Purpose Driven

“My purpose cannot possibly be to win another game,” Hudson says. “That can’t possibly be what I was left here to continue to do.”

That’s not a cliché, either, says Gregg Farrell, pastor at Crossland Community Church in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Farrell has worked with the Lady Topper volleyball team for six years in what he calls a “Chief Encouragement Officer” role, where he pours into the mental and spiritual health of those in the program.

“[Hudson] understands there’s a sovereign design in that God could’ve called him home any time He wanted, but He hasn’t,” Farrell says.

It’s an impossible story, Hudson says. All of it, including how it all even started.

At 17, Hudson joined the WKU volleyball program as a student manager just doing laundry and shagging balls. It was the first time he’d even touched a volleyball.

At 24, he became the youngest head coach in Division I, and all these years later he’s built WKU into a perennial top-25 program that consistently wins its conference championship, and has been to 12 NCAA Tournaments under his watch.

— WKU COACH TRAVIS HUDSON

He’s won 14 different conference or region coach of the year honors, and has coached countless AllAmericans. In 2019, after a 31-1 regular season, WKU hosted an NCAA Tournament game for the first time. He was inducted into the WKU Hall of Distinguished Alumni in October 2020.

On the court, he’s created what athletic director Todd Stewart says is “the perfect template and the perfect blueprint for what a successful athletics program on and off the court would be.”

All that success and still Hudson wouldn’t say that’s his purpose. He just wanted a job that allowed him to work with young adults and see them grow. He’s received plenty of offers to leave for bigger jobs, but he doesn’t need a different school’s name on his shirt to feel like he’s doing his job well. In his office you’ll find nearly 20 pictures of Hudson with his former players at their weddings. It’s the same office where he speaks from the heart to recruits and their families about why they should come to WKU.

There are no smoke-and-mirror games with Hudson. No figurative mask. He tells parents the same simple message, and he means it.

“While I was sitting in his office on my visit with my parents, he looked straight at my parents and said, ‘I will take care of your daughter like she’s my own,’” senior Hallie Shelton says. “‘Anything she needs I am here for her.’

“I just thought, ‘This dude is going to be like my second dad,’ and it just really clicked.”

The on-court success of the Lady Topper program under Hudson is undeniable, but perhaps the most impressive statistics — and the ones he’s most proud of — are these: The program boasts a 100-percent graduation rate, and just two players in Hudson’s previous 25 years have transferred. In the college athletics world where transfer numbers are soaring, that’s a rather impressive feat.

“I think that speaks volumes to the culture that he has here,” Stewart says. “A culture that exudes success in every respect.”

The players can all sense the genuine humanity Hudson exhibits and, as Farrell puts it, he’s just able to connect with the humanity of other people well.

“I think that’s why our alumni base is still so connected here because I didn’t just invest in them as a volleyball player,” Hudson says. “I invested in them as people. If they walk away from here and we’re not connected as family for a lifetime, then I don’t know that I’m doing a very good job.”

Perhaps no better example is that of Heather Friesen. In 2016, a year after her career at WKU came to an end, Friesen was on a hike near a waterfall in Hawaii when she slipped and fell nearly 50 feet — suffering injuries that could’ve killed her. Friesen doesn’t remember much from the time shortly after the accident, but what she does remember is Hudson calling her on her hospital phone every day to check on her. At one point he was contemplating even flying out to be with her.

“I don’t even play for him anymore,” she said. “I’ve been gone from Bowling Green, Kentucky, for over a year and he cares about me so much to call me on the phone every day, when I can barely even talk because I had a collapsed lung, I broke 10 ribs, I fractured my scapula, so I was in a lot of pain.”

There was also one of his former All-Americans, Alyssa Cavanaugh, who needed a bone marrow transplant after being diagnosed with leukemia. Hudson came up with an idea that if a WKU student got tested and was found to be a match for Cavanaugh, he would pay for their next semester of college (Cavanaugh’s father ended up being the match.)

— WKU COACH TRAVIS HUDSON

In 2011, Hudson and the Lady Topper team befriended a local girl, Harlie Bryant, who was diagnosed with a tumor behind her eye, and began to raise support for her. She’s now an honorary member of the program.

“What I’ve always believed has been the key to our success, you can’t buy it with money,” Hudson says. “It’s about kids that really, truly are connected to one another — kids that understand I’m going to love them whether they get the game-winning kill or they don’t, whether they turn out to be an All-American or they don’t. This journey we’re on together is way bigger than just volleyball.”

The stories of Hudson’s care for people go on and on. Such as, he asks his players to carry notecards so they can write letters to people in their life that they’re grateful for, or to thank someone for an act of kindness.

His faith and principles shape everything about his philosophy, says junior Katie Isenbarger.

“He’s so consistent,” she says. “He knows exactly where his head’s at. He just always seems like he knows the right thing to do in every situation.”

Farrell says Hudson is simply a gifted human being capable of extracting the absolute best out of his players in every aspect, and approaches everything with a level of humility that’s almost beyond description.

“I just think he’s got a really good grasp of who he is, who God is, and why God has him where he is and what he’s doing,” Farrell says.

His players speak of his discernment and ability to keep things in perspective. Getting to host an NCAA Tournament

— PASTOR GREGG FARRELL match was, aside from winning a national championship, the one major accomplishment Hudson wanted to experience. He’d witness a full crowd at Diddle Arena for basketball games and wondered what it would feel like to see a crowd like that for a volleyball game.

He got his wish last year when the 19th-ranked Lady Toppers faced off in the second round against in-state rival, and fellow powerhouse program, Louisville. Diddle Arena was nearly sold out and the buzz around town for the game was palpable.

WKU lost a heartbreaker in five sets. Where it would’ve been easy to focus on the what-ifs and dwell on the loss, Hudson spoke in his postgame press conference of going home to hug his kids, his wife, tell them he’s missed them, and thank God for the blessings he experienced over the previous year.

“You know, I walked away thinking to myself, and I think that’s what I said that night, ‘At what point do you quit asking for more?’” he said. “Like, at what point are you just grateful?”

Through everything he’s done and been through, because he does it with such gratitude, it’s easy to forget how serious the events were that Hudson has endured. He could’ve lost his own life in any one of those instances — the cancer, the bus crash, then the heart attack.

“He sees his tragic events as adversity. The adversity for him becomes an accelerant — to drive him deeper into what he sees as a purpose,” Farrell says. “And that purpose is fulfilled through being a coach and an ambassador for Western Kentucky University. But he realizes that’s really not his purpose. His purpose is to honor God and advance the Kingdom. He just seems to know that he’s here on purpose and for a purpose.”

As he was being rushed to the emergency room to be operated on for his heart attack, Hudson remembers feeling a calmness over him. He knew God still had work for him to do. His purpose is still being fulfilled. He’s got lives to invest in.

“People talk about it being a gift, and in many ways things like that are a gift because, A) It makes me believe that my time here on this earth, I’m doing it the right way, and I hope that’s the case,” he says. “B) It tells me that I’ll be ready when that moment comes, and C) It tells me that I’m still here through all these things because I still have work to do. I try to remember that constantly.” SPORTS SPECTRUM 39