Heather Jacobs was named the 13th head coach in the history of UMass Boston women's basketball in April, 2021. She now enters her fifth season as the Beacons' head coach in 2025-2026.
Jacobs is a seasoned collegiate basketball coach and educator with a proven track record of program-building success across all three NCAA divisions. With more than 15 years of head coaching experience, Jacobs is known for transforming programs, developing leaders, and fostering a culture of academic and athletic excellence.
From 2016 to 2021, Jacobs served as the Head Women’s Basketball Coach at Wagner College (NCAA Division I). She inherited a program that had gone 3-15 in Northeast Conference (NEC) play and led a remarkable turnaround, culminating in an appearance in the 2020–21 NEC Championship Game—the program’s best conference finish in over two decades. During her five-year tenure, Wagner earned three straight NEC postseason appearances, while producing NEC First Team selections, a Winter Scholar-Athlete of the Year, and an NCAA Woman of the Year nominee. Jacobs also served as an adjunct professor of sports psychology at Wagner.
Prior to Wagner, Jacobs spent six seasons as the Assistant Athletic Director and Head Coach at Adelphi University (NCAA Division II) from 2010 to 2016. She took a struggling program and built it into a national contender, highlighted by a No. 3 national ranking in the WBCA Coaches Poll, a Northeast-10 Tournament Championship, and back-to-back NE-10 Southwest Division regular season titles in 2013–14 and 2014–15. Under her leadership, the program produced multiple NE-10 All-Conference and All-American selections, all while maintaining a strong academic standard.
Jacobs began her head coaching career at just 22 years old, becoming the youngest head coach in the country at Daniel Webster College (NCAA Division III). From 2007 to 2010, she led the Eagles to the most successful stretch in program history, including the 2009–10 NECC Regular Season Championship. She also served as the Senior Woman Administrator. Her teams featured multiple NECC Players of the Year and All-Conference honorees. She also held dual roles as the school’s head cross country coach and senior woman administrator during her time there.
Jacobs holds a Ph.D. in Sport Leadership and Administration from Concordia University Chicago (2023), a Master of Education in Sports Management from Adelphi University (2015), an MBA from Daniel Webster College (2012), and a Bachelor of Science in Sports Management from Franklin Pierce University (2006), where she graduated magna cum laude and was a two-time team captain and MVP of the women’s basketball program.
