Chicago State volleyball turns to Eskew

Updated: March 22, 2011 4:30PM

Bob Eskew had a lot of plans when he retired from teaching at Bloom in May. One of them was to continue coaching one of the most successful girls volleyball programs in the southeast suburbs.

Everybody at Bloom was ready to let him stay. Athletic director Joe Reda thinks the world of him, and none of the teachers was going to use his or her union status to knock him out of the position.

So does this story have a happy ending? Well, yeah. But not the one we were all expecting.

Eskew, 61, who led Bloom to a 29-3 record last season, is starting a new career as a Division I college women's volleyball coach at Chicago State University.

"This opportunity came along, and I've always been one to want a challenge," Eskew said. "This is a real, real challenge."

How real, real a challenge is it? You know those 29 wins at Bloom last season? Chicago State had, um, 29 fewer.

The Cougars were 0-9 at home, 0-11 away, 0-6 on neutral courts. The year before, they were 0-29. Counting two more setbacks to end a 6-25 season in 2007, CSU will enter 2010 with a 57-match losing streak.

Yep, this is a real, real challenge.

"I'm going to turn this thing around," Eskew vowed. "I've already got some good people coming in."

Bloom graduate and 2009 SouthtownStar All-Area player Valeria Desiderio will be joining Eskew at CSU. Brittany Hale, a Thornwood graduate, is entering her senior season with the Cougars.

During a 25-year career at Bloom, Eskew has served as a girls volleyball coach, a head baseball coach and an assistant boys basketball coach. For one six-year stretch he did all three.

Along the way he developed a reputation as a coach who had the ability to find a player's best attributes and draw them out for maximum results.

"I can remember a kid we had here named Hailey Kelley," Reda said. "As a freshman (in 2004) Bob said she was going to be a Division I volleyball player. I was like, ‘Bob, I don't see it.' And he turned a 6-2, long-armed freshman into a starter at Illinois State University.

"I've always had the utmost admiration for Bob. You've seen our program over the last couple of years and know what he's done with our student-athletes."

It really showed in his work with a girls volleyball program that has, especially in the past four or five seasons, proved it can compete with club player-rich schools from the south and southwest suburbs. One of the best state playoff games in 2009 was a pulse-pounding Class 4A regional title match in which Andrew outlasted the Blazing Trojans 25-23, 13-25, 25-22.

A couple of weeks later Eskew, a graduate of Chicago State, took a few of his players to see a Cougars match. Little did he know that he'd be on their bench for the next one.

The Cougars were coached by 2007 CSU graduate Shakeila Castile-Jones, who was the best blocker in the program's history. Overwhelmed by not having an assistant, she asked AD Sudie Davis to bring in some help. He suggested Eskew.

"I said, ‘OK, cool.' I knew coach from when I played at Rich South," Castile-Jones said. "When they said they wanted to make him the head coach and me the associate head coach, I went with the flow."

The agreement was reached earlier in the summer.

"She didn't do anything to get kicked down or anything," Davis said of Castile-Jones. "She is really an excellent coach. She's learning, but she needs some good support. So we reached out and found Mr. Eskew."

Eskew said he didn't exactly jump at the opportunity.

"Oh, I had all kinds of problems with it," he said. "I love Bloom, I love the people who work at Bloom and I love the kids. It was a real hard decision, but the longer I thought about it the more fascinated I became with the opportunity."

Fascinated? Most coaches would run from a 57-match losing streak.

"Well, let's see if I can change that," Eskew said. "I'm planning on it."

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