(This is the fifth part in a series of features on Baylor Athletics' 25 for 25, which honors Baylor's top 25 athletes in the 25-year history of the Big 12 Conference (1996-21). Selected by a panel of Baylor experts, the final list was picked from a pool of over 100 candidates that came from all 19 intercollegiate sports that the school offers. Through the end of March, two honorees per week will be released and will also be featured during game broadcasts on the Baylor Sports Network from Learfield IMG College.)
 
By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            Seven years later, there's a part of Whitney Canion Reichenstein that misses softball – the game, the adrenalin rush, the locker room camaraderie.
            Sitting with former Baylor teammates Meagan Weldon Diaz and Jordan Vannatta Williams at longtime assistant coach Mark Lumley's funeral, she was asked, "Do you miss it?"
            "I do miss it, but I love watching it," said Reichenstein, a two-time All-American and two-time Big 12 Pitcher of the Year. "I enjoy it, but I have a family now and I have normal work hours. I love that part."
            Reichenstein, who set Baylor's school records and ranks third all-time in career wins (123) and strikeouts (1,473), had a dream career that included trips to the Women's College World Series in 2011 and 2014.
            "I think about it, the last time I pitched was at the World Series. What a way to end," she said. "I didn't go play pro softball and try to be something else. My last pitch ever was in a Baylor uniform at the World Series. It's every kid's dream. I go back to all the years I went to the World Series and grew up thinking about that stage. You go there, and it's a totally different environment.
"Now that I have kids, i hope they get to experience some type of sports success, because it's an amazing feeling."
            Included two medical redshirts, Reichenstein had a phenomenal career that spanned six years. A dominant left-handed pitcher, she also holds school records for shutouts (40) and opponent batting average (.191), earned third-team All-America and WCWS all-tournament honors in 2011 and became the program's first first-team All-American in 2014.
            "For the last half decade, when you think of Baylor softball, you think of Whitney Canion," head coach Glenn Moore said in March 2015, when her jersey No. 11 was retired "No single athlete has done more for this program, so it is very fitting for Baylor University to honor Whitney with the retirement of her jersey."
            On the wall behind her desk at R&L Electric, where Reichenstein serves as controller for the family business in Weatherford, she has a framed Baylor jersey and a copy of a Waco Tribune-Herald story from earlier this year that honored her as Baylor softball's Pitcher of the Decade.
            "Before I committed, I made sure I got No. 11," she said. "I told Coach (Glenn) Moore, I will come play for you if I can have my number.' My husband calls me nuts because I am so superstitious and so obsessed with that number. He's already said that I can't make our kids wear No. 11. I told him, 'As long as they don't care, I am.' There's nothing that passes it on from family, it just became my favorite number from middle school to high school to select teams I played on."
            Following her Baylor career, Reichenstein had a chance to play pro softball in Japan, but said she chose to "go another route."
            "I was engaged and had my master's internship coming up," she said. "If it wasn't for being engaged, I definitely would have gone to Japan."
            Earning a BBA and a master's in education, Reichenstein worked for BNSF Railway for a little over five years before joining the family business in Weatherford, where her dad and brother run the business and are both master electricians.
            Whitney and her husband, Luke, have a son, Nolan, and daughter, Reagan Lee, who are turning 3 and 1, respectively, on Jan. 30 and Jan. 31.
            "I have a niece who's 9 years old and is wanting to get into pitching, so I'm kind of living a little bit through her," Whitney said. "And now that I have a little girl of my own, I'm hoping we've got something there. I keep putting everything in her left hand."