Bushnell University

The Dr. Heike McNeil File

2006-2019

Three-Time CCC Coach of the Year 2015 NAIA Coach of the Year

2015 NAIA National Champions 7 NAIA Appearances 3 CCC Championships 11 Individual CCC Champions 59 All-Conference Athletes 30 All-Americans 64 NAIA Scholar Athletes

Dr. Heike McNeil became the Bushnell University Faculty Athletic Representative in 2019. McNeil was the inaugural running coach for NCU, leading the men's and women's cross country program for 13 years and the men's and women's distance track teams for 11. She was the third-longest serving coach of any sport in school history before her retirement in 2019. 

Dr. McNeil was inducted into the Bushnell Athletics Hall of Fame in 2022. 

The Beacon Cup, given each year to the team that best represents Bushnell athletics on the field, in the classroom, and though their character, was renamed the Dr. Heike McNeil Cup in 2019. Her teams won the trophy nine times in 13 years.

During her career, McNeil developed Bushnell into one of the premier distance running programs in the NAIA. Her teams were consistently ranked in the top-25 nationally and from 2011 to 2018 at least one gender qualified for seven straight NAIA National Championships. McNeil was the architect for Bushnell's first Cascade Collegiate Conference Championship in any sport, winning the 2014 title. It was the first of three straight for the Beacons, with McNeil being voted the CCC Coach of the Year three times.  

Under her guidance the Beacons finished fourth in the NAIA in 2011, third in 2014, and second in 2016. The 2015 season will go down as the best ever with Bushnell collecting their first ever NAIA National Championship with McNeil being named the NAIA Coach of the Year. 

McNeil coached 30 NAIA All-Americans and over 50 All-Cascade Collegiate Conference recipients, including eleven individual CCC Champions in both Cross Country and Track & Field. 

Known for their strength in the classroom equal to their strength on the course, McNeil's teams garnered countless Academic All-CCC and NAIA Scholar-Athlete winners. Her teams also collected over 20 NAIA Scholar-Team Awards. In 2017 and 2018 respectively, Michelle Fletcher and Rosa Schmidt became the first two athletes in school history to by named the winner of the Presidential Scholar Award, given at commencement to the graduating senior with the highest GPA with the most credits completed. 
  Coach McNeil began at NCU in 2004 as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry and quickly established a successful running club on campus, taking students and faculty to various road races and other running events. That club evolved into the current varsity teams, which begin competition in the Fall of 2006.

McNeil was a star runner at Linfield College from 1992-1996, participating in Cross Country and distance events for Track & Field. She was an All-American and All-American Scholar Athlete for the Wildcats in 1994. She was also an NAIA National Qualifier for the Marathon before graduating in 1996 with a BS in Chemistry. 

McNeil is an active competitive runner and in the summer of 2010, took home a pair of second-place finishes (1500m, 5000m) at the USA Masters Track & Field National Championships in Sacramento, California.

Coach McNeil earned her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Oregon in 2000 and continues to work as a Professor on the Bushnell Faculty. She and her husband David live in Eugene.