Volleyball
Favorite athlete: Kerri Walsh Jennings
Favorite team: The Dallas Cowboys
Favorite memory competing in sports: Overnight club tournaments because I loved wandering the hotel at night with my team and dancing in the lobby.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Tripping over myself and falling mid-play when I wasn’t even back row.
Music on mobile devise: A bit of everything. I could go from rap to country to Jack Johnson in no time, but Chris Brown is definitely my favorite pre-game jams.
Future plans: To have a beautiful family and be a Pediatric Nurse and hopefully coaching in my free time.
Words to live by: “Your are confined only by the walls you build for yourself.” Which my club coach would always tell me when I was getting down on myself.
One goal before turning 30: Have good stable job as a Pediatric Nurse.
One thing people don’t know about me: My brother has special needs, so I’m actively involved in working with special needs children in and outside of school.
By GORDON GLANTZ
If the sky seems like the limit for the Pennsbury girls’ volleyball team in the pending postseason, senior middle hitter Shelby Hastings, a first-year starter, has as much to do with it as anyone on the squad.
The talent on head coach Mike Falter’s previous squads has never been in doubt, but the culture and chemistry was more the issue.
Knowing she was moving into the starting lineup and physically preparing to do so with as much working out as her tendinitis-ravaged elbow would allow, Hastings also prepared mentally.
She attended a camp at Misericordia University in Dallas, Pa., and came back with a plan.
“Last year, we lacked a lot of leadership,” said Hastings. “I went to the camp at Misericordia, and they talked about how you can’t just play for yourself. You have to play for your coach and play for the girl next to you.”
Hastings – the Univest Featured Female Athlete -- presented her ideas to Falter, who has known Hastings since she was in seventh grade when he formed a volleyball club at her middle school, and he was beyond receptive.
“She came to me with ideas on keeping the team more together,” said Falter. “While she wasn’t elected as a captain, it doesn’t matter to her. She doesn’t need the title to be a leader. She keeps us going, keeps the team together.
“This year, we only have one junior. We have some sophomores in the starting lineup, and the rest are seniors. These seniors learned from that class last year. She motivated the seniors this year. They came in fired up. We had to change the culture from “I-I-I” to “we” and make an impression on the younger girls.”
And Hastings, who waited her turn to start, epitomizes what it means to be a team player.
“She a great girl,” said Falter. “I’ve known her since seventh grade when I started the club to generate interest in volleyball, and she was one of the first girls to play.
“I’ll be honest, there are girls who are maybe better athletes than Shelby, but she gets the most out of her ability. She works hard, and that levels the playing field for her. As a middle hitter, she has mastered the technique and the fundamentals. This is her first year in the starting lineup, and I’m just super proud of her.”
The way Falter runs his program, upperclassmen generally don’t play junior varsity. That meant a lot of being idle during matches for Hastings.
“I got frustrated at some points,” the Hastings confessed. “I would go in sometimes, and then really not at all other times.
“I felt all along like this would be my year, so it made me work that much harder, and I definitely improved my skill level.”
Added Falter, whose team finished the regular season with the SOL National Conference title and a record of 21-1 and is setting its sights toward making states (top 5 from District 1 get there) and then going as far as they can: “She had to wait until her senior year to start, but I never heard her complain. That just speaks to her character.”
A Good Kind of Goofy
When asked to describe Hastings, Falter needed just one word – “goofy.”
But he was quick to qualify it as “a good kind of goofy,” adding: “She tries to make you have a good day, but she will also hold you accountable. She makes me laugh all the time. She keeps things lighthearted and is constantly thinking of others.”
Hastings is comfortable enough in her own skin to not only not be bothered by her coach calling her “goofy” but to own it.
“I’m an outgoing person,” she explained. “I love talking to people. I’ll dance if there is music. I’m smiling, 24/7, and I just like to make people laugh.
“So, yeah, he’s right.”
Bringing that “good kind of a goofy” into the team’s changing culture has been a major plus.
“I think it makes it easier for the underclassmen,” said Hastings, who laughs easily at the jibes she takes from following in a long family tradition of being a Dallas Cowboys fan. “I’m easier for them to talk to if there is a problem.
“And if things start to get real intense in a game, I can always lighten up the mood.”
Some of Hastings’ outlook on life could be gleaned from circumstances on the home front. She is the eldest of two children of a single mom, and her younger brother, Jordan, was born with a brain condition called Rhombencephalosynapsis.
Even though Jordan is just two years younger, she has almost been like a second parent to him.
“He has a brain malformation in his cerebellum and autism with it,” Hastings explained. “When you grow up with it, when your mom is a single parent, it makes you become more responsible.
“And maybe that is also why I’m so goofy.”
But in a good way, as exhibited most recently on the team’s Senior Night, when Hastings wanted Jordan to walk her onto the court.
It was not as easy as it sounds, and a lot of prep work was involved.
“Because autism is a sensory issues, loud noises do not work well for him,” said Hastings. “But it was important to me that he walk me out. That’s all I wanted, and he did it perfectly. It was really nice.”
It was a scenario appreciated not just by Hastings, but by the whole team.
“That was a great moment on Senior Night,” said Falter, who added that he saw the special bond Hastings had with her brother back when he first met her.
“I remember seeing her, as a seventh grader, interact with him. I was in awe that a person of that age having that kind of kindness. I think it was instilled in her at a young age, and she has always been able to rise to the occasion.”
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Looking Ahead
Hastings used to play soccer and run track but realized that she was more passionate about volleyball, as she was thinking and eating and sleeping it.
After waiting her turn to start on the varsity level, and in spite of her elbow that she has to monitor as to how much pain she can handle while icing it before and after matches, Hastings is not ready to give up on her passion just yet.
She still has the upward arrow and the height – at 5-10 – to take it to the next level.
An aspiring pediatric nurse, she is looking at Division III schools that present the double positive of volleyball and quality nursing programs.
The list right now includes Pitt-Bradford, Gwynedd Mercy and Misericordia.
“I’d love to continue to play,” said Hastings, a top-notch student who takes honors biology while also managing the boys’ volleyball team, singing in the school choir and staying involved with activities like Athletes Helping Athletes.
Hastings is close with her family -- with her mom, Pammy, topping a list that includes the likes of her grandparents (Jim and Evelyn Wood) and her aunt and uncle (Darlene and Mike Musial), but she considers longtime teammate Sydney Buell and Falter (who she just calls “Falter”) as extended family.
“We always make a joke about it,” said Hastings. “When he started the club, I was one of the only seventh graders, and we lost all of our games, but we got to know each other. And he is the one who convinced me to choose volleyball over soccer.
“He’s great because of how we all are individually - he knows how to handle us and how to relate to us. He leads us in the right direction and lets us make it happen. It’s really cool, because we get to see the success this year.”
It’s no secret that Hastings’ life experience with Jordan has steered her toward her career goal, as she recalls her ears perking up – even when she didn’t quite understand what was being said – when he had appointments with doctors.
“I always listened when my mom was talking to a surgeon or a neurologist,” said Hastings. “In the hospital, I was always curious. I was in that environment a lot. I just always really, really liked it.
“I also have a lot of different people, like my aunt, who have done it.”
But before all that, Hastings is focused on finishing what she started when she approached Falter about changing the culture.
Winning the league is not enough anymore.
“That’s what drives us more,” she said. “In the past, when we won the league, we would then lose in the first or second round of districts. Now, this year, our goal is to qualify for states and go further.”
And the team has the right overall mindset to do it.
“I see a bond,” said Hastings. “The whole team is a family this year, and that’s on and off the court. For us, the mentality is to play for the girl next to you.”
