CULTURE

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Scaife is not only a Muncie, Indiana, native, but from 2009-13, Scaife played for Ball State Men’s Basketball. He said even when he was a player in a different program, he could tell the women’s team had an identity. When he came back to his hometown to fill his current position, he realized the Cardinals’ identity remained true.

“The first thing that stood out was just the level of buy-in that they had with the coaching staff and with Brady. The level of respect and the command that he had with the group, you don’t see [that] too often,” Scaife said.

Scaife said he has never coached in a program with an established culture, as when he joined as an assistant at Murray State and Utah State, he was joining a new head coach. Scaife said he was impressed but not surprised by the Cardinals’ culture, saying the players’ maturity is a defining factor in what makes the culture successful. Although the team isn’t very old, he said they’re all mature for their age, allowing them to be selfmotivated and focused.

“When you got kids who are in the gym putting in work or you see kids in practice or diving on the floor playing extra hard, [and] you see your best players doing it, it naturally encourages the new kids, the freshmen [and] incoming kids to say, ‘Okay, that is what we’re doing here,’” Scaife said. “Then they kind of follow along, and I think that’s when you get in games. It’s not so much about talent, it’s more so about camaraderie [and] chemistry.”

While on scouting trips with Sallee, the Muncie native said he’s learned while Sallee tries to recruit talented players, he focuses more on whether or not they fit the culture. Scaife said this allows for the new players, whether freshmen or transfers, to have a better idea of what’s expected of them and how they play the game at Ball State.

Sallee said this method of scouting means he’s picky, but that makes him more confident in his choices.

“I’m okay with this program not being for everybody,” Sallee said. “I don’t feel like I have to get all of them. I just gotta get the right ones …We try to be really, really specific on filling needs, and I think it’s helped just this whole process of making sure that the kids we’re bringing in the door have the capacity and the want to be a part of a program that is team first.”

One of those players was Sydney Shafer, a senior transfer from Western Michigan, a program that shares a conference with Ball State in the MidAmerican Conference (MAC). Like Scaife, Shafer said she could tell from outside the program that Ball State had a strong culture based on family and hard work.

Shafer said the things that attracted her to transfer to Ball State were the offensive system the Cardinals run, the way Sallee fights for his program on and off the court and, most of all, the culture.

“The expectations here are you’re going to work hard, or you don’t want to be here,” Shafer said. “... Either you’re gonna [work hard], or you’re gonna get left behind. Nobody wants to be left behind, so you might as well just get in the gym like everybody else.”

The Jackson, Michigan, native said she remembers players like senior Annie Rauch acting goofy and joking around during downtime on the court. However, that attitude changed when it was time to hone in during crunch time.

When your inner circle is all chugging along to the same belief tones, it makes for pretty sweet harmony. And I think that’s what we have in this group.”

- BRADY SALLEE, Ball State Women’s Basketball head coach

“I remember playing against them, and it was just like, they don’t go away,” Shafer said. “My highest-scoring games were always against Ball State, and it still wasn’t enough to beat them. [It] seems like whenever you play Ball State, yeah, you could go on a run, but they’re gonna come back anyways and just kill you in a sense.”

Rauch was recruited out of Hilliard Darby High School in Hilliard, Ohio, and joined the Cardinals in 2019. She remembers the emphasis put on culture and family, even during the recruiting process.

The senior said when anyone first joins the program, there’s a period of time where players have to get integrated into the culture by driving the core values home in the way they’re expected to talk, act and represent the Cardinals.

“It’s really intentional,” Rauch said. “At the beginning, it can be really uncomfortable … It’s awkward to use that language at the beginning, but you get more comfortable over time.”

Rauch said this process allows for everyone, top to bottom, to buy-in and become immersed in the culture. Becoming ingrained in this culture, she said, makes the Cardinals more comfortable when their backs are against the wall.

“You can just see it when we play,” Rauch said. “We don’t just talk about it, you can see it in action, and I think that’s the difference between us and other teams.”

Sallee said he not only recruits players who fit the system, but it’s the same process when he’s looking to hire an assistant coach. When talking about how assistant coaches like Audrey McDonald-Spencer and Moriah Monaco joined his coaching staff after their playing careers, Sallee said he feels it’s not just the program that draws them back but the university as a whole.

“I’m still blessed and half amazed that I’m still here, [and] I got to come back,” Monaco said. “[Sallee] talks a lot before games and always talks about representing Ball State. It’s always about what’s across the front of your chest and not the back. That always hits home.”

Monaco, who played for Sallee at Ball State from 2015-18, said culture is talked about within the program more now than when she played. She said when she was a player, the culture was more expected of them, and now Sallee is more vocal about it. The second-year assistant coach feels these are some reasons why the culture is so strong in 2023.

Additionally, Monaco and Rauch said experience is a big factor when it comes to cultivating culture, with 2022’s MAC Championship Tournament championship game appearance being most important for the current locker room.

“With the success that we had and going as far as we did in the [MAC] Tournament and just coming up a little bit short, I think that they saw it firsthand,”

Monaco said. “This is really what it’s about. This is how important all of this is. Sitting down and talking through some hard stuff [is important].”

After losing in the championship game of the MAC Championship Tournament 79-75, Sallee began to drive home the mantra “five points better” throughout the offseason. It’s been an added phrase to the culture the Cardinals’ core were already bought into.

For new players, like Shafer, this mantra and the culture it rides on were made equally important.

“It is very prevalent in every-single-day things,” Shafer said. “Everybody wants to win. There’s a standard here, and everybody’s gonna rise to that standard because everybody has the same goal in mind.”

In the 2022-23 season, the Cardinals have taken the “five points better” mantra to heart, already winning more games than they did last season and getting off to the best conference start in program history. As the MAC Tournament inches closer, the Cardinals are positioning themselves for a No. 1 seed.

Even though she hasn’t spent a full season ingrained in the culture of Ball State Women’s Basketball, Shafer said what she’s taken away from the program will last her a lifetime.

“It’s gonna carry on not only in the basketball world but after we’re all done,” Shafer said. “I think we’re gonna be pretty programmed into a winning mindset, and whatever we want to accomplish we can do based on the way that they mentally prepare us every day for something.”

Sallee said although there will be players who aren’t bought into the culture, and along with that comes losing seasons, as well as moral and physical challenges, he knows it’s important to stick to the foundation he built the culture on, otherwise, it won’t stick and won’t bear fruit. He feels the culture the Cardinals use to drive them on and off the court every day is the biggest reason for their success.

“I think we believe that, and that’s ultimately probably all that’s important,” Sallee said. “Whether we’re right in that belief or not, I think we’re full bore that that is the difference. When your inner circle is all chugging along to the same belief tones, it makes for pretty sweet harmony. And I think that’s what we have in this group.”

Contact Kyle Smedley with comments via email at kyle.smedley@bsu.edu or on Twitter @ KyleSmedley_.

Campus

‘Menopause The Musical’ to come to Emens

“Menopause The Musical” is coming to Emens Auditorium March 1 at 7:30 p.m. This musical parody is about four women at a lingerie sale who have nothing in common but a black bra, memory loss, hot flashes, night sweats, etc. The musical is set to classical tunes from the 60s, 70s and 80s with around 25 parody songs.

Local All aboard at the Delaware County Fairgrounds

The 31st Annual Muncie Model Train Show will be held Feb. 25 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The train show will be held at the Delaware County Fairgrounds Memorial and Heartland buildings. The show is Indiana’s largest one-day train show, hosting over 200 vendors. Adult admission is $5, and people 12 and under get in free.

Campus

Planetarium show takes audience back to the beginning of time

The Charles W. Brown Planetarium’s “Birth of Planet Earth” show is taking place Feb. 25 at 6:30 p.m. The show is about how Earth became a life-supporting planet, explores the ideas of other planets like Earth and the chances scientists have of finding another planet that is similar enough to support life.

Ball State theatre professor and Emmyaward winning music director Micheal Rafter shares his journey.

Lila Fierek

Lifestyle Editor and Copy Director

Five children in a high stakes battle. Who can play piano the best and win the cookie?

When Michael Rafter is your brother, there is no chance.

“I always won the cookie,” he said, “but my brothers beat me up and ate the cookie.”

Rafter’s older sister would babysit and teach her siblings something on the piano, and whoever could play it best would win a sweet prize.

Though the rest of his brothers were athletic and could pick up a football and throw a “perfect spiral,” the keyboard is what made sense to Rafter.

Having both perfect pitch and perfect rhythm, music came naturally to the New Jersey native. Toward the end of his elementary years, Rafter found musical theatre.

After participating in theatre in middle school and high school, he became a bit burnt out from music, so he turned to math instead and ended up at Dartmouth College as a math major.

It wasn’t until Rafter unenthusiastically received the highest score in his senior-level math course that he realized his heart truly lies with music. He changed his major to music and never looked back.

Taking chances and saying yes to everything is what helped Rafter be successful.

At an AIDS benefit, Rafter played an arrangement of a song composed by Jule Styne, who wrote the score for “Gypsy,” “Funny Girl” and more Broadway shows. To his surprise, Styne was performing after.

“I thought, ‘Oh my God, he just heard this arrangement of the song that he wrote,’” Rafter said. “I thought my career was over.”

Styne found Rafter after the show and invited him to help work on a new show with him. Rafter ended up being Styne’s assistant for the last eight years of Styne’s life.

“If it’s an opportunity, you never know how that door is going to open,’” Rafter said.

“Gypsy” was the first Broadway show Rafter conducted, and he ended up winning an Emmy for his participation in the movie adaptation.

On the set of “Gypsy,” Rafter met Dick

Scanlan, a writer, director and actor known for writing the musical “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”

Scanlan said Rafter is committed to the storytelling side of theatre. If the story behind a song doesn’t make sense, he can’t play.

“I’ve never worked with a music director that’s so attuned to story, and really every choice they’re making is trying to support that,” Scanlan said, “and trying to deepen the audience’s investment in the characters and understanding the narrative they’re watching, rather than music for music’s sake.”

While Rafter has many credits, he is famously known for being Sutton Foster’s music arranger. Rafter met the actress, singer and dancer through working on “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”

Rafter and Foster have played many concerts together and even recorded a CD in Sursa Performance Hall at Ball State.

“I love playing the piano, which is why for [Foster], I love to get to do her arranging,” Rafter said. “... I also love standing up and conducting or playing and conducting, which I do in “Funny Girl.” I like mixing it up. I like coaching voice.”

While Rafter enjoys conducting, he said it isn’t all he wants to do.

Foster introduced him to Jo Ann Gora, president of Ball State at the time, and Gora invited Rafter to teach with Foster. Rafter started as an adjunct

They couldn’t get me away from the piano. It just felt so right for me. I don’t even know how to explain it. It was just so comfortable, and so I would sit and play for hours upon hours a day.” professor but came on full time in 2019.

“By your pupils, you’ll be taught,” he said. “And it’s so true. You learn from your students. It’s a living organism back and forth, and you are constantly learning from them, so I love that idea. I love that I can pay it forward a little bit, that I have something to offer them.”

Johnna Tavianini, associate professor of musical theatre, met Rafter after working with him in the senior cabaret class.

Tavianini said she and Rafter collaborate on things constantly, and they joke she is his understudy, often stepping in for him when he is away.

“His level of dedication to what he does is really sort of astounding, so there are times when I don’t know if he sleeps,” Tavianini said.

Despite this, she said he is always 100 percent with what is going on in the room, that he never brings an attitude of wanting to be somewhere else.

“I think it just speaks to who he really is and how he does value the people who are there to make music with him,” she said.

Scanlan agreed.

Imani Brissett, fourth-year musical theatre major, said working with Rafter has helped him grow and learn more about theatre.

One time, Brissett went to Rafter, and in 10 minutes, Rafter was able to help Brissett further himself more in one song than he knew possible.

“Because of his expertise and his knowledge, he was just able to give me that wealth very quickly,” Brissett said. “And I loved him for that, and he’s been such a great role model and figure in my life … I can always strive to do well because I know that he thinks I can do well.”

While Rafter taught some of Brissett’s classes, he also worked with him on Ball State’s production of “Violet.” The musical was written by Rafter’s ex-wife, and he was on the original creative team for the Broadway show.

Brissett said because of Rafter’s experience, he is anal and strict when it comes to shows, but it’s not in a bad way. Rafter is willing to be honest with the students to help them improve, something Brissett appreciates.

“I can clearly see how passionate and how much he cares about the work, and he holds us to a high standard,” he said.

Brissett said Rafter just knows songs off the top of his head and can transpose them on the spot.

“His brain though, that man, the way musical ideas work in his brain, seeing him play piano is so fascinating sometimes,” Brissett said. “Because he does stuff on the piano … he does it so casually. He’s like, ‘Yeah, I just did that.’”

Rafter spends his weeks at Ball State, then flies to New York on the weekends for “Funny Girl.”

In August, “Funny Girl” will go on tour, and Rafter is in charge of checking up on the show. The revival was something in the works for a long time. Rafter got the call for it in 2015, and it was a rocky start after Beanie Feldstien, who played the star Fanny Bryce, left the show after only three months.

“I never take it for granted, ever,” Rafter said. “I really don’t take anything for granted in that way. I’ve been on the other side.”

So if you give a kid a cookie, like Rafter, they might just find their dream.

Contact Lila Fierek with comments at lkfierek@bsu.edu.