18 Nov Jon Heinz Built a Winning Culture for Liberty High Basketball

Liberty High boys basketball coach talks to his team during a game in 2018. (Courtesy of Jennifer Heinz)

By Juan Cebreiros

When Jon Heinz took over as head coach of the Liberty High School boys basketball team in 2007, he stepped into a program that won just two games and lost 24 the year prior.

Now, Brentwood’s Liberty has become one of the most consistent high school basketball programs in the Bay Area and has missed the North Coast Section playoffs just once since 2011.

“It was hard,” Heinz said of coaching at Liberty his first few years. “My focus was still playoffs, even in year one. We just didn’t have the athletes. We’re playing games that we just really had no business being in.”

Indeed, his first four years at Liberty were rough. The team never finished above .500. And, for Heinz, who was coming from being an assistant coach at the collegiate level where he had success, the losing was difficult to deal with.

Heinz’s first game as head coach was at home against Granada. The Lions lost by 10, despite leading 31-27 at halftime. Heinz recalled after the game being livid with the loss but seeing his team just happy that they were in the game and not blown out.

Heinz knew the entire culture of the boys basketball program had to be reworked. He wanted to instill a high pressure, press-style defense to be the identity of the program.

“During our first fall conditioning, I probably had at least five players throwing up during it,” Heinz said. “It was just a different mindset. I didn’t have exactly the best crew around for pressing, but I wanted to set that foundation for our program.”

One of the biggest problems for Heinz in his first four years coaching at Liberty was just getting kids who were good at basketball and supposed to go to Liberty coming to the school. Heinz said at the time, he was losing a lot of talent to the other Bay Valley Athletic League schools, such as the newly built Heritage High School.

“No one was coming here,” Heinz said. “We had guys starting on our freshman team that didn’t make their eighth grade team. We just made sure in the ’08-’09 season, all those freshmen that should be going to Liberty, were going to Liberty.”

That freshman class who came to Liberty in 2008 would end up becoming the 2011-12 team that would go to NCS playoffs for the first time under Heinz.

During that 2011-12 season, Liberty won 21 games, finished above .500 in league play and won their first round home playoff game against Amador Valley 59-48. It was the first time in 30 years Liberty had hosted an NCS boys basketball playoff game and its first time ever hosting one at the Division 1 level.

While Heinz got the program to become a consistent playoff contender, a BVAL championship eluded Liberty until the 2018-19 season when the Lions went 10-0 against the league to capture their first league title.

Throughout the 2010s, BVAL was consistently sending four of its six teams to NCS playoffs. Heinz called the league “a gauntlet” when talking about trying to win a league title.

“There were so many solid programs at the time,” Heinz said. “There were so many good players in the league. Even though we were really good, we weren’t the most talented team in league. The first time I felt we were definitely the most talented team in league was not until my 2022-23 team.”

Now, Liberty stands at the top of BVAL as the best team in league. They have won the last three straight league titles, while also not having dropped a league game since May 27, 2021.

Heinz plans to step down at the end of this upcoming 2024-25 season, but he says he is excited for the place he’s leaving the program in.

“Probably the proudest thing is taking over a program that won only two games before I got here and when I step away,” Heinz said, “I think we’re built to be at least in the mix for a league championship for years to come. That shows what we have done with this program.”