SUU to Softball Champ and Mom

According to her teammates, Jessica Heineman Tringham spent 2000-2004 keeping the Southern Utah University softball team edgy and cool, and did it with a flair for fashion and style. However, Jess truly became fierce when it was time to don that Thunderbird red uniform and compete for SUU. She walked away with a regular season championship in 2003 and a degree in physical education with a minor in nutrition and food science by 2005.

After graduating from Layton High School in 2000, Jess headed to Cedar City, and the first lesson SUU taught her was achievements are dependent upon the right team of people and she learned that the key to success is surrounding herself with amazing people.

Like many freshmen, early college experiences included some growing pains.

“My first year at SUU was rough,” she says. “I didn’t realize how hard being away from my family and friends was going to be. I also didn’t realize how hard it was being a student-athlete. If it weren’t for the support of my family, SUU teammates and coaches, I might not have made it through.”

Jess did much more than just survive. SUU provided her an environment to truly thrive and begin her quest for adventures outside of the box.

“SUU set me up for success,” she explains. “I believe that going to a smaller school helped me get my feet wet. After graduating from Southern Utah, I attended and graduated from the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising (FIDM) with a fashion merchandise marketing degree and I would not have been as successful without my previous experience at SUU.”

In 2012, Jess embarked on her next great life experience when she married marrying Thomas Tringham, a US Navy Deep Sea Diver. The couple has been have been married for eight years and we have two children, Millie will be six in June and Tommy who turned four at the end of February.

Jess, along with her sister, founded a clothing company for children. But motherhood and the opportunity for her husband to be stationed overseas gave Jess the chance to focus on her family.

“I currently live in Yokosuka, Japan, and about to head to Oauhu, Hawaii, in April,” Jess explains, “I am a full-time stay-at-home mom. I decided to take step back from working at this time due to the constraints of my husband’s career.”

Through her student-athlete experience at SUU, Jess got a taste of what managing life on the road would be like, but even that does not compare to the military lifestyle. She brings a strong spirit and example to her children who are her best accomplishments.

“I am most proud of my marriage and my two kiddos,” she says. “Marriage and raising a family are hard, now throw in the military lifestyle including deployments, long trips away from each other, and living across the world from family.”

Speaking of family, Jess is still able to keep in touch with some of the members of her support group from her days at SUU.

“I keep in touch with a bunch of pals including my former coach, Laurel Simmons – thanks to social media making it so easy,” Jess says. “My former teammate Dusti Winward Puliz and I actually got married the same year and had our first borns within two weeks of each other.”

Along with her teammates, Jess lists some of her SUU favorites as sports Psychology and kinesiology classes as well as Professor Christopher Topher. She was able to make it back to campus in 2015 for homecoming weekend and an alumni softball game.

The cool and edgy freshmen who first stepped on SUU’s campus in 2000 is still setting trends 19 years later. By overcoming separation from family and immersing herself in the college experience, Jess has been able to seek out many big life adventures including raising two children in Japan.

SUU to Basketball Coach

If you were a Thunderbird in the nineties and attended the annual Basketball Bash, you might recall the night “The Jackson 5” made a cameo. Once the starting five on the men’s basketball team traded their uniforms for bell bottoms, one thing became clear: Keith “Shaggy” Berard’s rockin’ robin performance endeared himself to the T-Bird faithful.

The Houston native and St. Thomas High School Graduate made his Cedar City debut in 1993 as a point guard for the men’s basketball team. After some early hankerings for Texas, Berard soon found that SUU had become his home away from home. He went on to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in 1996, majoring in communications and minoring in physical education.

“Southern Utah University taught me how to adapt to being far away from home,” he says. “Once I came to SUU, I rarely - if at all - was able to go home. But being around my teammates every day made them family and took away any thoughts of being homesick. I still keep in touch with these guys because we are brothers, just from different mothers.”

While it may have been Keith’s epic dance moves that first put him on the T-Bird map, it was his performances as an all-conference basketball player, DJ on Radio 911, and stints on SUTV that connected him to students from all different backgrounds.

“I loved the hands-on experience we had as students at SUU,” he says. “I was a part of a great communications department, TV studio and radio station. I was able to have my own radio show and produced the Coaches Corner on SUTV. I really enjoyed those opportunities.”

Berard anticipated extending his love of basketball into a sports journalism career, but his playing experience and physical education classes gave him the sideline bug.

“I always knew I wanted to be involved with basketball, but I thought it would be in front of a camera,” Berard explains, “But once I graduated from SUU in 1996 and played professionally in Switzerland, I knew I wanted to coach.”

Through coaching contacts at his high school and junior college, Berard pursued his first coaching job at Howard College in Big Spring, Texas.

“School had already started, but I called the head coach and he told me if I could get out there by Wednesday, the job was mine,” he says. “I packed my things as soon as we hung up the phone, loaded up my Ford Ranger, and headed out to West Texas.”

Berard credits his coaches and teammates at Southern Utah University and beyond for providing inspiration in his coaching career.

“The coaches I played for were mentors and helped guide me as a player and now as a coach,” he says. “It meant a lot to me being named team MVP because that let me know the extra work I put into basketball was noticed. All of my teammates I played with, and even some of the guys who came after me, are some the friendships I value the most.”

Coaching has even brought Berard back to Utah with stints at the former College of Eastern Utah (now USU Eastern) and Weber State, including a chance to coach against his alma mater during the 2012-13 season. Today he is back on the sideline in his hometown of Houston serving as an assistant coach at Houston Baptist University (HBU).

“This is actually my second stop at HBU,” he explains. “Head Coach Ron Cottrell has been here for 28 years and restarted the program from scratch in 1991. What really drew my attention to the job was in 2007, HBU was returning back to Division I. Playing at SUU in the early 90’s as an independent school gave me the background to be able to relate to recruiting student-athletes who would be playing in a similar situation to myself.”

Basketball is not the only arena where Berard has excelled as he has put together a stellar support team that guides him in his life when he steps off the basketball court. He and wife Sabrina McNair have been married for 18 years and have two daughter, Katelyn Dion (age 16) and Khloe Dion (age 12). Being the minority gender in the household, his wife gave him a special gift.

“Since we didn’t have a boy, Sabrina allowed me to give both girls my middle name.” 

These days Berard has traded his MVP trophies for a spectator seat watching his oldest daughter follow in his foot steps on the basketball court, while his youngest daughter dances hip-hop, tap, and ballet.

He has also taken on a father-figure role with several of the student-athletes he has been fortunate enough to coach. And as someone who counted on his Southern Utah teammates as brothers, he understands the important connection and mentoring opportunities coaching provides.

“Professionally, I am in my 21^st year of coaching and enjoy every moment of it,” he says. “But what I am most proud of is when one of my former players calls or texts just to keep in touch and let me know how they are doing.”

Berard credits SUU professors Art Challis (’72) and Dr. Steve Lunt (’57) for helping him diversify his experiences and establish himself as a college basketball coach. He regularly reunites with teammates from his SUU playing days to reminisce about the glory days.

Southern Utah served as the spotlight for his moonwalk (which is still on point) as well as the educational jump start into a successful coaching career.