By: Alec Johnson, Athletic Communications Intern
Jessica (Nadolny) Waldorf did what many student-athletes couldn’t fathom; she played two collegiate sports.
Waldorf, née Nadolny, graduated from the State University of New York at New Paltz in May of 2000. She attended Ithaca College right out of Washingtonville High School and transferred into New Paltz after her freshman year. Waldorf attended Ithaca with a dream to become an occupational therapist. Soon after starting at Ithaca, she realized her talents were more suited for an education degree. While she came to New Paltz because the women’s soccer head coach at the time was a childhood coach of hers, she ultimately ended up playing for a young up-and-coming coach, Colleen Bruley.
Bruley started her tenure at New Paltz that year, and Waldorf believes “all things happen for a reason; I ended up building a really tremendous relationship with Colleen.”
“As much as I had loved my old coach that had been there and had some great experiences with him growing up, it just worked out to be a blessing in disguise,” Waldorf continues.
Like many students, Waldorf came to college “just trying to figure a lot of things out.” She explains that college is immensely beneficial because it is the first time that you are really on your own. She describes how she “was just trying to make the best of it” by engaging herself in all the opportunities that New Paltz offered her, even outside of athletics.
Waldorf was a three-year starter in collegiate soccer and also played two years of collegiate lacrosse. She grew up playing soccer and always considered soccer her No. 1 sport.
Coming from a high school where women’s lacrosse wasn’t offered, she never found an opportunity to play until coming to New Paltz. Waldorf recalls her roommate being very involved in lacrosse.
“She would make me go out and practice with her, and huck balls at me and make me catch them,” Waldorf says. “But it was one of those things I had to pick up on the way, so it was neat.”
Waldorf helped get the New Paltz women's lacrosse team off the ground, competing during the program's first two seasons in 1998 and 1999. She completed her lacrosse career with 19 goals and six assists.
While Waldorf was new to the game of lacrosse, she was no rookie in soccer. Waldorf finished her career as one of the most decorated student-athletes in New Paltz women's soccer's history. To this day, Waldorf remains the only Hawk women's soccer student-athlete to earn three All-SUNYAC awards, as she was an Honorable Mention choice in 1997 before earning First-Team honors in 1998 and 1999. She finished her career with 17 goals and seven assists. During her senior season, she became the first New Paltz women's soccer student-athlete to earn a spot on the National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) All-Region Team.
With everything that Waldorf was involved in, she needed to preform the ultimate balancing act, and she did. She illustrates the difficulty of her situation as coming “in waves” as she felt all of her “tests, projects, and assignments were due at the same time.” However, she describes herself as “a person that does better with a lot going on. If left on my own devices, I’m the queen of procrastination, so having to make time to get everything done and fit everything in it kept me more focused.”
Two sports, a rigorous class schedule and a job in the athletic department weren’t enough to stop Waldorf from having a social life. She describes some of her favorite moments as “moments where we would just hang out in the apartment and have people come by, and we would just goof around.” She has fond memories of going up to the mountains with her friends and volunteering for the Special Olympics. Also, she mentions, “I always liked New Paltz in the fact that even when our team wasn’t in session and playing, you just kind of knew everyone else on the other teams so you just made an effort to go and be a part of that.”
Waldorf’s fondest memory of her New Paltz experience was one of great importance to the women’s soccer program.
“My senior year, we made it to SUNYACs, and it was the first time in years,” Waldorf says. “The fact that the soccer team had made it to that point, we were literally jumping and screaming and cheering we were so excited. We all worked for it, and to have that moment and to celebrate it that way, I just never had that prior to that.”
Her finest memory in lacrosse happened every time she stepped on the field. She explains how she “was there with some of the first teams that the school has ever had” and “to be a part of something that was new; that was kind of neat.”
Waldorf stresses the most important thing she took away from being a college athlete was “teamwork.” Currently she serves as a seventh-grade science teacher, and she loves her job. However, that doesn’t mean everything comes easy.
She explains: “Throughout life, no matter what, you’re going to be put around a group of people that sometimes you agree with, sometimes you don’t agree with. You just have to find a way to persevere together through good times and bad stuff, and you got to have a common goal in mind and somehow, some way, find a way to reach it.”
Waldorf immersed herself in the New Paltz family and never looked back. If she gave advice to current student she would tell them to “enjoy every moment because it really does fly by so tremendously fast.”
“Even now going into year 15 as being a teacher,” Waldorf says, “I‘ve been with a group of ladies that are considered a team of teachers, and the four of us are very different. But over the years we have just really found a way to work together and bring out each other’s strengths and support each other. We’ve been through a lot, and I think it really just stems back to being part of a sports team. You’re always going to be part of a team, somehow, someway.”
Waldorf will be inducted into the New Paltz Athletics Hall of Fame in the fall of 2014. The New Paltz Athletics Hall of Fame was established in October 1982 as a means of recognizing alumni who competed as athletes at New Paltz or those who made a significant contribution to the athletic program at the College and who have distinguished themselves in their professions and their communities. New members have been inducted every few years, with the present number totaling 70 individuals and six teams.
