Latest News

« back to 2010 | Back to NCAA News Archive Index

Deep from the heart of Texas

By Gary Brown
NCAA.org

Kathleen Brasfield heard the bad news early one October morning in 1979. The 2 a.m. phone call informed her that two of her volleyball players had been killed in a plane crash.

The second-year Angelo State volleyball coach was stunned. She knew one of her players was dating a pilot who routinely flew small planes over the oil fields of west Texas to check for pipeline leaks, but Brasfield was unaware that she and a teammate had boarded the Cessna with him and a friend the previous evening for a dinner trip to Sonora, 70 miles from San Angelo.

She didn’t know that because had she been asked, she would have told junior Jennifer Cooke and sophomore Beverly Borron that they couldn’t go, especially not the night before the team was to participate in a tournament.

On the way back from dinner, they flew into the side of a mountain.

“For every member of that team – from the players and their families to the coaches and staff – that was a defining moment in their lives,” Brasfield said. “It certainly changed me.”

Brasfield is now the athletics director at Angelo State and chair of the Division II Management Council. Along the way, she piled up 647 wins as a volleyball coach and chaired the committee charged with selecting the NCAA tournament field. In the last five years she has added baseball and women’s golf to a 12-sport program that frequents Division II postseason play. She’s been a leader at the campus, conference and national levels for more than three decades.

But the accident 31 years ago left a lasting mark.

“It changed my priorities,” said the 1969 Hardin-Simmons grad. “It changed the way I coached. I thought twice about how I said something, and I thought twice about what I expected from my student-athletes and what I expected myself to give.”

Since then, Brasfield’s giving almost always outweighs the return.

“I like to have all people feel like they are part of the conversation,” she said. “If you want people to buy in, you have to give them a voice.”

She’s currently in charge of managing a collective Division II voice as members go through Phase II of the Life in the Balance initiative that aligns playing-and-practice-season policy with the division’s strategic-positioning platform.

In doing so, Brasfield fosters an inclusive atmosphere within the Management Council that encourages a good-natured approach.

“While always interested in the bigger picture, the interaction among members is such that they want to be student-centered but also have fun while they make these important decisions. It is a productive atmosphere where you can agree to disagree without feeling threatened,” Brasfield said.

She also promotes a “giving” structure at Angelo State, providing her coaches the resources they need to give student-athletes a good experience. That’s her job, she said. It’s the coaches’ job to follow the rules and do what it takes to be successful – which for Brasfield is a rewarding athletics and educational experience for student-athletes that culminates in a diploma. 

If players walk away from Angelo State and are later willing to send their sons and daughters there, that’s the measure of success, she said.

As for success in competition, Brasfield said she expects her teams to be competitive on the conference level every year, on the regional level often and on the national level “when things fall into place.”

“But our goal always is to win national championships – in the right way,” she said.

The right way includes looking out for student-athlete well-being, a point that hit home again last year when members of the 1979 volleyball team visited the Angelo State campus for a sobering 30-year reunion.

Those alumnae encouraged the current players to live in the moment. It was a message that resonated with their former coach.

“I just want to make sure we get things right for the student-athletes,” Brasfield said. “That’s why we’re in this business.”