Heather Ezell excited to start season as Cowgirls' head coach

Nov. 7—LARAMIE — The start to first-year coach Heather Ezell's tenure at the University of Wyoming moved quickly.

On March 24, the Cowgirls were eliminated from the Women's National Invitational Tournament at the hands of UCLA in an 82-81 triple-overtime loss.

The next day, former coach Gerald Mattinson announced his retirement after three seasons at the helm and 16 more seasons as a Cowgirls assistant. Ezell was announced later that day as the new head coach of the UW women's basketball team.

"It was definitely some work in progress," Ezell said. "At the same time, it was going, 'Hey, this is what we want to do.' It even caught me by surprise a little bit, too. I appreciate the trust the administration has in me to take over this program."

Despite being a first-time head coach, Ezell is no stranger to UW. She joined the Cowgirls staff in 2015, where she served as an assistant to then-coach Joe Legerski.

When Legerski retired and Mattinson took over, Ezell served as the associate head coach for the Cowgirls. Both Mattinson and Legerski have played instrumental roles in helping prepare Ezell for this opportunity.

"To be able to learn under two people like that — I tried to soak it up as much as I could, not even knowing what the outcome would be," Ezell said. "I just tried to learn as much as I could and just grow with my coaching career with those two guys."

In her seven seasons in Laramie, Ezell has helped lead the Cowgirls to new heights. During that span, the team has won 130 games. UW has also made the postseason five times, including one trip to the NCAA tournament in 2021. In that same season, she helped lead the team to its first Mountain West title in program history.

Oftentimes, when new head coaches take over programs, there is a lot of turnover with staff. This did not prove to be the case when Ezell took over. After taking the reins to the Cowgirls program, she managed to keep assistant coaches Ryan Larsen and Fallon Lewis around.

"We all really work well together — myself, Ryan, Fallon, we have a good thing going," Ezell said. "Why change a good thing? Wyoming has been doing well in the past few years, so why change things when things are going well?"

With Ezell being so heavily involved in the program prior, not much is changing with how the Cowgirls play the game. She plans on keeping a lot of things the same, and only changing a few minor things. This has also helped the players adjust to the new coaching style almost seamlessly.

"She has taken a lot of the stuff we were working on last year and just added in her own flair," junior guard Grace Ellis said. "A lot of us could take what we already had and just improve on it. We didn't have to spend as long in the preseason going over basics. I think that is going to make a pretty big difference for us."

For fifth-year seniors Quinn Weidemann and Tommi Olson, Ezell's hiring marks the third head coach in five years for the two super-seniors. However, it hasn't been as tumultuous and turbulent as one might think. This is because the last two head coach hires have come from within the program.

"They (all) coach very similar," senior guard Quinn Weidemann said. "There are differences, but they learned from each other, so there are similarities."

Added Olson: "Hiring an assistant coach as the head coach after Joe retired and (Gerald Mattinson) retired was the smoothest transition you could ask for. They take what the previous coach did and put a little twist on it."

Time will tell if Ezell is able to maintain the excellence established by her predecessors. However, one thing is for certain: Ezell and Cowgirls believe she is in the right place.

"It's a dream come true (being here)," Ezell said. "I always said this couldn't be more perfect because I have been with the University of Wyoming for seven years. To be able to start my head coaching career here just makes it that perfect situation, if you ask me."

Matt Atencio covers Cheyenne prep sports for WyoSports. He can be reached at matencio@wyosports.net. Follow him on Twitter at @MattAtencio5.