Kevin Winn, Louisiana Tech University Kinesiology and Health Promotion (2009)
In March of 2010 I was sitting on a picnic table in Arizona crying because my life changed in an instant and everything that I had been working for my entire life up to that point was taken. I had just been released from the San Diego Padres as a minor league baseball player and didn’t know what I was going to do next. If you would have asked me at this time, being a Christian, I would have told you that my identity was in Jesus Christ. However, once my career as a baseball player was taken, I realized that my “true” identity was tied to baseball.
I was fortunate enough to have a great family, a supportive family and a great network of friends that helped me through this difficult life transition. Looking back, I can also see my time as a student athlete at Louisiana Tech as one of the greatest building blocks to my current career. You see, I always thought that once I finished playing baseball, I would then transition into coaching baseball. I did this for a period of time, but eventually realized that I couldn’t be the man, husband and father I wanted to be by pursuing a career in professional sports.
Upon starting my freshman year in the fall of 2005 at Tech, I naturally majored in Kinesiology and Health Promotion because I thought it worked well with playing sports. I wanted to use the information I gained in classes to be able to apply to my athletic career in order to maximize performance. After graduating, I thought I could then use the skills I learned to one day coach other athletes once I transitioned into baseball coaching. I never in my life thought that I would one day use this information to build a corporate wellness company and lead thousands of non-athletes to become the best version of themselves.
I believe it was no coincidence that another individual stepped foot for the first time on the Tech campus that same fall as an assistant professor in the Kinesiology department. Dr. David Szymanski had just arrived on campus after finishing his Doctorate at Auburn University and spending a brief stint in Oklahoma as the director of a sports performance facility. At his previous post at Auburn, Dr. Szymanski was the assistant coach and director of sport performance for the baseball team where he helped lead the Tigers to a berth in the college world series. His passion and intensity for growth and knowledge was contagious. In addition to working in the classroom, he VOLUNTEERED his time 3-4 days per week to train our baseball team at 5:30 AM. He also applied his research to our team and I was able to participate in many studies over the years. Dr. Szymanski’s passion and enthusiasm changed my life. I began to fall in love with Kinesiology and wellness and loved his exercise physiology classes and strength and conditioning. For the first time, I began to enjoy academics and started to develop passion for something other than sports. Although it took me until 2015 to start applying this knowledge outside of the sport realm, I am grateful for the experiences I had at Tech- it was a pivotal building block for me.
Kevin and wife Amanda 2009
After being released from the Padres in 2010, I took what I THOUGHT would be a “temporary” job as a technician at a physical therapy clinic in Bowling Green, KY (my home town). My wife Amanda (Tech alumni 2009!) were married that October and she began her career as a teacher in the local school system. In addition to my job in the physical therapy clinic, I started coaching baseball at local high schools. Although my dream was to coach collegiately, I tried unsuccessfully to land a job in college coaching for 5 years. I remained a physical therapy technician during this 5 year period and was making a very limited income. I was not growing with that company because I was putting all my focus STILL into a career in baseball. In 2015, we were blessed with the birth of our first daughter, Ava (we have 4 children now!), and my wife Amanda felt called to quit her job as teacher to stay home with Ava. This more than cut our household income in half and I realized that I needed to focus less on baseball and focus more on supporting my family. It was the best thing that ever happened to me!
I decided I wanted to begin “applying” myself in something outside of baseball. I was looking for opportunities in my company outside of becoming a physical therapist. At this point in my life I didn’t feel like PT school was something that I wanted to pursue and I knew financially it would be too difficult for our family. However, I did notice that there was one area for growth: corporate wellness. My company was starting to do some work with various employers throughout Kentucky and the need for wellness services within industry was apparent. I realized that the majority of our community were performing physically demanding jobs and sustaining musculoskeletal injuries with limited to no support to help them through it. I realized that oftentimes the reason they didn’t seek the care needed was because it was too expensive. I started thinking back on my experiences as an athlete.
When I played baseball at Tech and in the minor leagues, I had an entire team of people that helped me feel and perform my best while avoiding and recovering from injuries. This included athletic trainers, physical therapists, strength and conditioning specialists and registered dietitians. I realized these individuals were essentially “industrial athletes” and that they should receive the same care as athletes on the playing field. I began working very hard to develop programs for these companies. This included ergonomics to improve work stations, job testing to ensure proper job placement, early intervention programs to catch injuries before they become worse, and pre-work stretching routines. Additionally, we developed ongoing coaching programs as well to make sure we were alongside to help people in their wellness journeys by providing training and dietetic coaching. This was a pivotal time of development for me and I began to fall in love with corporate wellness. I realized that the thing I loved the most about baseball coaching was helping people reach their goals. Corporate wellness programs allowed me to do this same thing on a much larger scale.
In addition to growth in my career, I began to focus on my faith. As my relationship with Christ grew, I began to have more clarity in all areas of my life. I started clearly seeing that I was called to business ownership and to create a product that was Christ centered and relationship driven. At the time, I didn’t know anything about business, but I set a goal in 2017 to be self-employed within the next three years. Not by chance, and through a series of events, I was connected to the right people and the right opportunities presented themselves.
In 2020, I was able to leave the physical therapy clinic that I worked for to start/own my current company, MuuvWell. Business ownership had been a long-term goal and making the leap into entrepreneurship has been scary but also rewarding. MuuvWell now employs 11 people and we are headquartered in Bowling Green, KY. We work with many different types of clients all over the southeast such as barge transportation companies, manufacturing, banking, city governments and municipalities. We have developed our own mobile app, MuuvWell, and deliver most of our services virtually through our platform. With MuuvWell, every client has access to free one-on-one coaching on an unlimited basis with physical therapists, registered dietitians and personal trainers. We also offer various on-demand programs through our app as well as quarterly challenges and onsite services.
MuuvWell HQ Ribbon Cutting 2023
The last few years, I have been able to replace my passion for baseball with a new passion, ultra running. I have competed in many ultra marathons and will be toeing the line at my second 100 mile race this November. Four years ago, I also found the “Hot Rod Ultra Marathon” in Bowling Green, KY. This is a 24-hour race that takes place in the concourse of a minor league baseball stadium around a .31 mile loop. We just had our fourth race this past weekend and had 149 runners from all of the country and the world attend! All of the money raised from this event supports a local ministry, Curbside Ministries. This year, we were able to raise close to seventy thousand dollars for this amazing non-profit! You can learn more about the race by visiting http://www.hotrodultra.com.
I feel incredibly fortunate to do what I do. I can honestly say that without my time at Tech, I would not be doing what I am doing today. Dr. David Szymanski and all of the professors I came in contact with at Tech were a HUGE inspiration in my career. They taught me love and passion for Kinesiology and also instilled a work ethic in me by leading with their example. I am so thankful for my time in Ruston and excited to see where MuuvWell continues to go.
Kevin, Amanda and their 4 children: Ava (9), Everly (4), Asher (3), and Ella (1)
The Exponential Factor 