Nathan Forest
nforest@uwyo.edu
From her stitch ripping spikes, to her pre-serve game-face or her nickname of “Nuke,” Bridget Shanahan can be a pretty intimidating person.
But spend any amount of time talking to the senior outside hitter/middle blocker and a humble, grateful and bubbly personality comes out.
With 68 points in the season and 59 kills, Shanahan is one of the Cowgirl’s biggest offensive players on the court.
But Shanahan wasn’t always the offensive powerhouse that we see on the court today. At one point she was a young, nervous redshirt freshman.
“The very first game that I ever played, I came into the game and I was so excited, I got set the ball on the outside, and hit it as hard as I could and it hit the back wall and I got subbed out,” Shanahan said.
She’s been playing volleyball for so long that she can barely remember a time without it in her life. Yet, volleyball was not her only sport.
“I tried a lot of stuff when I was younger, like horseback riding,” Shanahan said. “In high school I did basketball and track, but eventually it came to a point where it was basketball and volleyball.”
Many children who start sports young, and play them for so long, often times end up burning out. But Shanahan found a way to skirt this problem for all her years of playing and still has a fiery passion for the game.
“I’m so blessed to be able to say that I’ve had good coaches throughout my entire experience of volleyball and that’s a really huge thing,” Shanahan said. “It depends on your attitude too, which my teammates have helped with, whether I was 12 years old or now that it’s 10 years later and I’m 22.”
Teams change from year to year, with new freshmen coming in and seniors graduating. Shanahan believes that this year’s team is special.
“The team atmosphere has grown and we’ve been increasingly stronger,” Shanahan said. “The mentality we have this year is ‘cowgirl tough,’ we came into the first day of preseason and our idea was ‘hey we’re going to take it eight seconds at a time.’”
Although this year’s Cowgirls like to take their challenges one game, one set and one point at a time, they still have high hopes for this year’s season.
“One of our goals for this entire season has been to make it to postseason. Make it to the NCAA tournament, and get our name up on the wall,” Shanahan said.
College athletics are not always fun and games. Well, it is a lot of games, but not always so much fun.
Shanahan says that one of the hardest things about college athletics is accepting losses. When she comes back from an away game and everyone asked what happened, when she doesn’t even really know.
But even though the team is currently coming out of a bit of a rut, Shanahan has an optimistic outlook. She truly believes in the team’s ability to bounce back from anything.
“This past week was really tough, but the girls have come right back. It has been tough for all of us but I think that we just have a change mentality,” Shanahan said.
Although she has high hopes and expectations for the team this season, she knows that it will be anything but smooth sailing. Especially moving in the back half of their Mountain West schedule.
“We have a target on our backs and people are coming after us and we still have to continue to work hard and be selfless and humble,” Shanahan said. “And get into the gym every single day and work hard no matter what happens. “
While she is disappointed about finishing her career at UW, Shanahan is looking forward to the future where she gets to put her talents to use. The work ethic of the volleyball team is something that came up over and over again with Shanahan. Her entire attitude towards the team and the sport in general is perfectly summed up in one sentence.
“We hit hard, we work hard.”
