As a junior high volleyball coach, Michelle Shoppach was overqualified.
“We were lucky to get her when we did,” Brandy Chumley said. “She is from [Benton], and she wanted to be with her family — we were just lucky enough to get her in the first place and keep her as long as we have.
“She is good at getting the players to play and getting what she needs out of them.”
Shoppach, who has coached eighth- and ninth-grade volleyball for 11 years at Benton Junior High School and won four conference championships, was appointed to the varsity position at Benton High School in June. She replaces Chumley, who was the head coach at Benton for 17 years.
“Brandy had indicated at some point, she would like to not coach varsity anymore, but that wasn’t something she was going to do this year by any means, because she had seven seniors coming back,” Shoppach said. “But we had two seventh-grade coaches leave, so the door opened, and you never know when that door will open again.
“Once somebody gets a job, they may be there for 20 years, so she felt like the door had opened, and she should take that opportunity to have more time to do the things she wanted to do.”
Shoppach said that when she was hired at Benton, 15 years ago, she was brought on to be an assistant basketball and assistant track coach.
“She is doing excellent [as a varsity coach],” Chumley said. “And she will continue to do great things. She is a very overqualified junior high coach, and we were lucky to have her in the junior high program as long as we did and that she didn’t step up sooner.
“She is a competitor and is really good at what she does. I guarantee you, they are going to try to make a run.”
Shoppach is originally from Benton, having graduated in 1977. The district did not have athletics until her senior year, but she did grow up playing Kiwanis slow-pitch softball and was one of the first to play at “the little field at Tyndall Park.”
She attended the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, playing basketball for one year and volleyball for four years, before graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in physical education with a minor in library science in 1981. Prior to coaching in Benton, she was a head coach in Texas and was the head volleyball coach at Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia from 1990 to 1997.
“My first job, when I was 22, was a varsity job,” Shoppach said. “My second job, I was the head volleyball, basketball and tennis coach. … I thought that’s what you were supposed to do, because I was lucky enough to get varsity jobs.
“It is pretty cool to be the varsity coach for your hometown, too. I was pleased to get the job. Here I am at the end of my career, and I am back at my hometown, doing what I’ve done in other cities.”
Shoppach earned a master’s degree in physical education from Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, and a specialist degree from the University of Arkansas. She was inducted into the SAU Sports Hall of Fame in 2014.
Brooke White was hired to be Shoppach’s replacement for the ninth-grade team. White played volleyball at SAU, but not while Shoppach was the coach there. White later ended up being the head coach at SAU.
“I have coached fifth grade all the way up to college, and I have pretty much coached all of them the same,” Shoppach said. “I expect effort, and I expect them to treat each other well and with kindness.
“I expect you to be more concerned with the team than you are with yourself. Whatever age or whatever I have coached, whether it is inner-city kids or country kids, or adults that are 29 years old, I want you to respect each other and respect the game.”
Heidi Cox, the head softball coach at Benton, has also served as the eighth-grade volleyball coach alongside Shoppach for the past eight years.
“It has been such a joy to work under her,” Cox said. “She has been a mentor and a best friend — my family loves her. My kids enjoy every aspect of her.
“I’m super proud of her and the opportunity to move up. … It is well-deserved and probably one of the easiest transitions.”
Scott Neathery, athletic director for the Benton School District, said there were other applicants for the position, but Shoppach was the front runner all along.
“At the end of the day, we are going to get the best volleyball coach we could get for the program,” Neathery said. “I feel like we are a top-notch program, in the top echelon of the state, so we wanted to continue that and continue to get better.
“I believe she was by far the best applicant we had, and I knew she would be. She was my favorite from day one.”
At press time, the Lady Panthers were No. 2 in Class 5A behind Jonesboro, with a record of 11-1 overall and 6-0 in conference.
“She has a lot of experience, and she has done a lot of different things,” Neathery said. “Like she said, she has coached from fifth grade all the way up to college, and she has been a highly successful coach here in Benton in her own right, coaching her junior high program.
“She has experience working well not only with students and players, but also with parents and our administration. It has made her well-versed to be the head coach here.”
Rachel Dodson, who won a volleyball state championship with Benton in 2009, will serve as an assistant for Shoppach.
“She is somebody who has been here and knows how to win a state championship, which is something I have never done, so that is on the bucket list,” Shoppach said. “She has been able to add some things that we couldn’t do last year.
“We are taking steps forward, and our kids have matured a little bit and have been very coachable. Ninety percent of the things we’re doing are the way Chumley did them, and I’ve just tweaked things about 10 percent.”
Having coached at Benton for so long, Shoppach said, there is only one kid at the varsity level that she did not have as an eighth- grader because she was a move-in from Mount St. Mary’s in Little Rock.
“They knew me, and I knew them,” Shoppach said of her team. “It was a seamless transition, more or less, or as seamless as it could be.
“We want to get the conference by ourselves and finish in the top four of every tournament we play in. We’d like to have at least a four-seed when it comes to play in the state tournament.”
Shoppach said her main goal is to finish playing at a high level with everyone having fun, and “you can’t always say that come Oct. 31.”
“I enjoy the fact that I can do some things with strategy that you can’t do with younger kids,” Shoppach said. “One of the neat things about our junior high conference is that it is competitive every night, and we better be on our ‘A’ game every night.
“So I enjoy the competition and not being able to walk over somebody. This weekend, we were able to play some quality competition, and I got to make some moves, and they actually worked.
“I made some strategy moves during the course of play, and the kids know what to do and are able to finish it and score the points.”
Neathery said Shoppach is a very good coach and is highly competitive.
“We won a lot of games in junior high and several championships,” he said. “I believe she is in it for the right reasons. Like I said, it was a very easy hire.”
Staff writer Sam Pierce can be reached at (501) 244-4314 or spierce@arkansasonline.com.