Opportunity with Chatham women’s volleyball adds up to success for Hempfield grad Delaney O’Shea
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Delaney O’Shea admitted she didn’t know what to expect when she embarked on her first student teaching assignment. She was placed in Clairton City School District, where she would instruct high school students on the finer points of precalculus, calculus and Algebra 2.
Her experience has been far different than what she envisioned.
“I really love it there,” said the Hempfield grad and senior on the Chatham women’s volleyball team. “The community is so nice, and the kids are so welcoming to me, which I really wasn’t expecting.
“I thought it was a harder area and the children would be harder on me, but I have had just the best experience with them. I have really bonded with them.”
O’Shea’s experience at Chatham has been pretty nice, too. And also included a bit of the unexpected.
She spent her first two years at Cal (Pa.), which, initially, seemed like the right fit. It’s where her father had attended college, and, she reasoned, she would be playing volleyball at a higher level (Division II).
But the sleepy town of California was not to her liking, and she decided she wanted to be somewhere she knew and loved. She had visited Pittsburgh’s Shady Side neighborhood, including Chatham, numerous times, and both were areas that felt vibrant and more like home.
So O’Shea took her volleyball acumen — and love of math — to Chatham, where she has become an integral part of the Cougars. She helped Chatham reach the Presidents’ Athletic Conference semifinals last season, the second consecutive season the program had advanced to that level.
This season, heading into the week of Oct. 23, the Cougars were atop the conference with W&J and Bethany. Each team had one loss.
While winning the conference regular-season title remains within reach, O’Shea and her teammates are more interested in winning the conference tournament and finishing what they couldn’t the past two seasons.
“I have this little book, and I wrote in it, ‘We will win the PAC,’ ” O’Shea said, “and this year, I wrote it with full confidence. I spoke to some girls on the team, and we just say we don’t think there’s any team in the conference that we don’t have the capability of rising to the occasion and beating.
“As we move forward and we grow more, it’s just going to keep getting better and better, and I think we will come out on top this year.”
Through Chatham’s first 18 matches, O’Shea was averaging 1.65 kills per set and had contributed 19 blocks.
Sixth-year coach Joe Bortak, a Penn-Trafford grad, said the 6-foot-2 O’Shea was a welcome addition to the lineup when she arrived last season. She gave the Cougars a needed presence in the middle, averaging more than 1.50 kills per set and adding 20 blocks.
“You’d be silly not to notice her size right off the bat,” Bortak said. “She’s tall, she’s long, puts up a heck of a block. And offensively, she can do some things just because she touches high.”
But being moved to the middle was not what O’Shea anticipated. A right-side hitter throughout her teenage years, she was in uncharted territory at the middle blocker position.
She also was set back in her transition when she suffered a broken pinkie finger early in her inaugural season at Chatham. Once she got back on the floor, she adjusted well. And, if nothing else, it gave her a needed shot of confidence.
“In high school, I was told I was too slow to play in the middle,” she said. “So I just kind of put myself out of ever being in that position. But having (Bortak) put me in the middle, that was my first thing that he showed me with how he trusted me and he trusted me that I could be a great player in the middle.
“He put me in a position that no other coach believed I could play.”
This season, with senior Jessica Taney and freshmen Zoie Bateman and Latrobe grad Paige Watson providing plenty of depth in the middle, O’Shea was able to move back to her more natural right side position.
The switch has worked out for her and the team. With O’Shea now on the right side, Bortak has versatility in his lineup that he lacked last season.
“We’ve run a 5-1 (one-setter offense) traditionally in the past,” he said, “but now we have the flexibility to run a 6-2 (two-setter offense). So we’ll always have a setter in the back row, and we’ll always have a right-side hitter in the front row. It gives us one more block and one more swing in all rotations.”
Additionally, Bortak said, O’Shea has provided valuable leadership and knowledge for the younger players. Now with experience in the middle, she can offer instruction to Bateman and Watson when needed while also shepherding the young players in other areas.
Bortak said it isn’t unusual for O’Shea to bring a couple of other players with her when she comes in during off hours to look at game video. It’s kind of the teacher coming out in her, he said.
O’Shea can see parallels between how she has been brought along in her volleyball career at Chatham and how she wants to inspire students to love math. She never thought she was capable of playing middle until she was given a chance, and she never knew she was so adept at math until someone instilled the confidence in her to take it seriously.
“Once I got to high school, my teachers (Rob Stauffer and Joe Scheuermann) made it so much fun. … They really just implemented the fact that you can change the way students look at math and bring to light how much fun it is.
“That’s what I want to do: show kids they can be really good at math if they just apply themselves. That’s what my story was.”