The RoundHouse | 5/20/2021 10:44:00 AM
Mackenzie Wright loved softball and little else about college when she came to Wichita State in 2014.
"I just wanted to practice," she said. "It was the best part of my day."
Wichita State coach
Kristi Bredbenner's idea for the best part of the day in college is more expansive. It took Wright more than a year, but when she understood, her life changed.
Bredbenner's approach is rooted in her experience at Truman State, an NCAA Division II school in Kirksville, Mo. That is where Bredbenner's coaching career began, although she planned to go into the mortgage business for most of her time as a student and All-American catcher for the Bulldogs.
"She was born to coach," said Kristy Schroeder, who coached Bredbenner for three seasons at Truman. "She was the connector on the team, the one who pulls everybody together for dinners. She kept in touch with everybody, made sure everybody was all right, knew who was having troubles."
Ten years into her career as coach at Wichita State, Bredbenner is well into creating her own atmosphere of winning and college experience. The 24
th-ranked Shockers (39-11-1) open NCAA regional play on Friday (5 p.m. ESPN2) against Texas A&M (31-21) in Norman, Okla.
"I had a blast in college and I made lifelong friends," Bredbenner said. "That's what I want our kids to have when they come here."
Bredbenner's time at Wichita State includes three NCAA berths, three conference regular-season titles and Wichita State's first trip to an NCAA regional title round in 2018. She coached conference players of the year in the Missouri Valley Conference (Cacy Williams in 2014 and 2016) and the American Athletic Conference (Wright in 2018 and
Sydney McKinney in 2021).
Wright, as her honors make clear, endured few troubles on the field. She started at third base as a freshman and earned All-Missouri Valley Conference honors. She struggled in school.
"I didn't know what I wanted to do with my major and didn't really care, honestly," Wright said. "By my sophomore year, it was really hurting me that I was only focused on softball. I hated school. I didn't want anything to do with it and I just wanted to play softball. In my head, I felt like such a failure."
Bredbenner could tell. She wants her team to love practice, but as part of a full college life. The best part of a day should also include class. Weights are a part of many good days. A good day might also include bowling with friends, movie night and Halloween costumes.
"She is somebody who, I would say, coaches you hard, but then loves you harder," said Wichita State assistant coach
Elizabeth Economon, who played with and for Bredbenner at Truman. "She's going to help you look at an apartment if you're not sure it's a safe place to live. She's going to help you take your animals to the vet because she's an animal lover."
Bredbenner remains close with many of her Truman teammates who shared those times. The softball team bonded on the annual spring bus trip to Florida. The small squad size – 18 athletes – helped. And at a small school (enrollment around 4,600), athletes from all sports lived and socialized together.
"I had an unbelievable college experience, and maybe it wasn't at the 'highest level,' but we competed and we had a lot of success," Bredbenner said. "At the end of the day, I look back and I don't regret my decision to go to Truman at all. That's what I want our kids to have when they come here. I want them to have a great experience on the field. And I want them to have a great experience as a college student."
Wright needed direction with a push from Bredbenner and help from others in the athletic department. Tutoring helped. Testing helped. Talks with Bredbenner during her sophomore year helped Wright see failure as part of the growth process and a future where she needed to be more than a softball player.
"I spent a lot of time crying in her office," Wright said. "The biggest realization I think I came to was that I never wanted to try things because I was scared to fail. The big thing was school. I did not want to try at school. If people knew I was trying, but I was still not getting good grades, that would be really embarrassing. I don't like being bad at things."
As a junior, academics started to make sense for Wright. She got all A's and one B during the fall and turned her academics in the right direction. Now, she is a para-educator in the Maize schools. She helps coach softball at Maize High School and is applying for jobs as an elementary teacher.
Bredbenner soothed Wright's fear of failure by telling her own stories of failure.
"I remember she would be vulnerable herself – she would tell me things that she struggled with," Wright said. "I looked up to her so much. She's obviously a great coach, great person, so I was like 'Wow, Coach B has failed in her life, too. Maybe I shouldn't be so scared."
Becky Endicott, former senior associate athletic director at Wichita State, thinks of Mackenzie Wright when she describes Bredbenner's work at Wichita State. Endicott hired Bredbenner in 2011 after she coached six seasons at Emporia State.
When Wright played her last game in 2018, she refused to take off her uniform. She wore it on the bus, wore it into the fast-food chicken place, and wore it home, hanging onto every last moment as a Shocker.
"Here comes Kenzie in her uniform," Endicott said. "That's a tribute to Coach Bredbenner. When you have a senior who won't take their uniform off, she's done something with passion. It's not just about the game. Kenzie didn't want to give up the experience."
That experience is what Bredbenner loved about Truman State.
She was, her teammates say, overqualified for that level of softball, but perfectly qualified to make the most of every moment.
"She's got a big personality in the best way – it never seemed like it was about her," said Jen Wright, who played outfield at Truman State and lived with Bredbenner for three years. "She knew how to organize people. I can't ever remember a time she led us astray."
She dominated on the field – twice an All-American and the 2000 Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association Most Valuable Player. She lived with her softball teammates and ran with a group of football friends to entertain themselves in the small northeast Missouri city. Bredbenner, from O'Fallon, Mo., started at catcher as a freshman and earned the first of four all-conference honors.
"We were lucky to get her at Truman," said teammate Michelle Rackers, who played left field with Bredbenner for three seasons. "I was jealous. Super smart. Super hard-nosed. She was in control of the field and what was going on."
That was also true for the softball house.
She and Rackers shared bunk beds for two years. She remembers Bredbenner as an organized roommate and a morning person. They played Trivial Pursuit with their football friends, bowled and watched movies. Rackers considers Bredbenner an expert on popular culture, especially music and movies, which helped her win at Trivial Pursuit.
"She knows a lot of useless information," Rackers said. "We watched the movie "Shag" probably 900 times during college. When we were planning something, she was the one calling the shots."
At Halloween, Bredbenner organized group costumes. One year, they went as "Care Bears." The next year, they dressed as a deck of cards. They topped that by winning a contest dressed as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" with Bredbenner playing "Doc."
"We never second-guessed her," Jen Wright said. "She is very creative. So, she is killing her costume and the rest of us are like 'How am I supposed to make this costume?'"
Bredbenner majored in business administration with an emphasis on marketing at Truman State and planned to return to O'Fallon and join her brother's mortgage company. After her playing career ended, she needed one semester to graduate, so she stayed at Truman State.
Schroeder left Truman State for UC Santa Barbara after the 2001 season. The first replacement backed out in August. Truman director of athletics Jerry Wollmering asked Bredbenner and two friends to organize the team for fall practices.
A few weeks later, he offered the job on an interim basis for the spring season. Bredbenner, because she would graduate in December, would be the head coach and her two friends would be assistants. They recruited, handled meal money and ran practices.
"You could tell she had coaching in her blood," Wollmering said. "She acted like she was a head coach. She was more organized than a lot of coaches who had been doing it for years."
Bredbenner, making $2,000 a month as student-turned-coach, led the Bulldogs to an NCAA regional in 2002.
"I thought I was living large," she said. "As we got into the season, and actually playing, coaching was awesome. It became something where I thought 'I could totally do this.' I always loved the game of softball. Giving it up was a lot harder than I thought."
Schroeder always considered Bredbenner a coach on the field. When she needed an assistant at UC Santa Barbara, she called. Bredbenner also had an offer from Truman State to stay as coach.
"It was this blessing that ended up handed to me, but I realized head coaching at that time wasn't what I needed to do," Bredbenner said. "I needed to learn and figure out what this was about."
She did need to learn.
"I distinctly remember my first day at Santa Barbara," she said. "I remember Coach Schroeder saying 'Hey, you're going to throw BP today.' And I was like 'What? I've never throwing batting practice.' She said 'You'll figure it out.' To this day, I throw BP almost every single day."
Because Bredbenner was the best player on the team at Truman, she could say things other couldn't, Schroeder said. She brought that same confidence to her new job. Schroeder knew she could trust Bredbenner to call a game because she did so as a catcher at Truman State. She also knew Bredbenner would help her understand the pulse of the team and serve as a sounding board.
"There's only a certain handful of people that you go 'I need to have that person with me,'" said Schroeder, who played shortstop at UCLA for NCAA champions in 1990 and 1992. "She's opinionated. I like that in players and coaches. You want to know what they're thinking or what's going on, so you can make better decisions."
Bredbenner moved to Emporia State for the 2006 season. The Hornets finished as NCAA Division II runner-up twice while Endicott – herself a former Emporia State athlete – watched.
"She had a unique way of being a players coach without being a player," Emporia State athletic director Kent Weiser said. "She really created that team atmosphere where you play for each other and buy into something more than yourself."
While Endicott watched, Bredbenner gathered information about NCAA Division I softball. She took the Hornets to fall tournaments where they defeated NCAA Division I schools. She decided the same recruiting and coaching strategies would work at a higher level.
Bredbenner took over at Wichita State for the 2012 season. She led the Shockers to an MVC title in 2014 and NCAA play in 2016 and 2018. This season, they won the American regular-season and tournament crowns.
On Friday, the Shockers return to NCAA play in Norman, where they won the program's first NCAA game in 2016.
Mackenzie Wright will watch, as will many other former Shockers out of uniform and still connected to the team. Their experience was that good.
Paul Suellentrop covers Wichita State Athletics and the American Athletic Conference for university Strategic Communications. Story suggestion? Contact him at paul.suellentrop@wichita.edu.
