Four years ago, Brendan O’Shea was working as a volunteer in Central Africa.
Fresh off a fruitful collegiate basketball career, the Vermont native was toiling away as a member of the Peace Corps, aiding a community development project in Uganda.
“I was ready to move on from athletics,” O’Shea admits. “I was looking for something very different.”
The previous year he’d helped lead Rochester University’s men’s team to an NCAA tournament berth. A three-point specialist, O’Shea’s accuracy from downtown helped the Yellowjackets advance two games deep in Division III March Madness.
Over 7,000 miles away from Rochester’s River Sports Complex, sports were the last thing on his mind as he plugged away as a Peace Corps volunteer.
“I was working as an economic development volunteer,” he explains. “Because access to banking is limited, women’s groups meet and save money so that they can give each other small loans when one of their members has an economic opportunity that needs to be financed.”
O’Shea and his colleagues assisted these groups, helping them manage their books and overall organization. Things were finally beginning to click for the group.
But the world had other plans for the former hoops star…
The COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrench into O’Shea’s volunteer service, calling him back stateside in 2020.
Shortly after his return, he began an internship with the former strength and conditioning coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, Tim DiFrancesco.
“I was considering PT school at the time,” O’Shea explains. “So it was sort of an introduction to that field.”
Unexpectedly, the gig opened a door.
Saint Anselm College of New Hampshire happened to be in the market for an interim assistant strength and conditioning coach. O’Shea was their man.
“And I’ve been coaching ever since,” he says.
As an assistant athletic performance coach at UCLA, O’Shea now works with the Bruins’ women’s soccer and tennis programs. Having earned his Master of Education through UCLA’s Transformative Coaching and Leadership (TCL) program, he says the same competitive spirit that once stimulated his work on the basketball court now energizes his efforts as a mentor.
“I think a lot of coaches say they have a philosophy, but if you actually press them to give you something written down or concise, they can’t really do it.” O’Shea says. “There’s so much to coaching that I don’t think I appreciated as an athlete — how complicated it is and how nuanced and challenging it can be.”
“It challenges you to be present and be a better version of yourself.”
O’Shea, who also spent a year working with UC San Diego’s NCAA and club sports athletes, earned his undergraduate degree in economics at Rochester. As a strength and conditioning coach, he says that education comes into play more than you might think…
“I’m always solving problems,” he adds. “You sort of have to be a jack of all trades to be a good strength coach, in that you need to know a lot of things about a lot of different areas.
“And you have to be able to piece those things together to solve the problem in front of you, whether it’s a return-to-play plan for an injured athlete or putting together a training block to address a team and individual’s weakness. It’s always moving pieces and my econ background does help because I’m always making cost-benefit-like decisions for my athletes.”
Now in his third season working with the Bruins, O’Shea says the TCL program has reshaped his coaching.
“I don’t think our modern education system, as a whole, does a good job of really developing coaches,” O’Shea says. “But as soon as I got into the TCL program, I was like, all right, this is very different.”
“It’s valuable and I’m growing because of it. My expectations were definitely exceeded.”
A certified strength and conditioning coach through the NSCA, O’Shea comes from a family of coaches; his father coached men’s basketball at St. Michael’s College (Vermont) for two decades in addition to stints at UMass Lowell and Mercyhurst University; his brother is the head basketball coach at the Kiski School (Pennsylvania) and his uncle formerly served as the head basketball coach at both Ohio and Bryant University (Rhode Island). An All-League and All-State player in high school, O’Shea was a member of the University Athletic Association All-Academic squad and was named to the National Basketball Coaches Association Honor Court in 2019.