In the spring of 2018, Cleveland State staffer Shelby Zoeckler was assigned a task by her new boss, recently-hired head coach Chris Kielsmeier. Did she have to show a prized recruit around campus? Help assess the inherited roster? Plan an offseason workout?
Nope. She had to help redecorate the team’s offices.
“When I first got here, it had probably the original carpet, original ceiling tiles, original lights. It was not good,” Kielsmeier said, perhaps while remembering a specific stain or hole that had developed in the bowels of the Wolstein Center during the first quarter century of the arena’s life. “Part of me coming here was, we need to do something about this. And what exactly are we going to do?”
Framing the issue as a challenge was more than enough to get Zoeckler on board, so she and Kielsmeier headed to the carpet store and to CSU’s Departments of Facilities, Architect, Safety and Technology, where they promptly found themselves neck-deep in samples.
“You probably don’t know this, but if you dig in and look at tiles, there are probably as many tiles as carpet,” Kielsmeier lamented. “You think there’s probably two tiles or something. You want A or B. Well, there’s like 30 options.”
“It was kind of interesting. It was my first time,” Zoeckler added.
Anyone who’s ever had to sift through samples for their home or office knows how something that starts out fun and interesting can quickly become an overwhelming nightmare. Kielsmeier’s perfectionist streak – “It’s good, but how do we make it better?” is a question he asks of his staff frequently, both then and now – certainly didn’t allow for any shortcuts either.
Eventually, though, they got to “better,” including gray-patterned carpeting and clean off-white walls that chart the program’s history through photos, with green and black stripes running just below the ceiling.
“The overall design of that office was pretty complex,” Kielsmeier said. “We went through a lot of ideas and a lot of nos, and ultimately ended up with something that I think is really cool. We’ve made it even better over time, and we have something that we’re proud of now.”
This isn’t really a story about buying carpet, though. Mostly, it’s a story of persistence and chance that probably should have ended before it began, at several different points.
For starters, the sport of choice in the Zoecklers’ Sagamore Hills household is volleyball, not basketball. Shelby’s mother, Marci, has enjoyed a long and successful career as a coach. Several of her six siblings have followed that path, including Jayme, a senior at Walsh University, and Ellie, who recently wrapped up her career at Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy.
Shelby dabbled in volleyball too, but quickly veered towards basketball.
“It’s just always the thing that clicked,” she explained. “There’s just something about the game.”
It certainly did click.
Pull up a list of the 2015-16 Division III All-Ohio selections in girls basketball, and right at the top, you’ll see Gilmour Academy’s Naz Hillmon. Hillmon – whose grandmother played at Cleveland State during the early days of the Vikings’ women’s program – went on to superstardom at the University of Michigan and, presently, with the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream.
Scrolling down a bit reveals Grayson Rose from Garfield High School in Garrettsville, a dominant force in the middle of the floor for Northern Kentucky from 2017-22. Rose capped her career as the Horizon League’s Defensive Player of the Year, and with prominent placement among the rebounding and blocked shot leaders in the Norse record book.
Just past Rose, you’ll find Zoeckler.
At Trinity High School in Garfield Heights, the alma mater of former Tennessee and WNBA star Semeka Randall, the dynamic guard earned her place on that page with a superb senior year stat line of 18.8 points, 7.4 and 6.6 assists per game, despite being the obvious focal point for Trojans opponents. Accordingly, Zoeckler received interest from several college programs along with her fellow award winners, and committed to Ohio Wesleyan University during her senior year at Trinity.
However, she never made it to Columbus’ northern exurbs to become a Battling Bishop.
OWU, as a Division III school, doesn’t offer athletic scholarships. Even with other financial aid possibilities, the school’s annual cost of attendance north of $60,000 was just too much for a large family of college-bound kids.
“My mom and dad did not want me to take out student loans, and it’s really a heart-to-heart,” Zoeckler recalled. “I was devastated when I learned I couldn’t go to Ohio Wesleyan, but it was me having to be an adult and making a financial decision that, hey, I need to make a good decision for my future, instead of taking out so many years of loans and doing all that stuff.”
With that, the expensive private school became the local state university, setting in motion a chain of events that would transform both Zoeckler and Cleveland State.
As difficult as it was to stare down the early demise of her playing career, it did force Zoeckler to learn a universal truth before she otherwise would have: it ends for everyone, no matter who they are, or how capably they play Dr. Naismith’s game, and most of the time, it ends well before they turn 30.
Someday, it will end for Hillmon, just as it has already ended for Rose. Sometimes it ends with a senior day bouquet, sometimes it ends in a coach’s or a doctor’s office, sometimes it ends after a couple years of pro ball in Switzerland or Australia, sometimes it ends during a hard conversation at the kitchen table. The specifics differ, but the destination does not.
The good news was that as a college freshman in 2016, Zoeckler had the benefit of outlets for her love of basketball well beyond what’s available for most adults, and she chased down most of them at one point or another.
“I didn’t want to lose the game, I wanted to still be around it,” she said.
Early on, Zoeckler took the aggressive but fateful step of contacting Stephanie Mentz-Bruce. At the time, Mentz-Bruce was an assistant coach for the Vikings, though she was also a longtime staple of local basketball, with a couple decades of experience at the high school level and at Notre Dame College.
Her message was concise. She wanted to be involved, no matter what.
“I said I’d be a manager. I said I’d sweep the floor. I’d do whatever they had for me to do. I just wanted to be around the game because I grew up loving it,” she told Mentz-Bruce.
As it turned out, the university already had people to sweep the floor. The team’s practice squad was in dire straits though, as the generally-male group was short on players according to Kate Peterson Abiad, then CSU’s head coach.
Zoeckler’s next move was obvious. “That’s when I DMed some kids that I played against in the area that [went to Cleveland State],” she said. “We’re like, ‘We’ve got to find a way to play. We’ve got to find a way to stay in shape and do what we love.’”
With that recruiting effort – a tidy bit of foreshadowing, if there ever was one – the Vikings had a full practice squad, and Zoeckler had a way to continue playing.
That is, until she tore her ACL.
“It was the last practice, before the conference tournament, before we headed out for the tournament, she tore her ACL,” Peterson Abiad remembered. “We hated that for her.”
It’s worth pausing for a second to consider an alternate timeline where Zoeckler ended up playing at Ohio Wesleyan, and the distinct chance of her knee instead giving out during a game against Wooster or Hiram and ending her playing days. It’s possible, even likely, that Zoeckler would have charted a similar career path eventually, but either way, it’s a calculation that probably never crossed the mind of a disappointed 18-year-old. After all, people who think too carefully about negative consequences typically don’t make great athletes.
Zoeckler still didn’t have to sweep the floor after the injury, but she did end up as a casually-titled office assistant for the program. The job, she said, involved everything from “babysitting the head coach’s kids to helping with personnel on scouts and planning trips,” and was essentially an early glimpse of what it took to run a college basketball program.
“What I loved about Shelby is that she was just really selfless,” Peterson Abiad said. “It was a chance to be a part of the game she loved in whatever capacity. And she wasn’t afraid to work hard and do all the things to help us be better.”
“We always talk about servant leadership, and that’s really kind of what she was like. She wanted to do things that would help us and benefit us in the end. So really, she’s the kind of person you want to have around your program.”
There are roughly 60 coaching changes every offseason in Division I women’s basketball, each of which is chaotic in similar, yet unique ways.
When Peterson Abiad stepped down as the Vikings’ head coach following the 2017-18 season and Kielsmeier, then at Wayne State College in Nebraska, was hired as her replacement, the transaction wasn’t exceptional on its face. But where the public only saw a pair of school announcements and a press conference, Kielsmeier saw a million things that had to be addressed over the course of a few months just to get his first team on the floor.
“We’re short on the roster,” he began. “We had to go look for games. There’s such a long list of things that you’re trying to work through in a short period of time. It’s the end of April already, we’re going into May. There’s no portal [at the time], you can’t recruit that way. You need a whole bunch of games.”
Before getting to his roster and schedule though, Kielsmeier needed a staff.
Two of his assistant coaches were outside hires, including Katelyn Oney, who had been a grad assistant for Kielsmeier a few years prior at Wayne State, and Frozena Jerro, who boasted a couple decades of coaching experience, including seven years at then-Horizon League rival UIC.
There certainly weren’t any guarantees for Zoeckler at that point. She was wrapping up her sophomore year and had proven herself capable of a job that’s 95 percent about willingness and effort, but also one that could be done by an eager relative of one of the new staff members, or perhaps a well-connected booster.
It helped immensely that Mentz-Bruce stayed on for that first season and smoothed over the transition.
“Steph Bruce really highly recommended her,” Kielsmeier said. “She said some things about how she started the practice team at Cleveland State and there was enough things there that said, well, she’s got some true initiative and I think that that’s really what made me think ‘let’s do this, let’s give her a chance.’”
The only issue was that Kielsmeier didn’t have any kids to babysit, and didn’t have much of a need for an office assistant. He certainly wanted to keep Zoeckler on, but only if he could find a more structured job for her. As an undergraduate, she certainly wasn’t qualified to be an assistant coach, and an operations role would have been a lot at that point as well. Kielsmeier did need a video coordinator, but Zoeckler didn’t have any experience with video.
Her answer: “Give me a month, and I’ll learn it.”
Sure enough, she did.
“She just finds a way, and she’s done a lot of things really well that she’ll tell you after the fact she’s had no experience with,” Kielsmeier said. “Well, you faked it well, because you had me convinced that you’ve been doing it for a long time. And that’s just how she does a lot of things.”
When Cleveland State’s starting lineup is introduced before games at the Wolstein Center, the closing lines of the public address script read “The Vikings are coached by Chris Kielsmeier. His assistants are Bob Dunn, Emily Taylor, Shelby Zoeckler, Chenara Wilson, Hanna Zerr and Angie Lewis.” No mention is made of the fact that Lewis, for example, is the team’s video coordinator.
There’s at least a little bit of intentionality behind that, and even though the floor plan of those offices that Zoeckler helped redecorate nearly seven years ago dates to the arena’s construction in the early 1990s, it meshes nicely with that philosophy.
The natural center of gravity is Kielsmeier’s suite, which anchors the far end of a narrow hallway. Along that hallway are largely indistinguishable offices for everyone else, fronted by a small lobby area featuring a green-backlit CSU logo on the wall to greet anyone who enters.
Oftentimes, the place will resemble a call center, with each member of the staff talking to a lengthy list of recruits, and the cinder block walls certainly offer enough privacy for that. But mostly, it’s a collaborative space, with staff members often bouncing between offices to tag-team a task or brainstorm ways through an issue.
“We’ve just leaned on each other a lot and built a real trust with each other that we’re in this together, everything we do,” Zoeckler said. “I think we’re always like ‘alright, let’s lean on each other and get this stuff done.’”
“You know what tasks are needed each day, and if someone’s feeling a little down, you kind of help and slide over and pick them up, and just as we ask the girls to do a lot for the team, we do a lot as well,” Zerr added. “So just kind of holding each other to a high standard, and knowing what the result can be.”
Zoeckler changed offices frequently in another sense as well, as she earned two promotions within five years from her position as video coordinator. The first arrived in 2021, when she became Cleveland State’s director of basketball operations.
Directors of basketball operations – DOBOs, to most in the sport – are ostensibly responsible for the team’s travel, food, and various other logistical concerns, but in reality, it’s an all-encompassing job that can include anything from managing social media accounts to managing the emotions of the roster.
“You’re everybody’s older sister,” said Zerr, the team’s current DOBO. “So you’re looking for who needs a snack, who needs something, who lost something, how can we help?”
“I actually joke that I’m a fire juggler, or whatever those people would be called, because you think you’re doing great over here, and then a fire erupts over here.”
It’s a brutal role typically filled by freshly-graduated twenty-somethings with the energy to meet the challenge, generally with the hope of eventually advancing deeper into the sport after a couple years of navigating through the flames.
Zoeckler accomplished that, becoming an assistant coach during the summer of 2023 after a pair of departures forced Kielsmeier to reshuffle his staff.
Her promotions coincided with plenty of life evolution as well. When Zoeckler became involved with CSU basketball, she quickly abandoned plans to become an orthopedic surgeon and switched her major from pre-med to health science, with a physical therapy specialization (“my mom wasn’t thrilled,” she admitted).
Those parental concerns eventually subsided as Zoeckler earned her bachelor’s degree in 2020, followed closely by a Master of Education in Kinesiology and Exercise Science in 2022. She even bought her own house at a relatively young age, and began an adult life in earnest with a boyfriend and a dog, thanks partly to that once-catastrophic decision to avoid Ohio Wesleyan’s tuition.
Zoeckler likes to say that she’s learned about all aspects of a program from her unique journey, and appropriately, her current role feels as much like a culmination as it does a progression.
Her learned-in-a-month video skills have made her adept at developing scouts, the breakdowns of upcoming opponents that CSU’s assistant coaches take turns handling.
“The film side of it, being involved with scouts and being able to try to pick apart another team and figure out what we need to do to be successful, and what adjustments we need to make, [is] something that I really enjoy,” she said.
Zoeckler taps into her DOBO-style “do whatever it takes” mentality frequently, whether that involves trying to haggle Kielsmeier into letting her buy Nike Dunks for the staff to wear on gameday (eventually, a successful mission), or helping another staff member work through a technology issue.
She even reaches all the way back to find that All-Ohio Trinity Trojans guard when working with the Vikings’ backcourt, whether that involves extra hours putting up shots, or coaching life skills, as she has with several players, including current star Mickayla Perdue.
“We have a pretty close relationship,” Perdue said. “She knows how to laugh, but she also knows how to be serious when it’s time to be serious. It’s good being around coaches like that, who put a lot of time and effort into the players.”
“She’s always there to help you rebound, to shoot, she’s always texting you after every game. She’s just cool to be around.”
That holistic approach has helped Cleveland State build an unprecedented run of success on the court, as the Vikings quickly became an annual fixture in Indianapolis at the end of each season for the Horizon League’s semifinals after Kielsmeier’s arrival. CSU then collected HL championships during both the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons (a tournament and a regular season title, respectively), victories that followed a trophy from the 2021 Women’s Basketball Invitational, the first postseason tournament crown in program history.
For her part, Zoeckler received significant individual recognition when she was selected as one of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association’s Thirty Under 30 in 2024, an honor that afforded rising coaching stars networking and educational opportunities at last year’s Final Four in Cleveland.
From a first-year college student contemplating med school to a fixture with one of mid-major basketball’s best teams at her hometown school and alma mater, Zoeckler has, quite literally, grown up with Cleveland State’s program.
However, there may come a time when further growth requires heading elsewhere. As unlikely as it is for someone to become a Division I assistant coach without making at least a stop or two away from the ideal destination, eventually building a diverse resume and grabbing one of the precious few head coaching jobs in college basketball lengthens those odds by several orders of magnitude.
Even Kielsmeier reluctantly acknowledged as much, because his prevailing thought concerning Zoeckler’s career is the same as it was for countless carpet samples back in 2018: “It’s good, but how do we make it better?”
“She’s only known my way,” he said. “And there’s a million other ways that can be successful that aren’t my way.”
“But,” he continued, “it’s a whole lot more important to learn how to do things right than it is to chase money or a title or any of those things. They’re chasing something now, instant results, instant money, whatever it may be. And Shelby has stayed true to the process of trying to incrementally build her career, which very few do.”
For Zoeckler though, that process is simply an extension of what’s always come naturally, a full-scale commitment to whatever the moment places in front of her.
“I’m really just focusing on being where my feet are, not really ever planning a next move or what’s happening next, just really want to put all of my energy and effort into what I’m presently doing,” she said. “When you work really, really hard, then eventually one day opportunities will come, but I don’t really plan out my future.”
“Where I am now is where I want to be.”
