Origin Stories :: Breiana Bonkavich

Breiana Bonkavich is proof that it doesn't have to be that hard, that it doesn't have to be overly complicated.

There don't have to be private hitting instructors by the time your softball-playing daughter is 7 or strength and conditioning coaches by the time she is 10.

College softball doesn't have to be the dream from an early age in order to get there. There will be time for that later.

And sometimes it's okay to just let kids be kids and let them figure things out at their own pace, what they like, what they don't, what they are good at, what they aren't.

"My husband and I were both born and raised, you ride your bike and when the sun goes down, you ride your bike home," says Bonkavich's mom, Khrystena.

Of course, it helps that Breiana Bonkavich had two older brothers, the oldest of whom, Will, plays football at UNLV, and one younger brother. And Brock might be the most talented of the bunch.

He's a freshman at Bishop Gorman down in Las Vegas, home base for the family since James moved there from Pennsylvania in third grade and Khrystena from Sparks in 1998.

"He's going to be the greatest ever. He wrestles right now. He's in regionals in the 165-pound weight class and he's just dominating. It's the coolest thing to watch," says Breiana.

"He's so great. I just love my little brother. He's like a mini-me. We're basically the same person. He's a big man. Will is 6-4. Brock is going to be taller."

Welcome to the Breiana Bonkavich experience. Her bat has never seen a ball it hasn't wanted to shred. Her right arm has never thought to itself, you know what, I don't think I can throw it that far. And her train of thought only has one setting: full speed ahead.

"(Brock) is a linebacker. He just blows up the gaps. If he hits somebody, that guy goes down, not him. It's the coolest thing," she continues.

"When he cracks somebody, hooooo! I love it when somebody cracks somebody. I think it's the coolest thing. Hey, nobody's your friend on the field."

And you'd rather have somebody wired differently to play third base for the Grizzlies? No way.

She played football for the Las Vegas Ducks before she ever gave softball a try. Played left tackle. She made a habit of dropping down, getting low, then throwing the oncoming rusher over her shoulder. That's one way to get the job done.

"I didn't know you weren't supposed to drop down to a knee and hit the person," she claims.

It's instructive to note that Bonkavich won a softball state title for Shadow Ridge High as a freshman. She won a flag football title as a senior, a sport the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association has sanctioned since 2016.

You ask her which one was more satisfying. She answers before you can even finish the question.

"Football. Football is great. I loved it. Softball was great too, but you're more into it," she says. "You get to attack people, if that makes sense." Yes, it does, it very much does. "You're more into it. You can do more things.

"I'm just more of an aggressive person. The faster speed, that's what flag was in my mind. Flag was just exhilarating. Your heart rate is up the entire time. You don't get a break. Softball was fun too, just a different kind of fun."

She had 80 tackles, 18 sacks, two interceptions and six pass breakups as a senior to earn All-Southern Nevada honors. It was the only year she played.

"I was pretty good. Got all-conference defensive player for being a linebacker. I was really fast. All the quarterbacks were scared of me," she says.

We're still talking flag, right? Those 80 "tackles" were just pulled flags, right? "In other states, when you're blocking, you have to cross your arms. You can't use your hands, you can only shuffle around.

"In Nevada, you can use your hands and block like a real football player."

You interview Bonkavich one day. You get what you feel is a pretty true picture of the Montana freshman. The next day you interview her mom, who says, "She is probably one of the kindest, one of the most thoughtful and generous humans that I've ever met," Khrystena says.

That, too, is part of the Breiana Bonkavich experience, the result of being raised in a home dripping with testosterone. Her dad is a SWAT sergeant with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. He was raised the son of a Marine.

"Everything he does, there is no second place, so she's had that instilled in her," Khrystena says.

Her mom is asked about the mother-daughter relationship and what that's like in a house with four dudes. "She is my go-to girl. If I need anyone to go with me somewhere, she is there.

"She's special. She can relate and be a boy is she needs to. She's tough. But then she's beautiful and curls her hair and she's smart and can bake everybody cookies when she wants to. She's just special."

There was a time she had her heart set on being a PICU nurse, which is as tough a job as there can be for a big-hearted girl. Pediatric intensive care units have both the best stories, of little fighters who overcome long odds, and the worst, of those who don't.

And the nurses, who need to care while maintaining at least a sense of detachment, see both outcomes unfold in real time, right in front of them.

"When she was younger, she cared for two autistic brothers of close family friends and a third who was not autistic. She jumped right in," says her mom. "It was like a natural thing. That's when she decided she wanted to be a PICU nurse."

Then she decided she couldn't handle it, not the worst-case-scenarios, the loss of life of an infant and what that does to a family, not to one who loves her own as much as she does.

Once she graduates from Montana with a degree in communications, she'll return to Las Vegas and become a fireman and EMT, the perfect profession for someone who wants to help people but has to scratch that adrenaline itch that won't go away.

"I want to be a fireman when I grow up," she says. You're not grown up now? "I'm not grown up. My path is windy and wiggly. One day I'll figure it out, when I'm stable, have a home, have a job. In my heart I'm a third grader. I'm a la-la."

And off we go again. Now, about that communications major: "I don't want to do business because I'm not a fan of math. I don't like math. Stats," which she is taking this semester, "is my last math class of my whole, entire life, I promise you that."

Then she throws in that she types with two fingers, hunt-and-peck style, just like her dad. It's not clear why she brings it up, but it seems to fit the story. Maybe because she can't get enough of taking about her dad. Or anyone in her family. "He's great. I love my dad," she says.

Who but the Bonkavichs had the best take-your-kid-to-work day, getting to test-ride the SWAT team's tactical vehicles? Who else got to view video from chest cameras, from the latest Vegas drama? This is what I have to deal with all day, he told them, dumb people going around with knives and guns.

Will is a Covid-era football player at UNLV, 6-foot-3, 285 pounds, offensive lineman. He spent two years at Ventura College in California before transferring to Marshall, where he had enough with the quarantining after one semester and returned to his hometown.

Gage, two years older than his only sister, is the head baker at Kneaders Bakery. "He's really good at it. He makes really good bread," Breiana says, then turns it into a competition. Imagine that, in this family!

"I make really good Bonky buns," which is a cherished family recipe, passed down from generation to generation. But while any Bonkavich can have access to the recipe, only a few are entrusted with the between-the-lines secrets that produce the best buns.

She learned them from her grandma, James' mom. Gage didn't. "She taught me to make them for Christmas and Thanksgiving. I know the recipe because I was with my grandma the whole time she was making the recipe," she says.

"He tried to make them one time and it did not work. You have to know the tricks. I tell him, you just don't have the touch."

If you're getting concerned about all this sibling rivalry and one-upmanship, wondering how James and Khrystena handle it, keep it in check, don't. They are the source of it.

They met by chance, even though at the time they were working at the same hospital, he in the surgical unit, she in human resources. It was time for annual orientation. He was late. He found a seat next to her. "That was all she wrote," says Khrystena, who is now a regional HR director for US Foods.

She was accepted into the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Academy back in the day. He was too, but only after she was, an important distinction she makes sure to bring up. She was first, he was second. Then Gage came along and she withdrew.

"We're kind of a funny family that way. There is even a competitive streak between the two of us. He ended up being the bigger dog," she says. Breiana throws in, "They love each other so, so much. They are great parents." Just so you know she loves every part of her family so, so much.

In case that wasn't clear.

The softball in this story starts with Hog Wild, then continues on to the Honey Badgers before it ever reaches the Grizzlies.

Hog Wild was the Friday-night beer league team her parents played on at the Big League Dreams complex in Las Vegas. Up until that point, their daughter had hardly touched a softball.

"We were always outside, playing in the cul-de-sacs. Kickball. I loved riding my Ripstik. I was just being a kid with my brothers, having fun," she says.

Hog Wild was officers and their wives. The Bonkavichs were the battery, he pitched, she caught. Their daughter played off to the side with the other kids until one day she decided she wanted to give the sport a try. She was almost 11.

Some of her current teammates at Montana had been playing the sport for years by that age.

"It's interesting that that's where she found her love," says her mom. Bonkavich's first team was the Honey Badgers and a girl always remembers her first. "That's where I was taught how to play softball. I will always and forever be a Honey Badger no matter what."

Her early coaches, who were gifted this talent from outside the usual pipeline, tried her everywhere, including pitcher.

"I remember the day, either her first or second season, she was pitching in a championship game. She did something and tweaked her knee, but she stood up there to the last pitch. She threw that pitch, the girl struck out and her whole team ran," says Khrystena.

"They won and she didn't give up. That kind of showed her spirit at a young age. I'd like to take credit for it, but that's just who she is.

"She fell in love with softball, because there is nothing better than hearing the ball crack and watching it go to the fence, then getting older and watching it go over the fence."

Her grandfather, James' dad, was a left-handed pitcher. He caught the eye of the Pittsburgh Pirates before the draft and the start of his family came along. He's the one who taught his granddaughter to become the player you'll see this season. Except for her still hitting right-handed.

"He taught me how to throw, how to hit. He wanted me to be a lefty. I think my dad changed it. Sometimes I think maybe I should have been a lefty, because lefty power hitters? Scary," Bonkavich says.

It's what she wants, to be feared when she's at the plate. It's how she took that football mentality and transferred it to the diamond. "Just hit the ball as hard as you can. Hit it right back at the pitcher. Scare them a little."

That was the player Montana softball coach Melanie Meuchel wasn't there to see that day, when she was getting another look at Makena Strong and the Lil Rebels. But here was a player with all the tools: bat and arm.

"She was someone who packs a big punch. When she strikes and connects, it goes a long way. With her arm strength, we felt like if we could get her into our program, we could help hone those tools but then also let her be herself as a player," says Meuchel.

None of them, none of the Bonkavichs, was quite ready for this new world of travel-ball softball. She was always the star on her other teams, playing outfield when she wasn't pitching but always on the field, never a reserve.

Then she joined Lil Rebels, where the best of the best in Las Vegas end up.

"My husband and I didn't understand how intense it was," Khrystena says. "She sat on the bench a lot. That was soul-crushing for her. She was used to pitching, playing every game, every inning. In travel ball, we had a lot of highs, a lot of lows." She emphasizes the second half, a lot of lows.

At the time, Bonkavich didn't view her spot on the Lil Rebels as a path toward college softball. She liked it because it was so fun. And if a girl isn't having fun playing her sport, then why bother?

"In sports, if you're not having fun – that's my whole thing – why are you doing it? I want to have fun. If the people around me aren't having fun, it's kind of like a Debbie Downer," she says.

"Here (at Montana), they have fun. First practice, everybody's having fun, everybody's cheering. We're still excited."

Back then, she didn't even know those were college coaches surrounding the field at her team's games. And if she did, she didn't think they were there to see her.

"I didn't even know what was happening. I didn't know college softball was a thing or that I was capable of going far enough for it," she says.

"I didn't even know they were there. I just go to the games and play and then leave. That was my thing."

There are some softball players for whom the recruiting process was a nightmare, months if not years of stress, particularly for this class, players who were in their sophomore year of high school when Covid arrived and shut things down at just the wrong time.

When Bonkavich tells her story, she talks about it with the freeness you'd expect. "This coach wants me? Sure, I'll go! I get to continue playing softball? Sure! At the D-I level? That's every girl's dream! That was basically it," she says.

"There wasn't much thinking to it. Something new? Okay, cool, sure!"

Her mom confirms. "She just knew she wanted to go to college and get her degree. If she could play softball, that was a bonus. It was like, oh wow, I can do that too? Yeah, let's do it!

"There were some stressful moments but there wasn't any pressure of, you have to pick a school and you have to stick to that school. It was more, Montana? Outdoors? Beautiful? Trees, animals, big sky? Heck, yeah, who wouldn't want to go to Montana, especially being a dessert kid?"

Since she's been at Montana, she's been playing third base behind Grace Hardy and has gotten some reps in the outfield, where the Grizzlies don't have a lot of depth behind Julie Phelps, Elise Ontiveros and Presley Jantzi.

"She continues to grow every day at the Division I level, at the plate," Meuchel says. "I think she can make an impact. She has a spark to her, plays with a lot of passion.

"She could work her way into some things. I don't have a cap on her this year. Put something in front of her and she is going to push through and continue to push through until she gets it right. All of our freshmen are talented enough to contribute to our team this year."

For as tight a family as the Bonkavichs are, Khrystena isn't worried that one of them went so far away. She knows her only daughter is in good hands at Montana. Not the school but the entire state. It's her kind of place.

She learned that firsthand when she used to work the Salt Lake/Billings area.

"In Montana, they love their state. They are almost as though they are this unit, a family," she says. "I was accepted into the Billings area. The people are just kind, they care. They text me asking about Bre to this day.

"It's warm and cozy. I just like the people there. It's different than Nevada. It's a great place for her to be. It's all working out really well. She's really happy and we're happy for her."

University of Montana Athletics

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Breiana Bonkavich

Grace Hardy

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Julie Phelps

Makena Strong

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