QUEEN OF COURT: Kelli Hoffer Reflects on Volleyball Career and Challenging Road to Honda

COLUMBUS, Ohio (EYT/D9) – DuBois native Kelli Hoffer has been a worker from an early age.

A three-sport athlete growing up, she learned the life lessons that mattered from sports and it’s translating in her newest chapter of life as a development engineer at American Honda Motor Company Inc. as a part of their year-long Engineering Development program.

A 2019 graduate of DuBois Area High School, Hoffer grew up as the youngest of three and regularly attended her older siblings’ Kyle and Kristie’s sporting events. She took a particular interest in volleyball, going to Kyle’s high school games and looked forward to when she could begin playing herself.

It started in middle school and quickly became her favorite sport.

Hoffer would prioritize volleyball and became a four-year letter winner for the Beavers. She also added three letters in track and field and two in swimming while at DuBois.

It was in volleyball, though, that she excelled most.

She became a two-time District 9 all-star, the District 9 MVP as a senior, a two-time District 9 champion, and an all-state selection in Class AAA.

“I had such a great time playing high school volleyball and am thankful for all I could experience,” said Hoffer. “Jason Gustafson is a great coach and has had a lot of success leading the program. I’ll never forget winning those D9 titles after coming up short the previous two years.”

Hoffer’s career in volleyball took a leap when she began playing club with Club 1890 out of Elk County and Colt Club out of Cambria County. These organizations traveled around Ohio and Pennsylvania seeking the best competition they could find. This exposure to the talent that was beyond her home area was eye-opening and reaffirmed she hoped to play in college.

The only problem was there were few options to both play volleyball and study engineering.

She was particularly interested in architectural or civil engineering to start, but there were few schools nearby that featured these majors and college volleyball. One of the few opportunities that featured this combination of engineering, volleyball, and an offer to play on the team was Penn State Behrend.

After her recruiting visit, she quickly fell in love with the plastics engineering technology lab and heard that the program had a 100 percent job placement rate.

“I knew I wanted to be an engineer for a long time,” she said. “Math and science always made sense for me, and my grandpa was also an engineer. The tour and meeting my head coach (Phil Pisano) sold me on the opportunity. I was also already a Penn State fan and grew up going to games at University Park during the era where they were regularly winning national championships. It all just made sense to go to Penn State for me.”

Hoffer made the most of her opportunities, both on the court and in the classroom.

She became a four-time Academic All-Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference (AMCC), a two-time AMCC Champion with the Lions, and also got to experience two NCAA Division III Volleyball Championships in her career.

Individually, she played in 56 matches and recorded 316 digs and 101 kills in three seasons. Unfortunately, she missed her sophomore season because of the COVID-19 pandemic that canceled the 2020 season. Through a canceled season, completing one of the most difficult degrees on campus, changing to online and later hybrid learning, dealing with a nagging knee injury for three seasons, which turned out to be a torn meniscus, and balancing a college sport, it made for a difficult four years.

“It was incredibly challenging,” ‌said Hoffer. “I feel fortunate that Coach Phil (Pisano) was so accommodating to all of us in making sure school was a priority. Sometimes I could hardly fit everything into my schedule. I was thankful for my friends, teammates, coaches, and professors, who all understood I had a lot going on and all of them made sure to be as helpful as they could to me.”

Off the court at Behrend, she joined the Plastics Engineering Technology (PLET) Club and took advantage of a very connected plastics engineering alumni network. This network and opportunities at the career fair opened her to her first plastics engineering internship with Newell Brands in Charlotte, North Carolina. She was a design engineer intern who worked to stop the warp of plastic trash cans to reduce waste and deliver a more reliable product consistently.

After graduation from Penn State Behrend this past May, she headed to Columbus to begin her one-year rotational program. The program has ‌four rotations that allows new hires to explore areas of the company they are ‌interested in. The first one is an introductory rotation in the Auto Development Center in Raymond, Ohio, which helps employees get a solid foundation of knowledge about the company. Rotation two is tool and die related as it relates to her specific project. Her current rotation is manufacturing molding. The final one will entail product design, which she will begin in 2024.

Honda features various manufacturing facilities in the Greater Columbus area and Hoffer will spend time at two of the largest ones.

As she continues to get used to life in this new city, she will always look back on her times in DuBois and Erie with fond memories.

Her upbringing in DuBois laid a firm foundation of support from her community and her family members. Her parents, Cindy and Michael and siblings Kyle and Kristie, always were there in person or in spirit for all of their games and biggest moments in recent years.

She said she also met some great figures in sports in her high school head coach Jason Gustafson, her Club 1890 coach Jeff Kuleck, her Colt Club coach Mike Hogan, her college head coach Phil Pisano, and her athletic trainer Keith Webber, who all helped her tremendously improve in volleyball over many years of playing.