TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - A whirlwind summer has left Rick Heller with his third job in less than three months.

Heller, the former University of Northern Iowa baseball coach, on Friday was introduced as the new head man at another Missouri Valley Conference school - Indiana State.

In between gigs with the Panthers and Sycamores, Heller was lured to Creighton, with an offer to serve as the Bluejays' hitting coach. This has been one wild summer, indeed.

"It really has been crazy," Heller said Friday night, laughing. "The day I moved to Omaha was the day this (Indiana State head coach's) job opened. So I didn't even unpack."

Heller never actually signed a contract at Creighton, and left there with the blessing of the Bluejays' staff. Now, after 10 years largely spent in the dugout at UNI, Heller takes the helm of an Indiana State program that is expected to unveil an intimate new stadium sometime next spring.

"We're gonna have a nice, quaint, college-town ballpark," Heller noted of Indiana State. "FieldTurf. Some chair-back seats."

That's a far cry from UNI, which played off-campus and where the administration provided the Panthers with little funding before eventually deciding to eliminate the program last February due to budget issues.

Heller's career coaching record is 561-472-4. At UNI, where the Panthers set 57 school records under his watch, the veteran skipper went 247-252-1.

Prior to arriving in Cedar Falls, Heller led his alma mater, Upper Iowa, to a 291-194-3 mark from 1988-98.

Back in May, Heller expressed deep concern over finding a new job. His fears, as it turned out, were pure paranoia.

Late last month, former Indiana State coach Lindsay Meggs surprisingly landed a head coaching post at the University of Washington. Suddenly, a non-existent head coaching market provided Heller with a narrow window of opportunity. Still, 21 current Division I head coaches applied for the Sycamores' post, leaving Heller nervous.

"We thought the job carousel was over for the summer," Heller noted. And, when the Indiana State job opened up "I felt like I was the underdog. But I had a lot of people go to bat for me."