I could have easily written three features with the information that Cal women’s field hockey coach Shellie Onstead gave me.

I wanted to keep a pretty tight focus on her Olympic quest, which unfortunately came at the expense of leaving out a truly fantastic story about her family’s Berkeley legacy. Thanks to this blog, however, I get the opportunity to share it with you. Ah, the miracle of the internet!

Onstead’s fascinating story begins with a rather … interesting family dynamic. To put it bluntly, her mother went to Stanford and her father went to Cal. Yeah. In Onstead’s words: “I grew up in this really crazy household.”

In spite of some severely different rooting interests, Onstead’s parents were always supportive of her Olympic aspirations.

“Wow, to be going…to the Olympics?” says Onstead. “It’s the kind of thing I literally dreamed about watching TV where you think, ‘Oh I want to do that.’ My parents were the kind of parents that said, ‘You can if you want.’ They weren’t the kind who went, ‘Psh come on!’”

As a child, Onstead wanted to wear cardinal red but fate intervened.

“Didn’t get in (to Stanford), thank God,” says Onstead. “Made my father awfully proud by coming (to Cal).”

No kidding. Her dad ranks up there with some of the best alumni I’ve ever heard of.

“He’s one of those guys that still cries when they play the Alma Mater at the end of football and basketball games,” says Onstead with a knowing nod. “Oh yeah.”

Luckily for the Bears, Onstead spent her college years making her father’s, not her mother’s, alma mater proud. By the time she graduated in 1983, Onstead had accumulated quite a list of accolades. She was the first Bear to be honored as an All-American in women’s field hockey and currently ranks in seventh place in goals scored, assists, and total points in the program record books.

This year, Onstead will be inducted in the Cal Hall of Fame as a player for her contributions to the program.

“I was very happy to get the call, but I didn’t think much of it,” Onstead says. “But I’ll tell you, when I told my father and he burst into tears, I was like, ‘Well I’m glad this happened while he’s around so he can see it.’”

On the day that I interviewed Coach Onstead, she was helping media relations put together the 2008 media guide, catching up on all the goings-on at Cal she had missed while travelling with the U.S. national team, and was recovering from her flight in from Amsterdam the night before. While I was waiting, I noticed a steady stream of players coming in to say hello. In spite of the hustle and bustle of the day, Onstead took the time to return their greetings and discuss their summers. She stresses the importance of connecting with the “kids,” and it really shows.

“This job at Cal is my passion and my life,” Onstead says. “I plan to grow old here, as long as they’ll have me.”

All from a woman who wanted to go to Stanford.