{"id":8333,"date":"2018-06-15T16:39:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T16:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maderatribustg.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=8333"},"modified":"2026-05-13T18:30:48","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T18:30:48","slug":"hefner-continues-sunbirds-pipeline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/hefner-continues-sunbirds-pipeline\/","title":{"rendered":"Hefner continues Sunbirds\u2019 pipeline"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

For the past decade, there has been a Madera Coyote playing with the Fresno Pacific Sunbirds\u2019 baseball team and Brian Hefner will continue that trend next season.<\/p>

With Tristen Alvarez playing his senior season, Hefner will begin his freshman season after signing his National Letter of Intent to play at the school.<\/p>

\u201cIt\u2019s awesome,\u201d Hefner said. \u201cI get to play with Tristen one more year. It was just like high school where I played with him for a year. We texted a little bit. He came out for a few practices and I talked to him. He told me he was telling his coaches how good I was.\u201d<\/p>

Hefner ended a terrific senior season as a two-way player after an average junior season. He said that if he didn\u2019t have a good senior season, he wasn\u2019t even going to pursue playing baseball in college.<\/p>

\u201cI was surprised how good my senior year was,\u201d he said. Before my senior season, unless I had a good year, I didn\u2019t want to play college ball, even at Fresno City.\u201d<\/p>

Hefner ended his senior season with great year, batting .337. He led the Coyotes in hits (34), RBIs (29) and home runs (4). His most memorable hit was a ninth inning grand slam in a win over Madera South in April.<\/p>

After not pitching at all in his first three season, Hefner became the ace of the staff going 6-3 in 12 starts with a 1.35 ERA. He struck out 59 batters in 57 innings pitched and allowed just 11 runs all season.<\/p>

Hefner appeared on Fresno Pacific\u2019s radar after attending a camp at the school after his sophomore season.<\/p>

\u201cI haven\u2019t had a really good season since,\u201d he said. \u201cI had a really good senior year so that made me want to play next year. I got in contact with them again. He got back to me again and were interested again. They wanted me on a visit, so I went. I went around the campus and told them I wanted to go there and they said they will do what they can to make it work. I waited around for a few weeks. They called me and got all the numbers and gave me a full ride. I was pretty excited.\u201d<\/p>

Before Fresno Pacific came with an offer, he was going to play at Fresno City College, although he said if he got any other offers from a four-year school, he would have taken it.<\/p>

\u201cI was pretty stressed,\u201d he said. \u201cI focused on the baseball season. I was stressed where I was going. I didn\u2019t know what FPU was going to offer.\u201d<\/p>

He played first base and pitched at Madera, but doesn\u2019t know what he will do when he gets to Fresno Pacific.<\/p>

\u201cThey just liked my work ethic,\u201d Hefner said. \u201cMy other coaches tell them about it. They didn\u2019t tell me where I would be playing.\u201d<\/p>

Hefner hasn\u2019t decided on a major, but would like to go into engineering. Since Fresno Pacific doesn\u2019t have an engineering program, he will work on his general ed.<\/p>

\u201cIt\u2019s an amazing feeling,\u201d Hefner said. \u201cIt seems like a dream.\u201d<\/p>

With Hefner signing with Fresno Pacific, it will being a sibling rivalry into the Hefner household. His older sister Brielle is a senior volleyball player at Fresno State.<\/p>

\u201cWatching her, (Alec) Gamboa and Tristen sign made me want to do it a little more,\u201d Brian said. \u201cMy sister will be able to watch me play.<\/p>

\u201cIt\u2019s a great feeling to sign. I didn\u2019t know what I was going to do for four years. Now, I have a plan to follow, so it\u2019s awesome.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the past decade, there has been a Madera Coyote playing with the Fresno Pacific Sunbirds\u2019 baseball team and Brian Hefner will continue that trend next season. With Tristen Alvarez playing his senior season, Hefner will begin his freshman season after signing his National Letter of Intent to play at the school. \u201cIt\u2019s awesome,\u201d Hefner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":28490,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_theme","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_angie_page":false,"page_builder":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-8333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-schools"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}