Brandee Elliott has just been hired as Bob Hope High School’s volleyball and softball head coach. Naturally, she’s more worried about the volleyball season coming up.
Toward the end of a newspaper interview Thursday, she started verbalizing strategy for the Eagles against some of their common opponents. That’s how much she’s looking forward to the season’s start in August.
“It’s a new beginning, and I think that I can come in and make something out of it,” Elliott said. “I hear Bob Hope is known for heart, and I am looking for heart.”
Elliott spent the past five seasons at Anahuac, including four as the head coach. She guided the Panthers to the UIL playoffs the past three seasons.
She turned the program there into a contender the same way she plans to in the middle of Port Arthur, although Bob Hope is coming off its first playoff appearance in two years of competing in the UIL.
“One, just giving them positive reinforcement,” she said. “Two is getting some games in I know they can win so they can feel a win again, but they have to have competitive teams so they have to know what to build and know what they have to look forward to, but definitely staying positive and staying on it.”
Elliott requires one key ingredient from her players — heart.
“Heart is the key,” she said. “Heart is a passion. You can’t teach heart.”
Elliott is one of three head coaches Bob Hope athletic director Rick Frey — who was hired himself in December — has brought on board in recent days. He also hired boys soccer coach John Morgan and girls soccer coach Erica Vendel.
Frey said longtime Hamshire-Fannett coach Debbie Peltier, who coached Elliott, referred the 2005 Longhorns graduate to him.
Bob Hope is moving from Class 2A to 3A in all sports except soccer, where 4A is the lowest class. So, the Eagles will compete in a District 23-3A that Elliott is all too familiar with in volleyball, where the likes of Anahuac, Buna, Hardin, Kirbyville, Kountze, Warren and East Chambers will pay Bob Hope a visit.
Elliott admits facing her old Panthers will be tough emotionally.
“I kind of built that program up, because they hadn’t been winning, and then I came in and we went to playoffs my first three years,” she said. “I am a little nervous about that.”
More over, she’s looking forward to seeing her Eagles compete.
“They’re very scrappy,” she said, asked what she learned about her new team. “They may not be as powerful as other teams, but they are definitely not going to give up, and that is something I’m looking forward to.”
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I.C. Murrell: 721-2435. Twitter: @ICMurrellPANews