Liv Heaps decided not to follow her family’s sports tradition. Her dad Jay Heaps played soccer collegiately and professionally, coached professionally and currently is the president and general manager of the Birmingham Legion FC professional soccer team.
Her older brother Jack was a star soccer player at Mountain Brook—leading the Spartans to the 2022 Class 6A state championship—and the 2022 Alabama Gatorade Soccer Player of the Year. He now plays in college at Georgetown University. Her younger brother Jude, an eighth-grader at Mountain Brook Junior High, also plays soccer.
Liv played soccer growing up in the Northeast, but two months before the family moved to Mountain Brook from Boston in 2018, she quit soccer to concentrate on lacrosse, which she had begun playing at age nine. “I played soccer and lacrosse in the seventh and eighth grades, but I wanted to take a different path, my own path,” Liv says. “Lacrosse is a relatively young sport in Birmingham. Plus, my dad’s sister, Katie Heaps, played lacrosse in college at Duke, so it’s in my family. I love that it’s fast-paced, and it gives any player a chance to be awesome—and it’s fun to watch.”
Liv, a senior midfielder at Mountain Brook, has developed into an awesome player, traveling regularly to Milton, Ga., near Atlanta to hone her skills at Eagle Stix Lacrosse in their elite program. A prolific goal-scorer, Liv is the top-rated female lacrosse player in Alabama and a three-time Alabama All-American recipient by USA Lacrosse.
Liv has helped the Spartans win four consecutive Alabama Lacrosse state championships, scoring five goals in the 2024 state championship game against Spain Park, which Mountain Brook won 23-7. “She takes coaching pleasantly, and what people don’t see is how hard she works,” Mountain Brook coach Tom Lewis says. “She practices when nobody is watching.”
Liv takes such compliments and glittering recognition in stride. “Obviously, it’s an honor,” she says. “I’m grateful to be on a team that allows me to contribute and has good coaching. We have so many good players and we try to make each other look good.”
Liv has been a part of the team since she was in the eighth grade and can’t believe that she’s finally a senior. “It feels like I just started yesterday,” she says. “This season has gone by really fast. I’m honored to have played here, and now I’m trying to be a role model for the younger girls and help the sport grow more.”
As brilliant as she’s been for the Spartans, Liv has no plans to play in college. “It’s a whole different playing field,” she says. “After some serious consideration and weighing my options with academics and athletics, I’ve decided to just be a student in college.
I’m going to the University of Georgia to study business. I hear they play some high-quality club team lacrosse, so I might give that a try.”
Meanwhile, she will try to finish her career with a fifth consecutive state title. The Spartans entered April with a 7-0 record and are considered the top contender for the crown. The state championship game will be played on May 3 at Hoover’s Buccaneer Stadium. “We’ve got 11 seniors, and we’ve been playing together for so long,” she says. ‘It would be fun to win state again.”
