If at first you don’t succeed …

Keep calling until the coach accepts your offer.

For Kendra Oberzan, a former Kansas University volleyball player and Ottawa University coach, that’s exactly how her current job appointment played out. As it turns out, a more perfect coaching scenario couldn’t have arisen anywhere else.

It began last year when Oberzan resigned from her head coaching position at Ottawa University — where she spent eight years — as the birth of her first child approached.

Two weeks after resigning, however, she received a call from her former high school, Ottawa High, where a volleyball coaching vacancy had opened up.

Actually, she received several calls.

“I told them no, I wasn’t interested,” Oberzan said. “But they just kept calling. Finally, I went in for an interview and it just seemed like a good situation.”

For Oberzan, a step down in competition level was a stride in the perfect direction. It’s been pretty smooth sailing since.

In just her second season as coach at the high school level, Oberzan led the Cyclones to a 34-5 record this year, a No. 2 ranking in Class 4A and a berth in the sub-state championship match. Oberzan’s efforts this year earned her the Journal-World’s all-area coach of the year honor.

“The girls have been great. I can’t say there’s any real big difference,” Oberzan said regarding the change in coaching philosophy from college to high school. “It’s fun to be able to train them from an earlier position. They’re just fresh and excited. They were really willing to listen to everything I said.”

The team’s sub-state loss came to St. James Academy, which won state, finished 45-1 and wound up as one of the top-ranked high school volleyball teams in the country.

But what stood out more than wins and losses this season for the Cyclones was the attitude their coach brought to practice every day.

“There is a never a time where I dread going to practice,” Cyclones senior middle blocker Meghan Cahill said. “The way that she helps us improve and learn from our mistakes is by giving a positive outlook on what we did do wrong and showing us ways that we could do better.”

Cahill said Oberzan helped her improve individually, growing from a timid player to one with more aggressiveness and confidence on the court. That individual success helped Cahill make a decision to continue her volleyball career in college at a school to be determined.

The fact that Oberzan was in Cahill’s shoes not long ago means Cahill — and the rest of the Cyclones players — easily can relate to what Oberzan has to say.

“She knows what it takes to move on to go to a D-I school, to be successful and get playing time,” Cahill said. “Coming from Ottawa, it gives us girls hope that we can do exactly the same thing.”