When head coach Mike Larabee met his new team for the first time, he didn’t know much about them. But word had apparently gotten out about junior first basemen Kailyn Campbell.

“He goes, ‘Kailyn Campbell, you can really swing the bat can’t you?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah a little bit,’” Campbell said.

Larabee was not far off.

She has a .397 career batting average, with 202 hits,  37 doubles, 17 home runs and 140 RBIs in 146 career games.

Campbell was an All-GNAC Honorable Mention in 2014, second-team last season and first-team this year.

This is Larabee’s first year coaching Campbell. He praised her work ethic.

“She was at almost every single optional hitting day we had throughout the fall and winter,” Larabee said. “She’s a gym rat.”

Standing 6-feet tall, Campbell is tied with sophomore first baseman and pitcher Laura Steiner as the tallest player on the team, which gives the infield a good target to throw at.

“I came from the best softball conference in the country,” Larabee said. “I coached in the SEC for six years. She would’ve been, by far, the best first basemen we had at Arkansas and one of the top defensive first basemen in the SEC.”

Larabee complimented her unique skillset in the field. He likes her mobility and athleticism and her 60-miles-per-hour throwing arm, which is nearly unheard of in a first basemen.

Former head coach Mallory Holtman-Fletcher recruited Campbell. She compared Campbell to another talented former Wildcat.

“She was comparing me a lot to herself,” Campbell said. “We both played the same position, did the same thing at the plate and she really liked that.”

The only other offer Campbell got was from Pacific Lutheran University.

“I wanted to stay close to home but also go away,” Campbell said. “I really like this area. [It’s] a lot like my hometown.”

During her freshman year at Central, Campbell led the team with a .356 batting average and  had 53 hits and 41 RBIs, good for second on the team.

“She said I would have a chance to play a lot, long as I kept working,” Campbell said.

In the four regional games Central played in 2014, Campbell hit .500, scored three runs and had nine RBIs. Campbell’s best game of the tournament was the third game against University of California-San Diego, when she went three-for-four with six RBIs. The Wildcats won that game 10-1.

The Wildcats struggled overall in 2015, going 20-23 and missing the GNAC tournament. Campbell led Central with a .395 batting average, 11 doubles and 53 RBIs.

After the season, Holtman-Fletcher resigned from the team to spend more time with her family.

“I was completely shocked,” Campbell said. “It was an emergency meeting, too.”

During the final series of the regular season, Campbell passed her former head coach’s school record of 128 career RBIs.

“She texted me and put something on Facebook about it, that she was really proud of me,” Campbell said. “She wouldn’t want anybody else to break it, and she’s been telling me [since] the first year I got here, ‘You’re going to break my records, they’re not going to stand.’”

With a year of eligibility left, Campbell has lots of time to extend her school record.

Going into Wednesday’s game, Campbell is four hits away from breaking Holtman-Fletcher’s hits record which stands at 206.

Like most baseball and softball players, Campbell started young in T-ball.

During her childhood, she played softball, basketball and soccer but had to choose between softball and soccer. She decided on softball because she did not like playing in the cold.

“Softball “started to get competitive and a lot more fun,” Campbell said. “It was something I wanted to keep doing for as long as I could.”

She started to play on a select team when she was nine. Two years later, she made the Washington Hustle, a team associated with the Amateur Softball Association and USA Softball.

According to Team USA’s website, they have over 160,000 teams all over the country. Their headquarters in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma host the NCAA Division I Women’s College World Series.

Campbell played on the Washington Hustle for seven years.

“You’re playing to get recruited,” Campbell said.

During her freshman and sophomore years of high school, they started sending out letters to college coaches. During junior year, the coaches could get in contact with the players.

She did play softball for Cedarcrest High School in Duvall, Washington, but said high school softball was not as competitive.

Teammates and fellow junior outfielder Sammy Morris,  shortstop Taylor Fereleman and pitcher Kiana Wood, played on the Washington Hustle with Campbell.

Currently, Campbell has known them for five to seven years, giving them chemistry that is not normally seen at the collegiate level

She plans on double majoring in primate behavior and anthropology, with a psychology minor.

After she finishes up softball, she plans on going to graduate school here at Central. She’d also like to try and walk onto the basketball team with the remaining year of eligibility athletes can be granted for a second sport after playing and graduating in four years without redshirting.