[VIDEO] EAST Students interview Shoppach “Community Spotlight”

Michelle Shoppach – A Coach Who Cares

By: BHS EAST

Michelle Shoppach has been coaching at BHS for the past four years, been a careers teacher, and a friend to many of her players. She’s taught at Benton for basically her entire career, building and maintaining many close relationships with all her students and players.

Even though Coach Shoop is known for her genius volleyball coaching skills, she actually never played the sport herself in school. “I played Basketball my Freshman year at UCA. Then I switched to Volleyball for the next 4 years at UCA.”

When talking about her thoughts on her influence on students and players as their teacher and coach, she mentioned that she still sees students years after teaching or coaching them. Even saying that they remember having her, no matter how many years it had been. 

“I’ll be in a drive through or a Kroger, and old students of mine will come up to me and say, I remember when we had to make a resume, I remember when we had to do interviews…” 

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO!

Even though Benton has been her only coaching location, she’s never regretted not taking a job anywhere else. She loves living in the same town and being able to see people she knows and former students around town on any given day.

“Everybody says ‘have you retired?’ or ‘are you going to retire?,’ but as long as I’m loving what I’m doing, I’m not retiring, so I may be here for a while”

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z31iVBISoBo[/embedyt]For a coach who works so hard and so consistently, it means a lot to hear her say how much she loves her job and that she plans on being in the same place to have such a great influence on years of athletes and students to come.

It’s important to remember the amount of influence and support teachers and coaches can give to their students, and Coach Michelle Shoppach makes this fact hard to forget.  

Article and video created by Benton EAST Students, Jonah Chrestman, Micah Meredith & Noah Kappert. Email any comments to [email protected]. See the archive of articles by EAST Students at www.mysaline.com/events/columns/benton-east.