Baylor head coach Glenn Moore could’ve simply seen a good story of two rising coaches coming back to their grassroots of Waco with Jenny and Brad Fuller as his pitching and hitting coaches.
And while that side of the coin can be true, making the right decision for his program is the other side, for a program that is looking to reload after a Regional Final appearance in 2026.
Moore interviewed both Jenny and Brad and felt good about the pair, but still went to his most comforting place. To the lord in prayer. He spent a lot of this prayerful time in Billings, Mt., where he had gone to recruit a player and spent time in the mountains, mulling over the decision and making sure it was the right one.
“I wanted to make sure I did a thorough interview with them, so that I didn't just play the role of a nice guy in that cool story, bringing them back home,” Moore said. “We want to win here, so I want the right people. That's another reason for spending so much time in prayer. I was asking God to make sure that I wasn't blinded by those cool facts and then get the best two [coaches] into our program that would benefit the program, the team, and help us compete for championships,” Moore said.
The two filled positions were coveted by coaches at all levels, from high school baseball and softball coaches to an Olympian and a major league baseball coach, according to Moore.
For the Fullers, the thousands and thousands of miles journey to get back to Waco started at a local restaurant in the 254.
While neither can recall which restaurant they ended up eating at, it involved watching diamond sports, as after friending each other on Facebook at one restaurant, they went out to eat at another later on to watch a Texas Rangers playoff game.
Brad had a standout high school baseball career at China Spring High School and even had a collegiate tenure in diamond sports, playing for Tarleton State.
Jenny, a Lorena native known in her Baylor playing days as Jenny Isham, helped lead the Bears to 40 wins and a Super Regional appearance in 2009.
After graduating from Baylor, she stayed in Waco for another five years as an assistant coach for another former team of hers, McLennan Community College, where she helped guide the Highlanders to the 2011 NJCAA World Series and the 2014 Region V Tournament title.
After her MCC era, she moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to help coach Cardinal Stritch University, an NAIA program. It was then that an assistant abruptly left, leaving a void in her staff. Brad stepped in and expected it to be a temporary gig originally.
That was until the team went 30-13 and the offense excelled. At that point, he knew it was a permanent change.
Before Brad even began coaching, they would recap games and go over what went down that night.
“It felt very natural when we first started doing it together, and I was always with pitching and infield defense and Brad was with hitting and outfield defense, so I just feel like we worked really well together, and our love for softball continued to grow, and we kept learning, and just kind of getting better at it, and getting more opportunities,” Jenny Fuller said.
While the couple wasn’t waiting for these positions for years per se, it was a chance they could not miss.
“As soon as Coach Moore called us about this opportunity, we knew that it was something that we would want to pursue,” Jenny Fuller said. “I’ve been a head coach for 11 years, so it is a different role, but I think that Coach Moore, he's somebody that I really look up to … he's been a big mentor in my life, and just the opportunity to learn from him, somebody that knows the game so well, and he, he just does things at an elite level that we couldn't pass up this opportunity.”
“We trust each other, and we let each other kind of stay in our lanes. And I think that's kind of attributed to our success over the years,” Brad Fuller said. “We let each other do our things, and it worked out.”
However, it was the Fullers’ most recent job that was the most impressive.
They joined Northwestern State in 2025. With one of the youngest rosters in the country, boasting 16 underclassmen — 12 of them being freshmen — they put together seven wins, but one was a shutout upset of No. 20 Mississippi State.
They proved their skills in player development at the D-I level, with the win total spiking to 24 this past season, even with a roster staying on the young side. The 17-win improvement was the second-best in college softball last season.
“I thought they maximized what they had — the talent they had there — as well as I had ever seen. The way they pitched our hitters, we struggled for a while,” Moore said. “We ended up doing what we needed to do later in the game, but we struggled for a while with them, and I watched many of their games this year.”
The Fullers admitted that with that much youth, they had to get creative and change coaching methods to accommodate the roster.
“We actually had to really dig deep, and it forces you to — not that you coach differently, but when you have a bunch of underclassmen that don't have that college experience — it really forces you to dive into the coaching piece and really coach hard. So we saw that, and I think it made us better coaches when you have to work extremely hard,” Brad Fuller said.
While Moore was very familiar with Jenny Fuller, he was still getting to know Brad a little more through the interview process. A couple of things Brad said made him stand out and feel like a culture fit.
“I liked it when he said this and I’ll keep using it in that you’ve got to bring your own swing mentality, which I believe is crucial in not only recruiting, but also developing and coaching kids at the right time. Not making robots out of hitters. So he knows that we have to recruit hitters and then manage those swings,” Moore said. “He's young and energetic and innovative, and he's going to push the envelope in the coaching area. A lot of today's hitting coaches are trying to reinvent the wheel, and they want to make a name for themselves, and they want to come up with something that's the catch phrase like ‘launch angle’ or ‘rotational hitter’ — things like that — and he's not into that. He's into individual development and doesn't care who gets the credit; he just wants to win.”
Brad and Jenny Fuller are replacing pitching coach Britni Newman and hitting coach Steve Johnigan, who both stepped down at the beginning of the off-season.
“I am stepping into Coach Newman's shoes, who was my pitching coach as well, so I know that those are really big shoes to fill and I definitely want to do a good job,” Jenny Fuller said. “So I think that I'm a very positive coach. I'm very positive with our pitchers. With me being a pitcher, I know how pitchers think, and they need a lot of positive encouragement because it's hard carrying that weight on your shoulders on the mound.”
To Moore, he aspires for his staff to have an athletic and spiritual mission, and watching them over the years made that combination easy to see. Including her time at Baylor, Moore has known Jenny for 18 years and has seen that time help her curate her own coaching style.
“You have to surround yourself with people that are smarter than you if you want to be successful, and I've made a career out of doing that. So she is going to be vital,” Moore said.
Moore has also gotten some information through his son, Ty, who was with the Demons program for the last two years. First as a student assistant, then as a graduate assistant this past year.
“She's been a winner everywhere she's been,” Glenn Moore said. “Now she's also coming home to play a role in her desire to be back home around her family. She wants to be successful, but she's done that everywhere she's been, so no concerns at all that I got the right one.”
They’ve already gotten their recruiting chops on the current roster, as they aren’t the only members of the 2026 NSU roster that will don the green and gold this upcoming year, by bringing over Demons ace Mattison Buster through the transfer portal.
“She doesn't come here unless they move, and she doesn't even enter the portal to be recruited because she has that much respect for them. So when they left, she entered the portal. Jenny's relationship with her is such a strong one,” Moore said.
It’s a story of a couple of ball players returning to the 254, but also bringing a new edge and perspective in being primarily inside the dugout.
“I grew up going to Baylor games and supporting the Bears at a young age, so to see it come back around is something that we're very thankful for, and getting to do our job in our at a high level in our in our hometown is something that we're thankful for, and opportunities like that don't come around very often, so we're going to make sure we make the most of it,” Brad Fuller said.
