Athlete of the Week: NDB’s Kelly Schackel

The junior middle hitter was front and center as the Tigers closed out their undefeated West Bay Athletic League Foothill Division season with their 12th straight win, a five-set comeback thriller 23-25, 18-25, 25-17, 25-16, 17-15 last Thursday at Sacred Heart Prep.

“It was such a crazy intense game,” Schackel said. “There were so many emotions on the court. Everybody just put their emotions on the court.”

The Daily Journal Athlete of the Week totaled a career-high 26 kills and added three blocks. And when she rotated back onto the floor amid a 15-15 deadlock in the fifth set, she shut the door by recording a kill through the middle to force match point, then closed out the emotional comeback with a solo block to send her team into a frenzy.

“It was like such a surreal moment,” Schackel said. “Coming onto the court at 15-15, all I knew was I had to make a difference.”

Schackel has been hammering away through the middle all season. And at 6-3, with the powerful downward plane of her swing when she gets on top of the ball, she might seem perfectly suited for feasting on kill opportunities through the middle.

Cal Poly doesn’t see it that way, though. Schackel is verbally committed to play indoor volleyball for the Division I program there as an opposite hitter. It’s a position she’s played her entire career on the club circuit since she was 13, all the way through her season with the Encore Volleyball Club earlier this year.

Entering this season at NDB, Schackel was hoping to make the transition to the right side after two years as the Tigers’ primary middle. NDB head coach Jen Agresti said she’d hoped to accommodate her best returning scorer. A pair of 2018 graduates, Kendall Peters (now playing beach volleyball at Tulane) and Vanessa Pan (now playing indoor volleyball at Columbia University), were last year’s top two terminators.

After taking inventory of the 2019 lineup, though, Agresti implored Schackel to again anchor the middle. Now, she ranks fifth in the Central Coast Section in total kills with 314, among teams reporting statistics to MaxPreps.com. Incidentally, NDB junior outside hitter Abby Miller — who added 19 kills last Thursday against SHP — ranks second in CCS with 383. And SHP senior outside hitter Elena Radeff is tops in CCS with 414.

“It changed everything for us,” Agresti said of Schackel staying at middle. “I said, ‘you can just be so much better in the middle.’ … Now look, she’s killing it.”

In two previous seasons, Schackel had never celebrated a league championship. The Tigers earned their last WBAL Foothill title in 2016, the year before she arrived, and finished in second place in each ’17 and ’18.

And while the Tigers wrapped up the 2019 crown two weeks ago — SHP, Menlo and Harker all tied for second place with four losses apiece — the regular-season finale presented the opportunity for NDB to do something else the program hadn’t done since 2016: run the table in league play.

“I knew we had pieces,” Agresti said. “I was just working hard to see what our puzzle would be. … I didn’t see us winning WBAL, and I certainly didn’t see us going undefeated in it. But, hey, good for us.”

After dropping the first two sets against SHP, however, that opportunity seemed to be slipping away.

“It was one of those nights,” Agresti said. “I was just standing there saying this was just not going to be our night.”

Agresti made two key tactical changes, entering junior outside hitter Ashlin O’Riordan, who went on to finish with a career-high eight kills. She also allowed senior defensive specialist Lauren Harrison to rotate through the front row as allow her to drop back on serve receive to contend with SHP sophomore Millie Muir, who finished with a match-high four aces.

Schackel stayed put through the middle, though, and she went on to hit for a .500 swing percentage, and a 61.9 kill percentage, both also match highs.

After battling back to win the third and fourth sets, NDB darted out to a 12-5 lead in the decisive Game 5. That quickly evaporated, though, when SHP went on a 6-point run before eventually tying it at 13-13.

NDB forced two match points, but SHP answered both times to take it to extra points at 15-15, allowing Schackel to rotate back onto the court.

Schackel immediately connected with a bump set from senior Lauren Payne to give NDB its third match point. Then on the defensive side, Schackel put the game away sliding over to the pin on the double block with Payne and scoring the roof by squaring up a two-handed block.

“To win the game, I knew I was going to the outside and just pressed as hard as I could,” Schackel said. “And after I got that block, it was just the best feeling in the world. It was everybody screaming. … It was jut amazing.”