Head Softball Coach Kelsey Knapp arrived at Chatham a stranger; she’d grown up in Pittsburgh, but she’d never traveled Woodland Road. When she reached campus for her interview, she stumbled upon a family. “I love the small community,” she says. That first day, the strong connections among Cougars surfaced immediately. “Everyone was saying hi to everybody, and it seemed like everybody knew everybody.”
It’s a feeling Coach Knapp is used to: from the moment she arrived at the University of Delaware to start her first year in college softball, she was welcomed into the sisterhood. “I think the camaraderie between your teammates is the most amazing thing ever because you would walk in the first day (and I didn’t know anybody coming from Pittsburgh), and I had a phone call that evening from teammates. They were like, Hey, we’re coming over, let’s hang out. As soon as I got there, I had an immediate group of friends.”
Everyone longs to find a home away from home at college, but that support network is essential for any Division I athlete. “I definitely learned how to grow up very quickly, because I had to be on a very strict schedule and I had to learn those time management skills to be an athlete and to be a student at the same time in a very rigorous program.” Knapp balanced the pressures of a Blue Hen athlete with a full Criminal Justice course load: certainly not easy, but she wasn’t in it alone. “I think it also helped that we had a very large team and everybody kind of took everybody under their wing, so it’s definitely a very family-like atmosphere,” she says. “That’s just why I love athletics in general, because you have that bond with people who know what you’re going through everyday.”
When Knapp pulled off her Delaware uniform for the last time, she knew it only marked the beginning of her time on a diamond. She quickly found a coaching position at Oberlin College. The job meant a move to Ohio and a shift to the Division III philosophy. “You had to learn to do the most with your athletes during a very short amount of time, and you had to be very efficient with it,” she says. After Oberlin, she spent time coaching at the University of Rhode Island before returning to Division III at Chatham. Besides the close-knit campus atmosphere, meeting the Cougar athletes was a selling point for Knapp. “I met with a couple of student athletes during my interview process, and they were amazing,” she says. “They said they wanted to be coached, and that’s what I’m here for. That’s why I get into this.”
Echoing the giving spirit of Chatham, Knapp hopes to provide every athlete she coaches with an extraordinary opportunity. “My job is to kind of inspire them through softball, and I just hope that they have the best experience possible here that I could give them.” The Division III program makes it easy for her to ensure every student gets a well-rounded education. “Whenever you’re a Division I athlete, you’re tied to your sport because you have money hanging over you,” she shares. “You don’t have a choice of whether or not you go to practice; you have to be there. And the thing about Division III students is that they come to practice because they want to be there. It makes my job so much easier because I know those kids, they don’t have to be there if they don’t want to. And since they are at practice, they’re 100% dedicated, they love what they’re doing, and I couldn’t ask for anything else from them.”
As she works to make the Chatham softball program even better, Knapp is thrilled to bring more ladies along for the journey. “In a softball player, I’m looking for someone who is athletic, who is dedicated, doesn’t mind putting in the work and who will just give me everything they have at every moment they’re at practice.” Even if a student hasn’t played since high school, Coach Knapp is happy to hear from them. “I tell them there’s two requirements: can you catch a ball, and are you not afraid of the ball? Because those are things I really can’t teach.”
Realistically, they’re probably the only two things Coach Knapp can’t teach; she’s an extremely dedicated, talented coach with a huge heart for her team. “I’m absolutely 100% a coach,” she says, “and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
As Knapp instills the same sense of dedication in students as she found as a player, she has one piece of advice for every athlete:
“Enjoy every moment of what they’re doing right now. I think that in the moment, it might not seem very important what you’re doing, especially when you’re going through the hard part of your season. You know, the lifting, the conditioning. But you have to enjoy every single moment of it because you’ll never get it back.”
To find out more about joining the softball team, stop by Coach Knapp’s office in the AFC, call her, or email her (look her up in the directory on myChatham).