The Craig Hall Chronicles :: Kayla Rendon Bushmaker

Imagine.

Imagine if the injury had never happened, the one more common to a baseball pitcher, the one that threatened to cut off blood supply to her elbow for the rest of her life unless she gave gymnastics a break.

Kayla Rendon Bushmaker was eight.

Imagine what could have been. "Who knows? I have visions of her doing anything she wants to do with anything," says her mom, who watched her daughter spend four hours each day at gymnastics practice, from the age of six, never once complaining about the demands, then come home and keep going.

There was the beam they set up in the middle of the living room, the swingable bars at the local park that allowed her to go overtime and keep working on the latest things she'd learned at the gym.

She was drawn to the floor routine, with its tumbling and flips and daredevil stuff, and those bars, where a girl could take on gravity and push the boundaries of what it allows the human body to do in an attempt to defy it.

Imagine: You're sitting there one summer day, watching the Olympics on television, drawn as so many of us are to women's gymnastics at that level, the best in the world, and this 5-foot-2 dynamo steals your heart, becomes the nation's darling, this combination of power and strength and daring.

The camera cuts to the crowd. There is her mom, Josie.

The broadcast team tells how she won the Great Northwest Athletic Conference cross country title in 2003 at Seattle Pacific, gave birth to her daughter, then came back to become an all-American in the distance medley relay at Division II nationals in 2005.

How her stepdad, Michael, who is 6-foot-9, played basketball at Seattle Pacific and was the hero of the 2006 NCAA Division II West Region championship game, when he scored 24 points off the bench to lead the Falcons to a four-point win over Western Washington and send them to the Elite 8.

How Josie and Michael's daughter, Hailey, surpassed her older sister in height by the time she was entering middle school, thrown in if only for the laughs, a play on the role of genetics.

Then the cameras cut back to Kayla as she steps up on the podium to accept her Olympic medal.

Imagine: "She was really good. I think everything worked out great, but who knows what would have happened?" asks her mom.

The arm pain started. An MRI revealed the extent of the overuse injury in her elbow. Her parents broke the news. She would need to take some time away. She still went to practice, to sit on the sidelines, to still feel part of the team, to support and cheer for her teammates.

One month became two, which became six. The injury had barely improved at all, even after half a year. Slowly the realization: she would need to find something new, a different outlet for that passion, a sport that didn't require an extensive use of her arms.

Running? Like her mom? Daily trips to the track in an attempt to shave off another few tenths of a second from a PR, like the 4:35.52 Josie has in the 1,500 meters, a time that still ranks in the top 10 in Seattle Pacific history?

Never. "I love running and competition, but I'm not a runner," Kayla says. "If I have to go chase a ball, I'll do it. I'll run for days on a soccer field, but running any other time is just a different level of motivation."

She tried soccer, the sport her dad, who was born in Mexico, played at Seattle Pacific. Gymnastics? She never really thought about it again. "Soccer took off from there. It's been that way ever since. It was clear I was supposed to play soccer."

Imagine: You're 15 years old, a freshman at Kentwood High School in Washington, south of Seattle, and your coach at the Pacific Northwest Soccer Club pulls you aside and tells you the coach at the University of Montana is interested and would like to talk.

The player who loves to find herself in space, who loves to find herself going 1-v-1 against a defender who has no chance, who has no fear in that moment, no lack of confidence, faces to prospect of going 1-v-1 on the phone, her first conversation with a college coach.

"It was one of the funniest things that has ever happened in our lives," says Josie, a kindergarten teacher at Martin Sortun Elementary. "She was so nervous. She wanted us to be there and be a source of support, so we were able to listen in."

Imagine being on the other end of that conversation, being a coach who can see into the future, who already knows what Kayla Rendon Bushmaker could be at the collegiate level, who knows the importance of this very first phone call. There are nerves there as well, of first impressions.

He first saw her in February 2019, when she was a freshman and he had just led the Grizzlies to the NCAA tournament in his first season at Montana. As every coach does, he had one eye on his current team, one eye on what else was out there, players who could put NCAA tournaments on repeat.

"I was surprised at the amount of pace she had and how good she was 1-v-1. It's everything I've always wanted out of a winger," says coach Chris Citowicki. "Okay, can we get someone of that quality? What is it going to take? How much work is it going to take?"

They talked. If it wasn't game over, Citowicki had at least put himself and his program at top of mind. It's his gift, of connecting with people, no matter the age, no matter if they are 15 or that player's mom.

"He is very engaging and a very easy person to talk to. He asks great questions. Great questions. For Kayla, his passion about soccer was something she could talk about and listen to and be engaged in," says Josie.

"There is something about him that makes it flow very nicely and very easily. Relaxed but also very passionate. You can tell he really loves what he's doing. It's an easy conversation if it's something you're passionate about too."

Imagine: You're the NCAA and you decide to change the rules regarding recruiting. Starting May 1, 2019, near the end of Rendon Bushmaker's freshman year, they declare that coaches can't communicate with players until June 15 going into their junior year.

For more than a year, Rendon Bushmaker goes into dark territory. She keeps training, keeps improving. "I was really excited to talk to him again on June 15," she says.

Imagine: A virus emerges. It spreads across the globe, impacting nearly every person on the planet in some way. The kindergarten teacher stays home, as does her husband, a salesman of medical supplies for W.L. Gore and Associates.

Rules are issued: Stay home, stay away from others, stop the spread. But if you happen to find an outdoor field, feel free to bring your ball, your training equipment and keep getting after it.

"It was such a horrible time, but it was kind of awesome for our family," says Josie. "Nobody had to travel. Nobody had to go to work. We got to hang out. You could focus on things you really wanted to focus on. For Kayla, that was soccer."

YouTube provides the video breadcrumbs, of workouts that began to be posted in June 2020 for all to see, a player, almost always accompanied by her stepdad, sometimes the entire family.

"They were at the field every day. Her sister would go and shag balls. If they were near a track, I would go and run while they were doing soccer stuff," says Josie.

The video titled "Finishing workout" starts with her on the right side of the field. She plays the ball into a small training net, gets it back, touches it into space 30 yards out from goal and strikes a shot that is only lacking contrails. It enters the goal just under the crossbar. Then she does it again. And again.

The result is always the same: the ball is well struck, it's on goal and it's near the margins, where any goalkeeper would have to be on top of her game to even get a finger on it.

The video resets and she's on the other side of the field. Same thing. Net, touch, space, shot, this time finishing with her right foot from distance. The greatest compliment you can give her? When you ask her if she is right-handed or left-handed, because there is no way of telling, so polished is her footwork.

Note to you, valued reader: She's left-footed. "No one assumes I'm going to be left-footed, so I get to trick people out. It's fun to see," she says.

"I've had to work on that a lot. I always want to cut to my left, but in those moments when a defender has read me too many times or I have to shoot with my right, I have to make those moments count, so I just worked on it."

Her mom is asked if there was an ah-ha moment, when she saw something on the field one day, in a match, that let her know her daughter had something special, that she might have what it takes to play at the college level one day.

There wasn't. Instead it was what a person could see in those videos, posted week after week during the pandemic, when teams weren't training, when a girl had to forge ahead on her own.

"We know what it takes and what being a college athlete is," says Josie, speaking for herself and Michael. "We knew watching her and how hard she worked that college could be a possibility if that's what she wanted to do.

"She's a really hard worker. That's what we were always really impressed with. That translates onto the field, so we knew everything else would come. That's what we always told her. You'll be able to go wherever you want to go and do whatever you want to do."

What did she want to do? Just play again, on a team, in a match, to end the seven-month blackout from competition. She had already reconnected with Citowicki, once it became legal. Now she wanted to show everyone the result of that hard work.

She got her chance that late fall, at a tournament in Arizona. "It was amazing to experience it again," she says.

Unable to attend because of COVID restrictions, Citowicki sat at his computer in Missoula and tuned in. "It was one of the first games I've watched when the best player in a high-level game was coming to our school. The very best player on the field," he says.

"She is so dynamic. Her ability to change pace so rapidly is impressive and fun to watch. She's amazing."

Imagine: You're a player who values teamwork over individual success and personal accolades, whose lasting memory of the 2019 Surf Cup wasn't that Pac Northwest won the whole thing but what came after the final buzzer sounded in the championship match.

"That was the closest my team has ever been, so it was an amazing moment to share with my teammates," Kayla says. "It was about more than winning a soccer tournament. Look what we did with each other and for each other. There were no outliers. We were all in it together."

Imagine being wired like that and then having a coach come into your life, first over the phone, then in person, and preaching team over self, of family, of surrounding yourself with not only exceptional players but exceptional people.

Just imagine what the program at Montana could do, what it could become.

"It was the kind of team I wanted to be a part of. You have to be a great soccer player, but you also have to be a great human to be on the team," Kayla says. "I thought that was great. I don't want to be part of a team where everyone is not for each other.

"With good people, it's easier to become a family unit. If you have a great team that wants to do their best for each other, you're going to win games and win championships, because you want to get better with each other and for each other. If you're happy, you're going to get results. Those go hand-in-hand.

"Why wouldn't I want to go there?"

Imagine being Josie right now, reading this. Is it goosebumps? Is it tears? Is it an overflowing sense of pride? All of the above? She competed in a sport that is viewed as individualistic but is anything but, so she gets it. She really gets it.

"I loved the relays, because doing it with a team is more fun," she says, giving a glimpse of how her daughter turned out the way she did.

"I was on a team at Holy Names that won the state track meet. The first time the school had won any state event. It was awesome. My track family in college was huge. It was always a team."

Imagine being Josie once again, on her daughter's first visit to Missoula, to campus and wanting to switch places with her, to become a student-athlete again, to be the one being recruited, to have the chance to compete again in a place like this.

"I was ready to do it all over again and go there myself. I fell in love with Missoula. I loved it," she says. "Michael and I were over-the-moon excited. We were ready to move the family. That's how much we loved it.

"But we kept it between the two of us because we didn't want to heavily influence her if that wasn't the way she was leaning."

She had nothing to worry about.

"I fell in love with it. This is the only school I visited, but I didn't need to see any other schools," Kayla says. "I love the coach, I love the place and I know I'm going to love being part of the team, so this is the place for me. I committed two days after I got home."

How good of a get was Rendon Bushmaker for Citowicki and the Grizzlies? Even after she committed, schools kept coming after her, asking her coaches at Pac Northwest, don't you see this logo on my shirt? Don't you know who I coach for, the school where I work? Don't you know who I am?

"I heard rumors there could be some other schools, but I didn't really care," she says. Then she's asked if they were Power 5. "Yeah, but I didn't care. I wasn't interested in anything else."

She's got Power 5 talent but she goes into the season with modest expectations.

"If there is a moment I'm needed on the field and Chris says, okay, Kayla, it's your time, I will definitely take it. If I do well, hopefully I can do it again in another game," she says.

"I'm up for anything. I just want to support the people who are on the field. If that's me, I'm very excited to be out there. If it's not me, I'm going to be a supportive teammate."

Imagine: Rendon Bushmaker gets played a through-ball. She's on the left side in space – "her happy place," says her new coach – and she has just a single, unlucky defender tracking her, with her teammates rushing toward the box, knowing something magical is about to happen.

Her ability to cross the ball, to put it right where she wants it to go, right where it needs to go, is upperclassman-like already. If the question is assist or goal, she prefers the former. But she'll certainly accept the latter.

"Probably setting someone else up to score. It takes technical work and the ability to keep your eyes open and see. I love to set people up. But don't get me wrong, scoring is amazing too," she says.

Imagine: Montana is playing Creighton on Aug. 18 in the Grizzlies' season and home opener. You haven't yet seen Rendon Bushmaker play. You wonder what kind of contribution she'll make as a freshman this season. You ask her coach.

"An important role. Let's go with that," says Citowicki, intriguingly. Soon we'll no longer need to imagine. Her time will have arrived.

University of Montana Athletics

The Craig Hall Chronicles :: Kayla Rendon Bushmaker

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