Utah Valley University Athletics

Ashley Garfield enters her third season on head coach Dan Nielson's staff at Utah Valley University in 2021-22. She helped lead the Wolverines to their first NCAA Tournament appearance in 2020-21, where they faced No. 1 and eventual national champion Stanford. During her tenure on staff, she has coached six All-WAC, two WAC All-Defensive Team picks, a WAC All-Newcomer selection, and 19 Academic All-WAC honorees. 

The 2020-21 team finished 13-7 overall and 10-4 in WAC play (including a 4-2 mark on the road), setting a program record for WAC wins since joining the conference in 2013-14. UVU also finished second in the conference for the second straight year and have gone 19-10 in the WAC over her first two seasons on staff.

She coached two first-team All-WAC selections in 2020-21 in Maria Carvalho and Josie Williams. Two players on the WAC's first team was also a program first. Shay Fano and Nehaa Sohail were also named honorable mention All-WAC with Fano, a Southern Utah transfer, also being named to the All-Newcomer Team, and Carvalho was on the All-Defensive Team for the second straight season. 

Garfield has been on staff at BYU since 2015 following a four-year playing career for the Cougars. She was the director of basketball operations from 2015-17 before being promoted to an assistant coach in 2017. She received her bachelor’s degree in health education in 2015 from BYU.
 
As a player, Garfield was a member of two West Coast Conference Tournament Championship teams and in three of her four seasons, the Cougars advanced to the NCAA Tournament. 
 
Garfield is from Morgan, Utah where she attended Morgan High School and competed in volleyball and track & field in addition to basketball. She is the sister of former Utah Valley volleyball player Chelsea Garfield Heaps and the sister-in-law to Chelsea’s husband, Austin Heaps, who was an All-American baseball player for UVU.