IOWA CITY — How does a college basketball player go from buried on the bench as a freshman to the go-to star as a sophomore?
For Iowa’s Ava Heiden, the answer is a blend of determination and 1980s rock bands.
When her playing time dwindled or even became non-existent a year ago, Heiden would show up an hour early to practices — usually by herself — or late at night, cranking up her go-to tunes on the reverberating practice-gym speakers at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
“Black Sabbath, Pearl Jam, AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses,” Heiden said. “Oh, I love hearing that music. And singing along. That’s another reason I don’t want a manager there, because I can sing and they can’t hear me.”
One of the songs on Heiden’s 9½-hour playlist is, fittingly, “Shot in the Dark” by AC/DC.
After tireless work in the dark, Heiden’s basketball breakout began in March of her freshman year. And now, as a sophomore, she has blossomed into one of the most productive players in the Big Ten Conference.
The 6-foot-4 Heiden leads the No. 13-ranked Hawkeyes with 16.0 points per game and 63% shooting and is second on the team at 7.7 rebounds. In conference-only games, she is eighth in the league with a 19.6 scoring average, despite playing fewer minutes (24.4 a game) than any player ranked in the top 25.
It’s been a stirring and revealing rise.
And like the best stuff in life, it didn’t come easily.
Working in the dark meant conquering challenges that were as much mental as physical.
“There’s no way around it. Freshman year is hard,” Randi Henderson, Heiden’s position coach at Iowa, said. “The players that choose to invest in the outcomes and their process, those are the ones that really soar at the end.”
The quiet bus trip that changed everything
Heiden grew up in Sherwood, Oregon, about 15 miles south of Portland. While she did follow Sabrina Ionescu’s storied college career in nearby Eugene, Heiden wasn’t exactly an avid basketball fan, nor was she heavily recruited at first. She’s a well-rounded type who enjoys exploring nature, cooking and reading books. Academics are a major focus. At Iowa, Heiden is double major in finance and risk management.
One day, going into her junior year of high school, Heiden noticed that the Hawkeye women’s basketball account started following her on Instagram. Heiden’s parents, Randy and Kelly, knew Iowa had a reputable women’s basketball program and encouraged her to research the school a little more.
That was around the time that Caitlin Clark was leading the Hawkeyes to the first of two Final Fours.
“Seeing Iowa, what they were doing, was pretty inspiring,” Heiden said. “They kind of reeled me in.”
Heiden arrived at Iowa, 1,900 miles and two time zones from home, as ESPN’s No. 42-ranked player in the 2024 recruiting class. Heiden had big expectations, externally and for herself. But it took only until Iowa’s fourth game for Heiden to experience her first, big ‘welcome-to-college’ moment.
The Hawkeyes were playing at Drake on Nov. 17, 2024, and coaches said this would be a great matchup for Iowa’s interior players. Heiden thought she had been practicing well and felt confident. But she only watched from the bench as senior center Addison O’Grady played 33-plus minutes and scored 27 points. Junior forward/center Hannah Stuelke scored 16 points. Heiden didn’t get into the game until the final 82 seconds of an 86-73 win.
Heiden remembers she was a poor teammate that day. She had a hard time being happy for others while internalizing that her own path was being stymied. She remembers nobody talking to her on the bus ride from Des Moines to Iowa City.
“You’re just thinking about a million different things,” Heiden said. “I didn’t sleep too well that night. I got up early, went to the gym.
“That was really the start of, ‘OK, screw this.’ I’m going to put in the hours, put in the work. I don’t want to feel like that again.”
Cue, “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey, and “Kickstart My Heart” by Motley Crue, and all the other classic hits on Heiden’s Apple playlist.
Those are the types of songs that fed her soul in those in-the-dark moments. She felt anger, too, but the songs were a way to remember who she was. Heiden had been introduced to 1980s rock when her father would play Rage Against the Machine on the way to her middle-school soccer games.
After that, the inquisitive Heiden explored the genre on her own and loved it. She even got her dad into Queen. They have been bonding over old-school rock ever since.
At Iowa, solo workouts turned into Heiden texting Henderson every day to get in extra work on post moves. She would work with head manager Tanner Henningsen, who is 6-3, on all kinds of drills, especially defense.
“I had to get there an hour early for (practice),” Henningsen said, “and she was always beating me there.”
Since Heiden enjoyed her rock-music workouts in solitude, too, Henderson and Iowa head coach Jan Jensen would give her offensive routines that didn’t require a manager for defense or rebounding: Mikan drills with one and two balls; high-post moves without dribbling; working on the short-corner and lane-elbow jumpers that according to Heiden are “like layups for us”; and free throws while fatigued.
Henderson, an Iowa player back in the day, had to wait her turn behind Tangela Smith. Jensen reminded Heiden that 2019 national player of the year Megan Gustafson had part-time minutes as a freshman. Before being named first-team All-Big Ten four straight years, Monika Czinano averaged 1.9 points and 5.3 minutes as a freshman.
The rise of Kate Martin and Sydney Affolter as memorable Hawkeyes began in similar freshman obscurity and solitude. There is only one Caitlin Clark.
“That’s the beautiful thing about this sport,” Jensen said. “Most of the best stories are a continual climb. I think that’s what Iowa women’s basketball has always been about.”
Ava Heiden: From ‘DNP’ to breakthrough moment
Heiden didn’t play a minute in last season’s most memorable win, a 76-69 home win over JuJu Watkins and No. 4 USC on the same day that Clark’s No. 22 was retired. She didn’t play in a Feb. 17 overtime loss at Ohio State. She didn’t play in a two-point home loss to No. 3 UCLA on Feb. 23.
Coaches would tell Heiden to stay ready, but after three months of grinding in the post-Drake aftermath, those words began to sound hollow.
“You want to emotionally protect yourself a little bit,” Heiden said. “It’s pretty draining to be in that position. That’s part of the process.”
Why she wasn’t playing became a speculative topic among outsiders. Heiden had shown flashes of her impressive ability to run the floor at her size.
The coaches had reasons for her six “DNP” (did not play) designations. The big one was a midseason move of Stuelke from power forward to center, which slid O’Grady to a top reserve role and Heiden third in line.
Jensen, a renowned post coach, also believes in the timing of when a young freshman is fully released — that if it’s done too soon, confidence can get crushed.
“When you’re a high school post player and you’re good, it is just easier,” Henderson said. “They’ve never had to navigate pushing against somebody that’s as big or as strong.”
In the dark, Heiden worked on scoring without dribbling. Heiden’s go-to move was always the dribble and spin. In college, that is easily scouted and takes too long to develop. Incredible efficiency at the basket, with high field-goal percentages and an economy of dribbles, was the calling card for Gustafson and Czinano.
“I knew with Iowa’s post-playing legacy, dribbling is frowned upon,” Heiden said. “I was never really a cross-stepper. That’s very much the go-to move (here).”
But with each extra workout, with each song in the playlist, Heiden’s game was ascending.
Phrases like “trust the process” started to make more sense. She knew she was getting better.
“In scrimmages, she would beat everyone down the court,” Henningsen said.
Now, she waited for her opportunity … which, at last, arrived in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament in Indianapolis. In a tense battle against No. 6 seed Michigan State, Stuelke picked up her fourth foul with 2:44 left in the third quarter. Instead of O’Grady, Jensen turned to Heiden — with Michigan State leading, 48-46.
Heiden scored Iowa’s next six points, including a memorable 3-point play on a fast break that restored Iowa’s lead to 52-48. Heiden finished with 11 points on 4-for-4 shooting in Iowa’s 74-61 win.
Heiden followed that up with 10 points in a one-point loss to Ohio State. In a first-round NCAA Tournament win against Murray State, Heiden was Iowa’s leading scorer with 15 points in 17 minutes.
“Every day, I got a little bit better at one thing. The next week, I got better at this. The next week, I honed this skill,” Heiden said. “When I got the opportunity at the end last year, I was able to show that growth.
“And I think confidence-wise, it was a big jump to see the ball go in and be like, ‘I knew it! This is what I can do! I told you!’ But there’s a big (message) of trusting the process. That’s a hard thing to hear as a freshman.”
What’s next for Ava Heiden, still just a sophomore
Heiden’s late-season breakthrough made her realize that she couldn’t stop with the extra work. In the offseason, 8 a.m. appointments with a basketball and Guns N’ Roses have continued. Jensen raved about Heiden’s offseason work ethic. She got stronger, if that was possible, and refined her offense.
The biggest difference as a sophomore?
“Last year, she was mentioned on the scouting report. Now she is a key name on the scouting report,” Jensen said. “The evolution in that nine-month-period … her mentality understanding that, she’s growing into that beautifully.”
In late November, Heiden was named Big Ten Player of the Week after leading Iowa to wins over then-No. 7 Baylor and Miami of Florida. Recently, she put up a career-high 27 points against Penn State.
As Heiden goes, so goes Iowa (14-2 overall, 5-0 Big Ten) as it heads into the Jan. 15 matchup against her home-state team in Oregon (8 p.m. CT, FS1). Her two lowest-output games (eight points each) have come in Iowa’s two losses — vs. Iowa State and Connecticut.
The Iowa State game, in particular, highlighted a key area of development for Heiden: Staying on the floor.
Heiden got in instant foul trouble in Ames and played only 15:37, which completely derailed Iowa’s game plan against productive Cyclones center Audi Crooks. Heiden was in constant foul trouble recently at Northwestern, playing only 18:13, but still scored 23 points.
“Learning how to play physically without fouling takes film,” Henderson said. “It takes experience, both good and bad, like learning what to let go. She’s in that growth cycle right now.”
Heiden’s story of patience can be a benefit to Iowa freshmen like Layla Hays and Addie Deal, who aren’t getting the production or playing time they’d like to have.
Heiden believes that if it weren’t for that quiet trip home from Drake, she wouldn’t have had the urgency in her work that fueled her Big Ten Tournament breakthrough. And now that’s spilled into this stage of her development, as the go-to player on Iowa’s offense.
Perhaps Heiden’s latest basketball theme can be drawn from another playlist favorite: Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now.” She absolutely has the potential to one day be an All-American center.
“I was able to trust the process pretty well with coach Randi, and we got through it, and here I am today,” Heiden said. “There’s going to be more hardships and more things I’ll have to grow from this year. All I can do is control my controllables and get better every single day.”
Hawkeyes columnist Chad Leistikow has served for 31 years with The Des Moines Register and USA TODAY Sports Network. Chad is the 2023 INA Iowa Sports Columnist of the Year and NSMA Co-Sportswriter of the Year in Iowa. Join Chad’s text-message group at HawkCentral.com/HawkeyesTexts. Follow @ChadLeistikow on X.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: How Ava Heiden found her rhythm in Iowa women’s basketball | Leistikow
Reporting by Chad Leistikow, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
