There is rarely a day at Palomar when someone is not looking for Flecicia Heise. After 33 years as the college’s athletic trainer, her presence has become woven into the daily life of Palomar Athletics.
The winner of the 2021-22 Classified Employee of the Year award and recent California Community College Athletic Trainer Association Hall of Fame inductee is retiring at the end of the 2026 spring semester, bringing an end to a long career.
“I always said that I would go out on a high, I would not go out on something that I hated. I still love it, and I could probably still keep doing it, but life changes, and it’s just kind of time to pass the baton and move on,” Flecicia Heise said.
Her retirement doesn’t mean her impact at Palomar is coming to an end though, just ask Kyle Le, an athletic trainer who works alongside Flecicia Heise.
Le became a full-time athletic trainer in 2025 and had been working in a part-time role for the previous three years.
Flecicia’s influence on him started back in 2016 when he was playing tennis for Palomar, long before he started his career.
“I wasn’t aware of what an athletic trainer was or what their role was, but then after being injured, I was introduced to Flecicia,” Le said.
Bottom: Flecicia Heise works with Felix Hamm through a rehab exercise. (Griselda Garcia)
“That influenced my process of becoming an athletic trainer, just because of how great she was and how she was able to help me get back onto the court with whatever injury I was dealing with,” Le said. “That inspired me to do the same with our athletes now.”
This is one of many ways that Flecicia Heise makes an impression on people. If you run into her, it’s hard not to notice the obvious joy and passion that she brings to each day.
As she maneuvers through campus preparing Palomar’s athletes for success, people walking by will shout out her name. Athletes going to the training room often seek her out before anyone else, hoping to catch Flecicia before she zips around campus helping Palomar get ready for a big game.
“There’s not a day where I don’t hear someone say, ‘Where’s Flecicia?’ ‘She’s probably helping someone out on the football field or the baseball field’ someone will say. I’ve noticed that everyone’s always asking where she is,” women’s basketball player Luciana Aguilar said.
When she isn’t zooming by you on the cart to head to the Dome or one of Palomar’s fields, she’s in the training room, working with an athlete who is recovering from an injury.
For a lot of these athletes, Palomar is a place where they can showcase their skills to four-year universities. When a player suffers an injury, that provides a massive setback to this journey. That’s where Flecicia comes in.
She works alongside the athletes through every step of the recovery process, making sure to push them to do their best while also ensuring that they aren’t exerting themselves so hard that they re-aggravate their injury.
Flecicia checks in after each exercise is finished to ask the athlete how their body is feeling, then challenges them to do more if she thinks they are capable. All of this effort is done to get that athlete back on the field feeling stronger than they were before.
Seeing an athlete play in their first game back from an injury is what motivated Flecicia these past 33 years.
“I really look forward to that. I like coming in and just listening to how [the athletes’] days were and how they’re doing. I really love watching them come into the training room, doing their treatment, their rehab, and then going out and playing. That’s my reward,” Flecicia Heise said.
Her upcoming retirement brings mixed emotions among those she works with. While everyone is happy for her to prioritize herself after 33 years of service to others, they also express how much they will miss seeing her every day.
“As coaches we go through a lot and same with her. Being able to connect, maybe it’s once a week going in there and it’s five minutes, but just laughing and realizing there’s somebody else going through what I’m going through. I’m gonna miss that,” women’s basketball Head Coach Leigh Marshall said.
In addition to her colleagues missing her energizing and thoughtful personality, her dependability and knowledge will also be missed.
“I always joked when she came around. I’d say ‘we got the big dog today.’ Just her presence, her steadiness, that sense of like, oh, our girls are being taken care of. You know, Flecicia is here,” women’s soccer Coach Gregg Cacioppo said.
While Flecicia Heise may be leaving Palomar, that doesn’t mean that the Heise family name will. Her daughter, Cara Heise, works for Palomar’s athletic department. She is in charge of sports information, making sure stats are accurate and helping Palomar athletes gain visibility so they can get noticed by four-year universities.
Cara shares a lot of the same personality traits that made her mom successful.
“Very few people on this campus care as much about Palomar as Cara and Flecicia. They both take a lot of pride in their work. They do outstanding jobs, and then combine that with the love and the passion for what they do. You got really, really special people,” Athletic Director Daniel Lynds said.
Cara feels really lucky to have been able to work alongside her mom for the past seven years. Cara grew up on Palomar campus, with her mom taking her to various games during her childhood. When she first started working at Palomar, a lot of the staff already knew who she was, as they had watched her grow up throughout the years.
She didn’t feel pressured to follow her mom’s legacy, so much as motivated by the opportunity to do so.
“I mean, when I was born on a Saturday in the fall, they announced my birth at the football game that night, it’s like I was destined to be here, right?” said Cara Heise. “My mom’s work ethic definitely pushed me to be like, okay, well, Flecicia is like that, so I need to be and people tell me ‘you’re just like your mom.’ That is something I take pride in.”
While Cara is sad to see her mom go, she is also beaming with excitement for this next chapter in her mom’s life.
That sentiment is shared by Cara’s sister, Morgan, a former Palomar athlete herself. Morgan played for the women’s basketball team from 2016 to 2019. She suffered a hip injury during this time, so she spent countless hours working alongside her mom doing rehab in the training room … and of course at home.
Morgan Heise knows from experience how much effort her mom puts into the job, so she’s overjoyed at the thought of her mom finally getting to have downtime to relax and explore new hobbies.
“She likes to go out with my dad, and they play golf every now and then, so I’m really excited to see those two go out and play more,” Morgan Heise said. “She’s also always on Instagram looking at new food spots around San Diego and Oceanside. So yeah, that’ll be fun for her. She deserves it too.”
Flecicia shares her daughters’ enthusiasm for her upcoming forever vacation. She talked about traveling and being more spontaneous, but was most excited that she now has free time to help Cara plan for her upcoming wedding.
“I haven’t had the time over the last couple years to golf, so I’m really looking forward to that because I love playing with my husband. He’s really looking forward to me retiring so we can do that and travel a little bit more,” Flecicia Heise said.
With both her and Cara entering new phases of their lives, this is a very emotional, but love-filled time for the Heise family.
While Flecicia Heise is retiring, but her legacy will continue to live on through everyone she has interacted with over the years and the foundation that she has laid to bring success to future athletes.
If life were a baseball game, she may be entering her seventh-inning stretch, but her legacy and impact may just be at the opening pitch.