Your future, our focus
Signed Letter Of Intent To Ottawa University
Kelsey Marchant — a 2015 Powell High School alumna and a 2017 Northwest College graduate — will continue her education and volleyball career at Ottawa University in Surprise, Arizona.
Marchant signed her letter of intent on May 17.
“As I was going through emails with coaches and talking with coaches over the phone, none of them really grasped my attention and made me want to be about whatever their program was,” Marchant said.
However, during a lengthy conversation with Ottawa head women’s volleyball coach Kristin Steele, “I just remember every time she would say something, I would just be like, ‘Oh my gosh, that sounds so cool; I want to do that,’” Marchant recalled. “She was just the one person who kind of stood out.”
Marchant’s major will be elementary education, with her preferred grades being kindergarten through second grade.
“I’ve always loved little kids,” she said.
Marchant said she reached out to several coaches/universities, and was talking to several coaches a day, but coach Steele left a lasting impression.
“She was the first school that my coach actually talked to me about, so it was just kind of a lasting impression, like it was always in the back of my head,” Marchant said. “And there were times where I was talking [to] more coaches and not so much her and she would contact me or I would contact her and then it all just seemed to fit together perfectly.”
Out of all of the schools Marchant looked into, Ottawa not only fit for her major and volleyball, but financially as well.
Money was an issue when trying to decide where to continue her education, and Marchant said the coach at Ottawa gave her references on who to contact.
“She really showed that she cared about my personal being and that really stood out for me and I find that really important to where I will being going to next,” said Marchant.
It was a similar thing that brought her to Northwest College.
“I actually really hated the idea of coming to Northwest cause it’s my hometown and I was like, ‘Oh I just want to get out of Powell,’” Marchant said.
However, NWC head volleyball coach Shaun Pohlman — who she’d worked with since her sophomore year of high school — drew her to the college.
“He really cared about who I was as a person, not just as an athlete. I wasn’t going to be another number, I was going to be a person and he was going to care — and that’s really what stood out to me most,” Marchant said.
Pohlman said he was “very excited to have had her last two years — last four years, technically.”
“There’s kids that touch your heart; every kid ... in some way touches your heart, [but] for Kelsey, there was no predetermined future in the world of volleyball and in everything she’s done, she’s had to work for,” Pohlman said. “And for me as a collegiate coach — and I think any coach out there would — just, you have to love that type of kid and I do.”
Pohlman said that when he first started working with Marchant in high school, she wasn’t collegiate level at that time.
“But everything she’s had in life has come from her own doing — her own work, her own effort, her own diligent personality, her dependability and that type of thing,” Pohlman said. “She started working with me and every once in awhile I’d see this, ‘Ah, that’s a good move alright,’ and then we’d keep working and she keeps improving, improving, improving.”
Coach Pohlman added that, “I’m honored to be able to have had an opportunity to work with her and be able to be in the experience of her growing to the point where she gets move on to a four-year school.”
Of Marchant’s experience at NWC, she wanted to say “thanks to my team the last two years and to the program, the volleyball program, the college, my friends and family that have supported me and anyone who’s been there to help along the way,” she said. “Really, that’s made a huge impact.”