Connecting with students, one lift at a time 

Coach Whitney Rodden trains athletes for health, for life.

By Sarah A. Moser

"For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come." 1 Timothy 4:8.

Whitney (Jenkins ’01) Rodden spends her days as the Director of Sports Performance and Head Weightlifting Coach at MNU. In her role, she trains athletes on the football, men's & women's basketball, men's and women's soccer, men’s and women’s golf, track and field, volleyball, softball, and baseball teams as well as the cheer squad. She also heads up the MNU weightlifting team, which is in its third year.

For 17 years, Rodden has worked to strengthen athletes’ bodies to enhance their performance in their respective sports. She creates and implements the training schedules and leads groups starting at 6 AM most days. Her education and credentials are impressive: BA in Athletic Training and minor in psychology; member of the USA Weightlifting organization at the National Coach Level; member of the National Athletic Training Association; a certified Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coach; Master Level coach with the Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coaches Association; and a member of the National Strength and Conditioning Association in which she is a member and a specialist. Simply put, Rodden knows her stuff.

While coaching athletes to build their bodies stronger and healthier, Rodden is called to do even more: coach their souls to love Jesus.

“I coach some students with little or no faith background,” says Rodden. “I try to drip a little bit of that Christianity on them in our daily activities. They may not see it now, but there will come a day when it will probably click. I think the students will see how we believed, how we behaved, and see that there’s something different about us at MNU.”

From athlete to coach

Rodden herself was a student-athlete. She came to MNU in 1997 to play softball while studying athletic training. The Plattsburg, MO, native grew up on a farm and wanted to attend a smaller school.
“I felt pulled to a smaller campus, while some of my friends were going to larger Division 1 schools,” she says. “I grew up in a very small church with no youth groups. I was with the old farmers on Sunday mornings, so even coming here was a bit of a culture shock.”

As a freshman softball player, Rodden started having some trouble with her knees so she came into the weight room for help. That’s where she met the late Coach Tom Cross, who took her under his wing. Cross introduced Rodden to competition weightlifting; she realized the impact weight training had on her softball performance and she was hooked.

After earning her BA in 2001, Rodden continued to Kansas State University to get her master’s degree in Education Administration and Leadership. While there, she had a grad assistantship with the athletic department.

“It was a bit rough going from a small NAIA school to a Division 1 school, a powerhouse,” she says. She soon moved to a full-time job as an assistant strength and conditioning coach at the University of Kansas, where she stayed for three years before returning to MNU in 2005.

“My mentor, Coach Cross, was ready to retire, so I assumed his position,” says Rodden. “He had a big impact on my career and my life and helped me get started here at MNU. He was never afraid to reach out to big-time programs to see how they did things; I learned a lot from him about Olympic lifting. He was ahead of the curve even back then.”

While KSU and KU might have bigger programs, Rodden liked the autonomy her new role at MNU offered as well as the ability to work with more head coaches at MNU. “My time at the larger schools helped give me a different perspective,” says Rodden. “At a larger school, it’s hard to feel valued; here, I do feel valued. Coming back to MNU as a coach felt like coming home.”

Rodden’s background, coming from a farm community to MNU, to KSU and KU, serves her well in her current role, as does her time as a student at MNU. “Having attended here helps me,” she says. “I know the school’s expectations of the students, I have good connections in the community, and I enjoy a lot of good memories from my time here. Now working here, sometimes when I talk to alumni, I am the one filling them in on what’s going on because of my continued connections to the school. I like being in the know and connecting alumni to one another.”

Rodden is married to Geoff, and the couple have three children, Cole (16), Kinsley (13), and Harper, who passed away in 2016 at 14 months.