Say this about Robbi Campbell: the man knows how to create a family atmosphere with a young team.
Campbell and his wife, Faith, each had three children from previous marriages who grew up and left the nest. So they filled the void recently by adopting three young daughters: 2-year-old Rubi, and 6-month-old twins Addyson and Alexis.
That might sound like a full-time task. But not for the 49-year-old Patrick County native.
Campbell’s day job is serving as the softball coach at Patrick & Henry Community College.
Last month he came up with a winning formula as the Patriots claimed the Henry County school’s first national championship in any sport by taking the NJCAA Division III title in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Patrick & Henry suited up 13 freshmen on a 16-player roster in the four-day tournament, which the young Patriots won with a 6-4, 10-inning thriller against North Dakota State College of Science.
A postgame meal at a Cheesecake Factory preceded an eight-hour bus ride home the following day that ended with a police escort from the Henry County line to campus, where a greeting party heartily welcomed the team home.
“That’s when it started feeling like, ‘It’s the real deal now,'” Campbell said. [This is] going to be huge. A lot of the softball community is going to see that we have a national championship in our backyard.”
Campbell, 49, certainly knows the neighborhood. The 1993 Patrick County High School graduate was a smallish second baseman for the Cougars before realizing one thing about his baseball playing career:
“I wasn’t going to make a living in it.”
Coaching might have been on the horizon, but not until after Campbell worked in the timber industry, cutting trees and later becoming a supervisor at Mayo River Lumber Co., in Stuart.
He began coaching his own children on travel teams in baseball and softball until he was called to interview for the vacant P&H softball job in 2015 by Chris Parker, then-school vice president and senior athletic administrator.
Immediately, Parker was impressed.
“What I admired about Robbi was his humility,” Parker said. “He didn’t come in and say, ‘I’m going to win every game.’ He just said, ‘If you’ll give me the opportunity to get better … we’ll get better. I want to work. I want to learn. And I want to serve.'”
“That just kind of stuck with me. You deal with coaches’ mentalities and they’ll come in and say they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread, and that wasn’t Robbi.”
The college started its softball program in 2008-09, playing its games off campus at Jack Dalton Park.
There was early success under original coach Kathleen Brown with two Region X championships at the Division I level. P&H won a regional title in 2014, but a coaching change ensued following the 2015 season.
Despite minimal softball coaching experience, Campbell got the job under Angeline Godwin, former president at the college.
“There were only a few players here, but they were really good athletes,” Campbell said. “We kind of had to build it because there was no recruiting they had done. We had to find some athletes that were here walking around or they were on a different sport here. We put a team together and went and played ball.
“It was some struggles, but I’ve got determination. Everything I’ve ever done in life I decided I was going to put all the hard work into it. We went from bottom to top.”
Campbell said he received invaluable advice from Patrick County High coaches such as Gerald Culler, Phillip Stegall, Terry Harris and Roger Wilson, but insisted his softball learning curve was not steep.
“The pace of the game is the hardest thing to pick up,” he said. “I don’t think it took long at all. When I got out there and realized softball is a much faster pace and a more exciting game, I kind of fell in love with it.”
Campbell developed his own recruiting philosophy, one that fit the community college’s mission and the fact that as a community college program, his entire roster will turn over every two years.
While the championship on the field was P&H’s first of any kind, the softball team won something else for the fourth year in a row. The Patriots field seven men’s and seven women’s varsity sports. The softball team had the highest combined grade point average of all 14.
“I’m making sure I’m getting kids that have a great work ethic in the classroom,” Campbell said. “They might not have the best [high school] grades, but if you’ve got a good work ethic we’ll help you here. We have the tools here at Patrick Henry to be successful.
“It’s a family aspect here. You may lose some games, but the educational part of it is huge for me, to make sure these girls move on.”
* * *
P&HCC President Greg Hodges made certain he would not miss the trip to the national tournament in Tennessee.
His schedule prevented him from attending one of the early-round games, so he and his wife, Renee, watched the Patriots on a live feed while awaiting a flight in the airport terminal in Charlotte.
“We made absolute fools of ourselves,” Hodges said. “It’s the DIII softball world series, but we were screaming like it was ‘the’ World Series. Everybody around us was wanting to know what’s going on, so I showed them my [P&H] hat and my shirt. Lots of folks around us got engaged with it looking at our cellphone.”
Hodges left Chattanooga happy with the outcome of the championship game, but part of his job is ensuring that the college — founded in 1962 — turns in positive numbers on other scoreboards.
Patrick & Henry began as part of the University of Virginia’s School of General Studies. It became an independent two-year school in 1964 and joined the Virginia Community College System in 1971, where it is now one of 23 community colleges statewide.
Parker said P&H was the first community college in the country to join the NJCAA when it signed on in 2007. At the time in Virginia, most collegiate sports programs either were NCAA Division I or Division III.
“When we opened that door to say, ‘Hey, here’s an opportunty to save all this money; go to a two-year school and still play sports at a competitive and varsity level,’ it overwhelmed us,” Parker said.
While NJCAA stands for National Junior College Athletic Association, more than 90% of its 520 members are community colleges.
The junior college model was built on sending two-year graduates on to four-year colleges and universities. A community college such as Patrick & Henry satisfies that mission along with producing graduates to enter the workforce with technical and career training.
Hodges was bursting with pride at P&H’s numbers on graduation day on May 11.
The college president said P&H had 456 graduates on the academic side who earned more than 700 credentials. On the workforce side, P&H issued approximately 400 credentials, a 45% increase from 2023.
“We’ve grown for the last three years on the academic side, for the first time in nearly three decades,” said Hodges, a Henry County native who was part of Drewry Mason High School’s last graduating class in 1988. “Athletics is part of that. This year we had 201 student-athletes, and they all take a full-time load.
“Across the country, most community college students are part-timers. They’ve got work responsibilities, family responsibilities, and transportation issues and child care issues.
“When you have an NJCAA program, these student-athletes have to be full-time. It doesn’t mean they don’t work. Many of them do. They’ve got an incentive that keeps them engaged full time. We want them to leave with a credential. The economic mobility for them in the future is greater with a credential in hand.
“Athletics, like any other activity, is a way of maximizing retention, maximizing engagement. We also have a robust theater program. Whatever it is that keeps them engaged and on campus and doing their schoolwork, we support it 100%.”
Parker was rooting for Patrick & Henry to win the softball title, but only on the inside. Since 2017, the former P&H administrator has been the president and CEO of the NJCAA.
“I’m not supposed to cheer for anybody, but I told Robbi I was pulling for them the whole time,” Parker said. “I was able to watch on our network, every game they played.”
The NJCAA president echoed Hodges’ thoughts concerning the mission of community college athletics.
“We use sports as a mechanism to bring education to people who may not have ever gone to college anyway,” Parker said. “Thirty-five percent of our 70,000 athletes are first-generation college students. But for athletics, would these young men and women even enroll in college? The answer is ‘No’ [for] most of them.
“If we can get these young men and women across the finish line, then we know their expectations of their kids, their grandkids is going to be the same, that they earn a degree. That’s generational change.”
* * *
Softball might have been freshman Laila Rodriguez’s best hope for enrolling in college.
She joined the P&H program after graduating from Princess Anne High School in Virginia Beach for one big reason.
“My grades,” she said. “I kind of struggled in high school. I wanted to play softball in college, and with my GPA, it wasn’t looking too hot. I met Robbi at a tournament and he introduced me to P&H and Martinsville and family, and I was like, ‘Why not give it a shot?'”
Patrick & Henry’s 2024 roster included players from regional high schools such as Bassett, Patrick County, Tunstall, Dan River, Halifax County and Westover Christian, along with one player from Texas and several from North Carolina.
What brought them to P&HCC?
“Several different reasons,” Campbell said. “Maybe they had an injury. Maybe they got looked over. Maybe they developed later. The [NCAA] D-I’s, they recruit [high school] sophomores now, freshmen now. They don’t really recruit juniors and seniors. When [players] come here, they’re getting a lot of at bats, a lot of time on the field, a lot more experience.”
Campbell’s goal is to send his players on to a four-year school, either in the NCAA or NAIA.
“I’ve got a lot of connections,” he said. “I try to put them in the right place. I don’t try to send them anywhere that I don’t think they’re going to get playing time, or I don’t try to send somebody that’s not going to be a good fit for that other coach’s program.”
Freshman Kayle Nichols originally left Gorman, Texas, to attend a different college. A change of heart brought her to Patrick & Henry along with teammate Rachael Gooch.
“I had originally signed with a school in West Virginia and it ended up being a bad situation for me,” Nichols said. “My friend, Rachael, talked to Robbi and I kind of jumped on the wagon with her and came over. We were new coming in in the spring and we didn’t know any of the girls on the team. They immediately took us in and made us a part of their family.”
With no on-campus dormitories, the players from outside the area live in apartments, giving the young ladies added personal responsibilities.
“I love it,” Rodriguez said. “I think the apartments are better than dorms. It’s honestly great to be started into adulthood early.”
* * *
The college’s athletes have other duties their counterparts at many other schools don’t share. They have to help raise funds to cover the cost of running their respective programs. The softball team and men’s soccer program needed extra funds to pay for trips to their national tournaments in 2023-24.
The players have worked at Martinsville Speedway, University of Virginia football games and Kiwanis pancake breakfasts to earn money to fund softball.
Why?
Virginia’s community colleges do not allow any of their members to use a penny of state funds for athletics.
“We’re always raising funds,” Hodges said. “It involves everything … digging for local dollars. [Teams] themselves will have fundraising expectations that make up their annual budget. We had two teams this year that made nationals, so there’s a whole separate campaign to get donations for that.”
Success is not a given. Mountain Gateway Community College in Alleghany County shut down its athletic programs in March, citing a lack of student interest and insufficient funds.
Patrick & Henry is able to maintain its athletic programs largely through the efforts of a 23-member, independent nonprofit foundation with a mission of enhancing the reputation of the school and raising money for scholarships, capital projects, facilities and basically anything else that state funds cannot cover.
The foundation, headed by executive director and P&H Associate Vice President of Institutional Advancement Tiffani Underwood, is composed of the college president, alumni, local business leaders and other community residents. It is committed to supporting the college and its 14 varsity athletic programs — men’s and women’s basketball, soccer, golf, cross country and track & field; and baseball, softball, volleyball and wrestling.
The community can be a willing partner. In the fiscal year ending June 30, the college has reported 103 named scholarships provided by individual donors that have awarded $559,088 to P&H students, Underwood said.
Additionally, the foundation’s website reported that the school’s Class of 1973 made a $64,000 donation to the school, while local partner Carter Bank & Trust turned over a jobs retention grant of $48,000 to P&H.
Patrick & Henry athletics are paying dividends.
The school commissioned an outside firm to conduct studies to analyze the economic impact of the college and the athletic program itself.
Based on data from the 2022-23 fiscal year, the study determined that the Patrick & Henry athletic program generated $2.4 million in economic impact for Martinsville-Henry County.
Local businessman and foundation board member Gary Collins is an enthusiastic supporter of the school. As a financial advisor, he understands the numbers.
“Obviously the economic impact is unbelievable,” Collins said. “That’s almost like a company coming in. What it generates to the area is huge. People are starting to take notice. I’m seeing more non-college related fans at ballgames.
“The [public relations] that we’ve gotten for this has been unbelievable. The coach, Robbi, has gotten people calling him to come and play now. The day we had the [welcoming] parade, one of the recruits from the Shenandoah Valley that they’ve got coming, she and her parents came down just for the arrival.”
In three years as the school’s president, Hodges knows the score.
“We are very fortunate that we have some folks who believe in this,” he said. “It takes that kind of benevolence to keep these programs going.”
* * *
The NJCAA is divided into three divisions for competition. According to the organization’s website, these are the parameters:
“Division I: Colleges may grant full athletic scholarships (tuition, books, fees, room and board), up to $250 in course-required supplies, and transportation costs one time per academic year to and from the college by direct route. Each sport has limits on the number of scholarships that can be granted.
“Division II: Colleges may grant athletic scholarships, but scholarships are limited to tuition, books, fees, and up to $250 in course required supplies. Each sport has limits on the number of scholarships that can be granted.
“Division III: Colleges are not permitted to offer any athletic scholarships.”
However, P&H athletes can compete for the available foundation scholarship money along with every other student.
While Patrick & Henry operates under Division III restrictions, several of the school’s programs choose to compete in one of the higher divisions for reasons ranging from proximity to opponents and increased competition.
P&H softball dropped from Division II to Division III in 2023 in order to compete nationally on a level playing field.
The Patriots entered postseason play in 2024 with a 25-24 record. Most of their regular-season games were against Division I or Division II schools. Their record against Division III opponents was 22-3.
Patrick & Henry won the Region X title by sweeping three games against Paul D. Camp Community College and Caldwell (North Carolina) by a combined 27-9.
Then the Patriots took a pair at home at Martin Field from Region XII champion Owens (Ohio) Community College 3-0 and 13-2 to qualify for the DIII world series at 3,500-seat Frost Stadium, which serves as the home of the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga softball program.
The field was set with an eight-team, double-elimination format. One of the contenders was Caldwell, the North Carolina squad that P&H had vanquished in the Region X tournament. The Patriots were now on the big stage.
“It was phenomenal,” Campbell said. “They had banquets at the Tennessee Aquarium. They made you feel like it was a national championship. Everybody out there had won a national championship before except us and Caldwell. We were the new people on the block.”
But not for long.
* * *
Patrick & Henry opened the tournament with an 8-5 victory over Herkimer (New York) followed by an 8-1 triumph over Corning (New York), setting up a winner’s bracket showdown with North Dakota State College of Science.
The Patriots won that one, too, 4-3 in eight innings.
That victory put P&H one notch away from the national title, awaiting the winner of the loser’s bracket final.
It was North Dakota SCS, which this time needed to defeat P&H twice to claim the championship.
The Wildcats avoided elimination with a 6-4 victory over the Patriots, setting up a winner-take-all finale.
“Props off to them. They were a first-class act,” Campbell said. “Probably the best team we played this year. It was an emotional game because everything was on the line. There were no more games after this one.”
Patrick & Henry trailed 3-2 heading to the top of the seventh inning, three outs from an agonizing defeat.
Gooch started a desperation rally with a single. Nichols, who transfered to P&H in the spring with Gooch, replaced her as a pinch runner. Jaci Parham put down a sacrifice bunt and Nichols had no thoughts of stopping at second base.
“I didn’t have a lot running through my head at the moment, other than run,” said Nichols, who was a track & field athlete at her high school in Texas. “I knew as soon as that bunt hit the ground I was going no matter what. As soon as I hit second I looked up and saw them throwing it to first, I just took off.”
Nichols made it to third base, then scored on a wild pitch to tie the game.
Both teams scored in the eighth inning and were blanked in the ninth.
Rodriguez, who batted .500 in Chattanooga and was named the tournament’s most valuable player, led off the 10th with a bunt single and stole second base. Nothing exceptional there except Rodriguez’s bunt came with two strikes.
“A lot of the time [Campbell] just tells me to do my own thing,” she said. “I bunted a lot with two strikes in travel ball. I was like, ‘You know what, why not?’ The infield was playing back.”
Rodriguez scored on a booming ground-rule double to left-center by Bailey Daike, who later crossed the plate on a sacrifice fly by Kyndal Hopkins for a 6-4 lead.
That was all ace pitcher Morgan Strickland needed.
A sophomore from Louisburg, North Carolina, Strickland was named the Division III national player of the year after the tournament. She finished the season with a 2.76 ERA in 228 2/3 innings with an NJCAA-best 34 complete games. She also batted .484 with 88 hits, 12 home runs and 68 RBIs.
Strickland pitched 38 2/3 of P&H’s 39 innings in Chattanooga. After losing the 4-3 lead in the eighth inning, Strickland was not about to let it get away again.
“If we were still playing, I think she’d still be out there pitching,” Campbell said.
The last of her 214 strikeouts on the season ended a season-long title quest that began in January, when the Patriots lost their first four games in a tournament in Florida.
“I was definitely confident we were going to win, having a two-run lead,” she said.
When the ice water from the celebration dried, the impact the potential of winning a national championship began to sink in.
Campbell was named region, district and national Division III coach of the year. The team was honored during an on-field ceremony recently during a Martinsville Mustangs game. The Henry County Board of Supervisors plans to celebrate the team at its regular meeting June 25.
With just three sophomores departing from the 2024 roster, P&H will put a very battle-tested team at Martin Field in 2025.
“Usually it’s just the conference championship experience,” Campbell said. “Now they’ve got the district and national championship experience. The maturity is going to be really high. We’re ready to play some ball now.”
The team members who took the long victory ride back to Henry County posed for a photograph on the steps of Stone Hall on campus before heading their separate ways.
The photo shows 13 young women facing forward and smiling.
However, there is one youngster who does not seem interested at all.
It’s 2-year-old Rubi, the coach’s daughter, cradled in her father’s right arm, back turned.
Too many lights.
Too many cameras.
Too much action.
Let’s go home, Dad.
