now I’m finishing up some classes, and once I finish the classes I’ll be able to do anything anyone over the age of 18 can do –you can wear an air pack, you can cut open cars,” she said. “I love it, it’s awesome.”
Although Heim won’t be playing softball at the school of her dreams as a youngster, Arizona State, La Salle isn’t a bad compromise for an athlete who sets goals for herself and then works hard to achieve them.
“Having watched her play, whether it be basketball or running a ball down close to the foul line in softball – those were things that jumped out at me,” coach Keeny said. “Sliding when you don’t have to slide, battling at the plate from an 0-2 count to a 3-2 count. Those to me are all the competitive things you can see early on in a player, and she had all of them. She’s got tremendous ability.”
Ability that the three-year captain has special incentive to maximize for her father, who continues to inspire and joins Heim every time she steps onto the softball diamond.
