New Castle (Ind.) Trojans volleyball freshman Melani Shaffmaster sets the ball for a portrait after practice. Shaffmaster committed to play for the University of Minnesota in eighth grade and is a USA volleyball invitee.
(Photo: Jenna Watson, IndyStar)
People couldn’t believe their eyes. They were at a volleyball game to watch high school girls.
But over on an empty court was a 3-year-old practicing her overhand serve. And she was getting it over the net.
The cameras came out. The video started rolling. A crowd gathered.
Who was this little girl? This exceptional toddler — not only for her burgeoning skill, but for the determination in her face?
Melani Shaffmaster wasn’t passing time as her big sisters played volleyball. She was really practicing. Every match.
“Melani’s going to be something special,” people would say.
Something exceptional.
***
Melani sat with a three-ring binder stuffed 4 inches thick with letters and emails, names and numbers from voice messages left for her.
The requests from colleges had started in fifth grade, Division I colleges already eyeing this volleyball standout from New Castle. Would she like to come to their summer camp? Would she like to see what their campus looked like? Meet the volleyball players?
By eighth grade, the onslaught of requests was out of control. Her parents, Wendi and Patrick Shaffmaster, couldn’t keep up. Their daughter had her pick of any college she liked.
“We were looking at two and three pages full of lists of schools that wanted her,” Wendi Shaffmaster said. “We told her, ‘You’re going to have to start narrowing this down.’ ”
Showing her age and humility, Melani didn’t want to tell any college no. She didn’t want to make the schools feel bad, her mom said. But then, during a college visit to the University of Minnesota in March as an eighth-grader, Melani felt something click.
“You couldn’t have pried a smile off of her face for the four days we were there,” Wendi Shaffmaster said.
Melani said the decision, in the end, came pretty easily for her. She knew she wanted to be at a Big Ten school, but she didn’t want to be in Indiana and she didn’t like Michigan. She liked Ohio State but that was too close to home. Minneapolis was just far enough away and when she visited, even though it was cold and pouring rain, she fell in love with the Minnesota campus.
On the final day of her visit, a nervous Melani told the coaches that she was verbally committing to Minnesota. She agreed to play volleyball at the college after she graduates high school in 2020. Because of her age, Melani wasn’t allowed to officially sign with the school. Her verbal commitment is nonbinding and players and programs can change their minds.
Melani said that’s not likely to happen on her end, as long as the coaching staff doesn’t change. It was the coaches, she said, who made her decision so easy.
“I liked the coaches a lot,” Melani said, as she took a break from practice this week in the New Castle gym. “They’re very friendly. They’re all about helping you get better.”
Funny thing is, some people wonder how much better Melani can get.
***
“You watch the ‘X Factor’ and you know how Simon Cowell always says either they have it or they don’t?” said New Castle coach Matt Curts. “Melani has it. That’s the type of thing a person is either born with or they’re not, that X factor.”
Melani is a 6-3 setter with hands that can send a ball sailing into the air with no spin on it at all, ripe for an outside hitter to kill. Or she can turn and surprise the opponent, taking a shot herself.
That’s what Melani, a USA Volleyball invitee, did this summer at the 15 Open championship match at the AAUs in Orlando, Fla. During the final play, she went up to set the ball, but she didn’t.
“That’s the thing about special weapons. You can’t stop them even when you know it’s coming,” Chris Tobolski wrote in covering the match for PrepVolleyball.com. “So instead of setting, Shaffmaster unleashed hers.”
She dumped the ball over the net with her left hand, surprised the opposing team and, with that, her team — the Munciana 15 Lorax — won the national championship. It also dominated the AAU circuit nationwide, finishing with a 58-0 record and ranked No. 1 in the nation by Prep Volleyball.
Club ball for Melani started with a legendary coach, Don Shondell, who spent years as the men’s coach at Ball State University. By the time Melani was 6, she was part of Shondell’s training program. And her club play is what prompted all those college offers. She, after all, is in her first high school season.
At New Castle, Melani starts varsity as a setter, never coming out of the game. She sometimes plays two rotations as an outside hitter. And after 28 matches, she leads her conference in aces and is in the top three in most other statistics. As of Monday, New Castle was 22-6 and 6-0 in its conference.
Melani has been named player of the match three times already in September. There was the match against Carmel when she had five kills, six aces, five digs, 20 assists and two solo blocks. In a match against Hamilton Southeastern, she led the offense with 28 assists, two solo blocks, five kills and seven digs.
And then there was practice last week. She told Curts she felt like she had lost her confidence in her jump serve. That she wasn’t being aggressive enough. So, she stayed after and worked and worked on serving, long after other teammates had left.
The next night, in a match against Pendleton Heights, Melani had seven aces and the team won 25-4, 25-6, 25-9.
“She’s willing to put in that extra time,” Curts said.
Because no matter how good she might be, Melani doesn’t get it.
***
She watches video. She wants to get better. If she’s having trouble with her top spin, she’ll ask her mom to get her a lesson.
“Melani is a very humble kid that works very, very hard for everything,” Wendi Shaffmaster said. “She just plays and she has no idea she is a big deal.”
Her favorite things to do, other than volleyball, of course, are to eat Mexican food with her friends, go to football games and to the disco bowling nights in New Castle. She also hunts.
Melani hunts deer (she has shot a 6-point buck) and geese with her dad. When she has time, she’ll go up in a tree stand for hours, calmly analyzing what’s to come. That, her mom said, is likely where she gets her composure on the court.
“When I watch her play, she is as cool as a cucumber all of the time,” Wendi Shaffmaster said. “She doesn’t get flustered. She doesn’t get upset about anything. She doesn’t say, ‘Hey, why aren’t you guys doing this?'”
Her teammates, in turn, have welcomed having this freshman phenom on their team.
“You would think with her caliber, there would be jealousy,” Curts said. “But the girls love her. The girls respect her. She’s a very team-oriented player who wants people around her to be good.”
Melani said she remembers being that little girl who wanted to be good. She remembers practicing while her sisters played and falling in love with the sport.
“I’ve never thought about why I love it,” she said. “I just do.”
Melani said she doesn’t ever foresee a life without volleyball in it. She wants to play professionally. She wants to make it to the Olympics.
“So far, all I can tell you is, if she sets her sights on something,” Wendi Shaffmaster said, “it’s going to happen.”