The fourth in a series on Penn State Women’s Volleyball players who moved into coaching after their playing careers were over.
Leanne (Kling) Piscotty
Leanne Kling Piscotty’s playing career was filled with firsts:
Penn State’s first Big Ten Player of the Week;
First Team All Big Ten (1991 and 1992);
Penn State’s first Big Ten Women’s Volleyball Player of the Year;
Starter on Penn State’s first Big Ten championship team;
AVCA First Team All American
She may even have been Penn State’s first Women’s Volleyball player to ride a yellow Pinto moped to and from class and practice. “I love my little moped,” Kling told The Daily Collegian at the time. Coach Russ Rose’s advice? “I wish she’d wear a helmet.”
As head coach of Shippensburg University’s Women’s Volleyball team, Leanne hasn’t let up.
In 2004, Piscotty’s first season at Shippensburg, she led the Lady Raiders to a 21-15 record, first-place in the PSAC Eastern Division, and was named PSAC Eastern Division Coach of the Year.
In 2007, Piscotty’s fourth year as head coach, the Shippensburg Women’s Volleyball team won its second PSAC Eastern Division championship, became the first team in program history to win 30 matches in a season, and the second to go undefeated in the PSAC Eastern Division.
In 2008, Leanne Piscotty became the winningest Women’s Volleyball coach in Shippensburg University history.
During Leanne’s junior year, Russ Rose praised Leanne in an interview with The Daily Collegian, as a person who didn’t “get caught up in small stuff like some other people do” — a person with “all the intangibles that separate average performers from exceptional performers . . . unbelievably competitive.” Equally important, Leanne was “legitimate — she’s always smiling. . . . She smiles for everyone. . . . That’s what I like about her” said Rose.
The two have remained good friends. In 1999, while an assistant coach at Bradley University, Leanne told The Daily Collegian, “I admire and respect [Russ Rose] as a coach and I admire and respect him as a friend. He’s knowledgeable and worldly and gives good advice.”
There may yet be hope for that moped helmet!