When you look at Mississippi State catcher Chelsea Bramlett’s softball career, it quickly becomes apparent that the university’s record base stealer moves in only one direction: up.
The Cordova, Tenn., native said as a girl growing up around Memphis, her family was unable to find a girls’ league that was competitive. After a while, they stopped trying. She decided to play boys’ baseball instead.
“We got into baseball because softball around the Memphis area just wasn’t competitive at all,” she said. “My dad saw I had talent, and he kept me with the boys until I was about 11 or 12.”
Bramlett said she played with boys’ teams until seeing a girls’ softball club from Southaven, Miss., that played at the level she wanted to be.
“I mean, if you look at boys’ and girls’ softball at about age 8, the boys are so much more competitive and a step above,” she said. “But it gradually catches up. It just takes a little while.”
After a stellar high school and club career in the Memphis area, Bramlett said she looked for a change of scenery.
“I came [to Mississippi State] and loved the campus,” she said. “And I wanted to get out of the whole city thing. Alabama and [others] are dead set right in the middle of big cities, and I just really liked this campus and atmosphere. It just seemed more my kind of place.”
Although her locale changed, Bramlett continued to excel at MSU, earning honors in her first year as National Fastpitch Coaches Association first team All-American, second team All-SEC, All-Freshman SEC and SEC Freshman of the Year. As a freshman, she swiped 46 of 50 bases, a first glimpse at a talent that would come to mark her career.
As a sophomore, she earned even more first team honors, matched her previous year in steals, played nearly error-free softball with a .993 fielding percentage and achieved the second-highest batting average ever at MSU (.450).
Bramlett found herself in the top 25 finalists for 2008 USA Softball Player of the Year and on the radar for the United States National Team, where another Bulldog was building his own resume.
Mississippi State softball head coach Jay Miller is not the university’s winningest coach by accident. The Aurora, Ill., native has been associated with winning throughout his career.
“Aurora, Ill., was a [big softball area] when I was growing up in the ’60s and ’70s,” he said. “This was in men’s fastpitch. We were national champions, world champions and had one of the best teams in the country.”
Miller said when men’s fastpitch softball began to die out in the late ’70s and ’80s, in favor of the slowpitch game that anybody can play, fastpitch became primarily a women’s sport.
“When people think about fastpitch now, it’s a girl’s sport,” he said. “In the high schools, the colleges, there are a tremendous amount of teams that travel in the summer and compete nationally, and that’s where we recruit from. It’s a whole different culture.”
Miller’s reputation got him elected to the committee responsible for choosing the coaches that would manage the 1996 Olympic team, the first time softball was an Olympic sport. He said after Atlanta, he wanted off the selection committee and threw his name in the hat to be a member of the coaches pool.
Miller was given various assignments as a member of the national coaches team from 1997-2000, and from 2004-2008. In 2007, he was named head coach of the Junior National Team, which won the gold medal at the Junior World Championship.
When U.S. head coach Mike Candrea retired after the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing, Miller was named his successor. Unfortunately, because of IOC politics, according to Miller, both women’s softball and men’s baseball were taken off the list of Olympic sports, until at least 2020. However, that doesn’t stop the U.S. from competing.
In 2009, a familiar face joined Miller as they competed in the Canada Cup, World Cup and Japan Cup.
Along with an increasing pile of accolades at MSU, Bramlett was selected to play for the national team last summer.
“I always grew up knowing who Cat [Osterman] (pitcher, Texas) and [Jenny] Finch (pitcher, Arizona) were, but to actually be able to play with them and catch them was a dream come true,” she said. “Just to meet them would be enough for me, but to actually get in there and be playing with them on the same team is just amazing.”
Bramlett said the experience showed her there was another level above college and the SEC.
“I always thought that SEC college softball was as far as it went,” she said. “But getting in there and having to scrimmage against Cat and Finch and other countries like Japan? I always looked back and wondered how the Americans lost the Olympics, but then playing them I can see.”
Miller said he thinks she learned another valuable lesson in perspective.
“I think making the U.S. Team last year was a great learning experience for her, because all of a sudden she wasn’t a starter,” Miller said. “She was on the bench as a pinch runner. But when we needed her against Japan, she came in and scored the game-winning run and turned the tide of that game.”
“We went on to win the gold medal, the first time we faced Japan since we lost to them in the Olympic games in Beijing,” Miller said. “It gave her a little different perspective and helped her grow up a lot, and I think it made her a better leader this year.”
And lead she has.
As of Tuesday, the senior leads the SEC is batting average (.528) and hits (85) and the NCAA in stolen bases (57). She is MSU’s career hits and steals leader, and Wednesday she became the career runs leader.
Even with all the records and trophies, Bramlett remains low-key and humble. And once her career with MSU ends, she said she wants to pass those traits and her knowledge to the next generation.
“I’m hoping to go back to Memphis and give softball lessons,” she said. “I love one-on-one, or -two or -three. I love giving catching lessons. I like the one-on-one because I feel like I get more done, and I like seeing the success.”