MOTHERHOOD CHANGES EVERYTHING
3/9/2022 9:30:00 AM | General
Career Change Brought Rapp Back to Waco Roots
By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
Since Michelle Rapp was 3 ½ weeks old when she went to her first football game, it's probably not a complete surprise that the 2013 University of Texas grad would eventually migrate to some type of career in athletics.
The daughter of a high school football and track coach, Michelle's life has revolved around sports for longer than she can even remember.
"It's what life was," said Michelle, who came to Baylor Athletics 2 ½ years ago as Director of Compliance. "Dad was never around, but I saw him on the sidelines every Friday night. I spent years in fieldhouses and at games and meets and practices. Growing up, that was all I knew. Every Friday night, we were at a game. And in the spring, we were at track meets."
Football is so intertwined in her life, she actually delayed getting married by a few months. Her husband, Nolan, proposed on Halloween 2014, but they waited until March 5, 2016, "because you don't get married during football season."
"It was a big point of contention," said Michelle, 29. "My rule was, even if you find a bye week for Texas – because that's all I really cared about at the time – none of my dad's friends are coming. My best friend from high school went to A&M. They'd probably have a game. Everybody's got a game. In my mind, we had to wait until at least January. And then, it was too cold. So, we compromised on March."
All before Michelle was born, Pat Carrigan had a coaching tour of Texas that included stops at Hamshire-Fannett, Bovina, Midlothian, Hawkins, Llano, Copperas Cove and Big Lake Reagan County, where he was the biology teacher before Jim Morris, who was the subject of the movie, "The Rookie."
Van Vleck is where Michelle's mom, Christie, took her 3 ½-week-old baby to her first football game.
"Even throughout high school, I went to a game every Friday night," she said. "Dad and I would both go to four, five, six games, depending on the weekend, during the playoffs. It's just what I knew."
At Robinson High School, stress fractures in both shins derailed a promising cross country and track career, but Michelle also played volleyball in middle school and basketball through her sophomore year.
As a freshman at UT, she missed Friday night high school football "for the first time in my life," but in Week 2 went to watch rivals Lake Travis and Austin Westlake play in the first high school game at Darrel K. Royal Stadium "in a long, long time."
"I didn't know what to do with myself," Michelle said of a football void that she filled at least partially by joining Texas Angels, a student host group for coach Mack Brown's staff.
"That was kind of how I got to really be around college football a lot more. I did that on game days for 2 ½ years. I just feel like football is what I've always grown up doing."
Staying in the sports realm, Michelle did an internship with the University Interscholastic League in her final semester of college, working with media relations and event coordination of the UIL's state championships.
Graduating a year early with a degree in public relations, she took a job in customer service with ACS Athletics, a computer software company in Austin.
"One of my friends, no joke, was looking on the internet for jobs in Austin that had sports in them," she said. "Thank God it wasn't Z-something, because I probably wouldn't have ended up there."
Since was the computer software that Baylor, Texas, Texas A&M and a lot of the bigger schools and athletic departments have used, Michelle became the point person for Baylor.
"Part of her role was to not only come to us, she had accounts across America from coast-to-coast," said Chad Jackson, Baylor's Senior Associate AD for Governance and Regulatory Affairs, "and do educational and implementation sessions with not only the compliance community, but coaches.
"We would have her come and do sessions on how to use the system with our coaches. And it was just immediately clear, her ability to command information and to share that information in an easy manner for the audience to grab a hold of. Just top-shelf communication skills."
It was through those sessions that Michelle began developing a relationship with Baylor Athletics and specifically the compliance department. After a session with the football staff, then-linebackers coach and special teams coordinator Mike Siravo handed her a note that simply said, "Do you want to work here?"
"They had no idea, but at the time, I was interviewing at Dropbox in Austin," she said. "A couple people I knew worked there, and I was thinking, 'You know what, good job, gets me out of traveling all the time.' And I decided, that's what I was going to do. Great place to work, great people. No one knew a thing about sports. I was the weird sports person that no one could really understand, but I learned so much from my time there."
After more than five years with ACS and the Front Rush company that it merged with, Michelle made the jump to Dropbox in September 2018 as Customer Success Manager.
"I did a lot of account management with schools, that's where I kind of fell into my niche there," she said. "I already had the experience with higher education, but this was the CIO-type people that I was dealing with versus the head football coach. But, at least I understood the challenges of higher ed and the specific needs of large institutions."
The following spring, a compliance position opened up at Baylor, and Michelle got a call from Mabrie Hermann, Assistant AD for Compliance.
"Growing up in Waco, I swore up and down I would never come back home, never wanted to come back. And I was like, 'No, I'm not going to do that,''' she said. "My husband was working at our church in Austin at the time, and he was in seminary (Dallas Theological Seminary). And he said, 'I don't know, maybe there's something to this.'
"We prayed a lot and had probably one of the toughest summers we had had in a long time of just trying to figure out where God wants us. Where are we supposed to be? What are we supposed to be doing? It just felt like God was saying, 'Nope, you guys need to go to Waco.' So, we made the tough decision to say, OK, we're doing this."
While she had never worked specifically with the compliance area, ACS Athletics had started as a compliance and football system, "so I knew the basics," she said.
"Aside from the presentations, just the day-to-day communications with her told us that this is a sharp, sharp individual," Jackson said. "Just who she was fit who we are at Baylor."
And while she was reluctant at first about coming home, Michelle found out what a blessing it was last May, when her daughter, Emily Paige, was born. After finishing her maternity leave, instead of dropping off a crying baby at daycare every day, Michelle's mom, Christie, takes care of Emily every day at the Rapp household.
"I would not have been able to do it without knowing my daughter is at home with my mom all day," she said. "First of all, she raised me and my sister and was a teacher for over 20 years. Since we moved all over when I was growing up, I was never really around my grandparents. So, letting my daughter be with my mom all day long is super special."
Greeting Michelle when she came back from maternity leave last summer was the added responsibility of Title IX Coordinator/Liaison within Baylor Athletics to the office of Equity, Civil Rights, and Title IX.
"As much as I hate to think that those things happen, they do happen. It's very, very real. I'm not naïve enough to think that it doesn't. But, I'd rather be part of the solution than just pretend like it doesn't exist,'' she said.
"At the end of the day, I just want to be maybe the smiling face or listening ear during a time of difficulty. Even the person who's not been affected directly but is reporting something, I feel like that's the scary part for a lot of people: 'What do I do? I don't want to get in trouble.' And I tell them, 'That's fine, tell me what's going on, and we can get everything taken care of.' I want them to be comfortable enough to call me in a situation and be like, 'Hey, I don't know what to do.'''
That calming bedside manner in dealing with a very sensitive area, Jackson said, "is what leant itself to making her a pretty natural fit" as the Title IX Coordinator/Liaison.
"On a serious subject like Title IX, you've got to be accurate in the communication, you've got to be timely in the communication, and then you've got to respect the confidentiality nature of Title IX issues," Jackson said. "And I think she's done a great job on all those fronts. And with Title IX, just like compliance, we spend a lot of time training others and educating others on the intricacies of it."
Michelle met Nolan, a third-generation UT graduate, during their freshman year of college. But, they didn't go out for the first time until the week before she graduated, started dating that summer and were engaged a year later.
"I turned him down three times," she said. "He still has some rough feelings about Texas-OU weekend, because for some reason that was always when we would start talking again. And I would turn him down again, shortly thereafter. It was dumb, but my rule was that I don't date friends."
A self-diagnosed workaholic, Michelle said she would work until 8 p.m. some nights, "especially in my software days," and would even work on the airplane or in her hotel room when she was traveling every week.
Now, she understands what her mom kept telling her about how life changes.
"It's that understanding that it is different when you have a child waiting at home for you," she said. "It has changed me so much for the better. I love my husband dearly, we both love each other dearly. But, it's almost like something was missing, that you didn't know about until you have a baby."
Baylor Bear Insider
Since Michelle Rapp was 3 ½ weeks old when she went to her first football game, it's probably not a complete surprise that the 2013 University of Texas grad would eventually migrate to some type of career in athletics.
The daughter of a high school football and track coach, Michelle's life has revolved around sports for longer than she can even remember.
"It's what life was," said Michelle, who came to Baylor Athletics 2 ½ years ago as Director of Compliance. "Dad was never around, but I saw him on the sidelines every Friday night. I spent years in fieldhouses and at games and meets and practices. Growing up, that was all I knew. Every Friday night, we were at a game. And in the spring, we were at track meets."
Football is so intertwined in her life, she actually delayed getting married by a few months. Her husband, Nolan, proposed on Halloween 2014, but they waited until March 5, 2016, "because you don't get married during football season."
"It was a big point of contention," said Michelle, 29. "My rule was, even if you find a bye week for Texas – because that's all I really cared about at the time – none of my dad's friends are coming. My best friend from high school went to A&M. They'd probably have a game. Everybody's got a game. In my mind, we had to wait until at least January. And then, it was too cold. So, we compromised on March."
All before Michelle was born, Pat Carrigan had a coaching tour of Texas that included stops at Hamshire-Fannett, Bovina, Midlothian, Hawkins, Llano, Copperas Cove and Big Lake Reagan County, where he was the biology teacher before Jim Morris, who was the subject of the movie, "The Rookie."
Van Vleck is where Michelle's mom, Christie, took her 3 ½-week-old baby to her first football game.
"Even throughout high school, I went to a game every Friday night," she said. "Dad and I would both go to four, five, six games, depending on the weekend, during the playoffs. It's just what I knew."
At Robinson High School, stress fractures in both shins derailed a promising cross country and track career, but Michelle also played volleyball in middle school and basketball through her sophomore year.
As a freshman at UT, she missed Friday night high school football "for the first time in my life," but in Week 2 went to watch rivals Lake Travis and Austin Westlake play in the first high school game at Darrel K. Royal Stadium "in a long, long time."
"I didn't know what to do with myself," Michelle said of a football void that she filled at least partially by joining Texas Angels, a student host group for coach Mack Brown's staff.
"That was kind of how I got to really be around college football a lot more. I did that on game days for 2 ½ years. I just feel like football is what I've always grown up doing."
Staying in the sports realm, Michelle did an internship with the University Interscholastic League in her final semester of college, working with media relations and event coordination of the UIL's state championships.
Graduating a year early with a degree in public relations, she took a job in customer service with ACS Athletics, a computer software company in Austin.
"One of my friends, no joke, was looking on the internet for jobs in Austin that had sports in them," she said. "Thank God it wasn't Z-something, because I probably wouldn't have ended up there."
Since was the computer software that Baylor, Texas, Texas A&M and a lot of the bigger schools and athletic departments have used, Michelle became the point person for Baylor.
"Part of her role was to not only come to us, she had accounts across America from coast-to-coast," said Chad Jackson, Baylor's Senior Associate AD for Governance and Regulatory Affairs, "and do educational and implementation sessions with not only the compliance community, but coaches.
"We would have her come and do sessions on how to use the system with our coaches. And it was just immediately clear, her ability to command information and to share that information in an easy manner for the audience to grab a hold of. Just top-shelf communication skills."
It was through those sessions that Michelle began developing a relationship with Baylor Athletics and specifically the compliance department. After a session with the football staff, then-linebackers coach and special teams coordinator Mike Siravo handed her a note that simply said, "Do you want to work here?"
"They had no idea, but at the time, I was interviewing at Dropbox in Austin," she said. "A couple people I knew worked there, and I was thinking, 'You know what, good job, gets me out of traveling all the time.' And I decided, that's what I was going to do. Great place to work, great people. No one knew a thing about sports. I was the weird sports person that no one could really understand, but I learned so much from my time there."
After more than five years with ACS and the Front Rush company that it merged with, Michelle made the jump to Dropbox in September 2018 as Customer Success Manager.
"I did a lot of account management with schools, that's where I kind of fell into my niche there," she said. "I already had the experience with higher education, but this was the CIO-type people that I was dealing with versus the head football coach. But, at least I understood the challenges of higher ed and the specific needs of large institutions."
The following spring, a compliance position opened up at Baylor, and Michelle got a call from Mabrie Hermann, Assistant AD for Compliance.
"Growing up in Waco, I swore up and down I would never come back home, never wanted to come back. And I was like, 'No, I'm not going to do that,''' she said. "My husband was working at our church in Austin at the time, and he was in seminary (Dallas Theological Seminary). And he said, 'I don't know, maybe there's something to this.'
"We prayed a lot and had probably one of the toughest summers we had had in a long time of just trying to figure out where God wants us. Where are we supposed to be? What are we supposed to be doing? It just felt like God was saying, 'Nope, you guys need to go to Waco.' So, we made the tough decision to say, OK, we're doing this."
While she had never worked specifically with the compliance area, ACS Athletics had started as a compliance and football system, "so I knew the basics," she said.
"Aside from the presentations, just the day-to-day communications with her told us that this is a sharp, sharp individual," Jackson said. "Just who she was fit who we are at Baylor."
And while she was reluctant at first about coming home, Michelle found out what a blessing it was last May, when her daughter, Emily Paige, was born. After finishing her maternity leave, instead of dropping off a crying baby at daycare every day, Michelle's mom, Christie, takes care of Emily every day at the Rapp household.
"I would not have been able to do it without knowing my daughter is at home with my mom all day," she said. "First of all, she raised me and my sister and was a teacher for over 20 years. Since we moved all over when I was growing up, I was never really around my grandparents. So, letting my daughter be with my mom all day long is super special."
Greeting Michelle when she came back from maternity leave last summer was the added responsibility of Title IX Coordinator/Liaison within Baylor Athletics to the office of Equity, Civil Rights, and Title IX.
"As much as I hate to think that those things happen, they do happen. It's very, very real. I'm not naïve enough to think that it doesn't. But, I'd rather be part of the solution than just pretend like it doesn't exist,'' she said.
"At the end of the day, I just want to be maybe the smiling face or listening ear during a time of difficulty. Even the person who's not been affected directly but is reporting something, I feel like that's the scary part for a lot of people: 'What do I do? I don't want to get in trouble.' And I tell them, 'That's fine, tell me what's going on, and we can get everything taken care of.' I want them to be comfortable enough to call me in a situation and be like, 'Hey, I don't know what to do.'''
That calming bedside manner in dealing with a very sensitive area, Jackson said, "is what leant itself to making her a pretty natural fit" as the Title IX Coordinator/Liaison.
"On a serious subject like Title IX, you've got to be accurate in the communication, you've got to be timely in the communication, and then you've got to respect the confidentiality nature of Title IX issues," Jackson said. "And I think she's done a great job on all those fronts. And with Title IX, just like compliance, we spend a lot of time training others and educating others on the intricacies of it."
Michelle met Nolan, a third-generation UT graduate, during their freshman year of college. But, they didn't go out for the first time until the week before she graduated, started dating that summer and were engaged a year later.
"I turned him down three times," she said. "He still has some rough feelings about Texas-OU weekend, because for some reason that was always when we would start talking again. And I would turn him down again, shortly thereafter. It was dumb, but my rule was that I don't date friends."
A self-diagnosed workaholic, Michelle said she would work until 8 p.m. some nights, "especially in my software days," and would even work on the airplane or in her hotel room when she was traveling every week.
Now, she understands what her mom kept telling her about how life changes.
"It's that understanding that it is different when you have a child waiting at home for you," she said. "It has changed me so much for the better. I love my husband dearly, we both love each other dearly. But, it's almost like something was missing, that you didn't know about until you have a baby."
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