A career consisting of four SUNYAC Championships, two All-America selections, a SUNYAC Offensive Player of the Year nod, four All-SUNYAC team honors, along with various other impressive individual accomplishments, nearly never came to fruition for State University of New York at New Paltz alumna Dani Ackerman '16.
 
Stepping in as a freshman in August of 2012, Ackerman, who grew up with five brothers and sisters — two of which would also follow suit and leave their own mark at the College — Ackerman was the first of her family to go away for school. Although looking at what she accomplished, the hurdle of overcoming the home sicknesses she felt the early months of her first year at SUNY New Paltz helped her overcome all the obstacles she faced along the way throughout what turned into a historic four years with the Hawks. A Hall of Fame career in fact.
 
Supported by a group of talented veterans on an up-and-coming program, led by then third-year head coach in Shanna Szablinski, Ackerman fought through and broke out immediately to become one of the most decorated players in program history.
 
"I think at some point I just realized that your hustle and your mindset determine everything. If you pour every bit of hustle and positive mentality in everything that you're passionate about, you're going to accomplish it," Ackerman said. "It came from a lot of that mindfulness training that Shanna does and my mindset completely changed, because there were so many things in college that was uncomfortable to me. Even just going away, that was a huge thing for me. I cried for the first month… I think that was the first big level of uncomfortability that I needed to get passed. Once I got passed that everything seemed so small. In moments you're going to suffer and you're going to truly feel like you're not going to get through something, but I think that was the biggest thing that I needed to get passed to kind of pave the way for everything else in my life because it's helped me push through so many other things that are uncomfortable, because I know it's temporary."
 
 
Ackerman made her career on hard work and hustle. She quickly became a staple in the program, guiding SUNY New Paltz to four consecutive championship titles along with all the individual accolades that came along with the success of the team. She excelled in the classroom and was the face of the department during her four years at SUNY New Paltz, and nearly 10 years later, she received a phone call that solidified her place with the Hawks forever.
 
Ackerman, alongside fellow 2016 alums Becca Borquist (women's volleyball), Christian Smith (men's volleyball), 2001 alumni Robert Jones (men's basketball), 2008 alumna Lauren Motzkin (softball) and former Hawks administrator and coach Alan Dunefsky, will be enshrined Oct. 1 in the SUNY New Paltz Athletics Hall of Fame as the 2022 class.
 
"I wasn't expecting it. I graduated pretty recently and when you think of Hall of Fame people, you think of people that played years and years and years ago," Ackerman said. "The funny part was that the week before I was in New Paltz visiting with my boyfriend and we were looking at the Hall of Fame in the athletic center and he was like, 'are you up here?' and I was like, 'well no,' and the next day I got the call, so it was a really strange happening. 

"It's really hard to even fathom," she continued. "I can't even explain how awesome it feels and how honored I feel by it, because field hockey is and was my whole life. It's really cool to see the work I put into it get honored, even though I feel like there should be a million and 10 people that should be up there with me. It's a really cool thing. I am definitely super excited and grateful for it."
 
Ackerman, from Nesconset, NY, grew up as the second oldest of six siblings. Her childhood consisted of playing and competing with her brothers and sisters in a variety of activities, but both her parents always pushed each of them into sports. Her dad, James, especially had an influence on Ackerman and her siblings' passion for athletics, which instilled early lessons of hard-work and a no-quit mentality that carried into all aspects of Ackerman's life, including field hockey.
 
"My dad is very athletic and got us started in sports since we were young and since then, we've just been about doing things together and it just kind of cultivated a big competitive environment. On top of it, it instilled the values in us of hard work and not quitting things," Ackerman said. "We couldn't quit something until we gave it a fair shot. You had to at least complete a full season of something before you talked about quitting. Jobs too, you had to finish it out and that's been the best lesson that has come from growing up in my house because it kept us invested in everything and it's made it that much harder to quit anything in life."
 
Field hockey grew into a huge part of all of the Ackerman sisters' lives. Jamie, the oldest, was the first to play. Dragged to a tryout when she was in seventh grade, she started field hockey in middle school, which influenced Dani, who was two years younger, to be a part of the team. Too young to tryout, Dani became the manager and went to all her sister's games and slowly fell in love with the sport. The following year she began playing herself and soon forged a path for her two younger sisters, Samantha and Hannah, to play as well.
 
"I just loved to watch and support and do all of that and then the next year I got to play, and since then it took off and we all followed suit," Ackerman said. "We would play in the backyard. We gave Hannah a stick when she was probably four and made her get into too. It was something that we all loved since Jaimie kind of set that path for us."
 
Jamie went onto play four years at Smithtown East High School and decided to play collegiately at Adelphi University. Instead of following her sister to Adelphi, Dani decided to branch out and look at school's a little farther away from home. SUNY Cortland — which Ackerman and the Hawks would defeat three times en route to a four-peat SUNYAC title run — was atop the list, but after meeting with Szablinski at SUNY New Paltz, the decision to become a Hawk was simple.
 
"I was always a homebody and I wanted to try being away and challenging myself a little bit, being a little bit uncomfortable and then Shanna really soled the program to me based on the area, the competitiveness of DIII, and just her coaching mentality I could tell that was what I was going for," Ackerman said. "I really wanted that level of competition that she talked about and just being with the team I could see how close they were, and it really reminded me and reflected the same values that my high school team had that I really sought for myself. I am really happy I took the leap and decided to do my own thing a little bit."
 
Although the first few weeks were tough while away at school, as her family she was so tight with was back home two and a half hours away, Ackerman got through a difficult transition from high school to college with the support from her teammates and especially a veteran class whose focus was winning the program's first SUNYAC Championship. The leadership that was already established in the program helped Ackerman work past all the doubts she had off the field and allowed her to breakout on the field.
 
"If I really had to go back on it in high school I was more of a timid person, a timid player, and always second place, always almost there," Ackerman said. "I tried out for the Empire State Games and was an alternate. I would try out for the travel team and would be second team. I was always right there, but I knew what was always holding me back was my confidence and my mentality… I think once I came to New Paltz that whole group of older girls that I had on my team they really just supported me in everything I did."
 
Ackerman went onto start all 21 games in her first season and totaled 14 points on the year, while helping her team to the top seed in the SUNYAC Tournament. After defeating SUNY Oneonta in the semifinal round, the Hawks took on defending champions SUNY Cortland. The first ever SUNYAC Championship game to go into shootouts, SUNY New Paltz went on to win, 2-1 to also earn its first ever NCAA Tournament appearance.
   
The path paved was a four-year run that no other team in Hawks history had ever done — win four-straight SUNYAC titles. With a talented group of seniors graduated, Ackerman and her fellow sophomores quickly took on leadership roles to continue building off what many thought was a "fluke" season in 2012. SUNY New Paltz responded by going 14-9 the following year and upsetting then No. 14 nationally ranked SUNY Cortland on its home turf with a conference championship on the line. Again, the game went into a double overtime shootout with Ackerman scoring the game-winning penalty shot to clinch her team's second-straight title.
 
The Hawks went on to upset No. 9 William Smith in the first round of the NCAA Tournament before falling to No. 5 Bowdoin College in the second round in the program's first appearance in the quarterfinal round of the national tournament.
 
With SUNY New Paltz then claiming its third consecutive championship in 2013 — Ackerman was one the catalysts as she went onto be named a Longstreth/NFHCA Second-Team All-America selection, along with garnering first team All-North Atlantic Region honors — pressure felt heavier on the senior class to complete the four-peat. Obviously, a championship was the goal, but Ackerman and her fellow seniors were more concerned with not only upholding the standard set for the program, but also making sure they left the team right where the seniors before them had when they entered as freshmen— as champions.
 
"I think by my senior year everyone around us was chirping in our ears, 'this last one,'" Ackerman said. "…It also was that pressure of being a senior and wanting to win for the girls younger than us. If we win this fourth that sets the freshmen up with their first, just like how Kim [LePore], Amy [Lee] and Morgan [Lizotte] did for us. It just felt like it was something that had to be done and we were going to get it done. I was confident in my team at that point. We were playing at the best level that we had in our whole careers, so we just tried to not let those outside forces weigh on us. We knew everyone was talking about it, thinking about it, but it felt really good to do it once it was done."
  The 2015 team stood as the winningest in program history until this past season. They went 16-6 overall and 5-1 in conference play, out-shooting their opposition by nearly double and allowing just more than a goal per game. The Hawks knocked off No. 11 Montclair during the regular season before finding themselves in a re-match against SUNY Cortland for the third time in four years, but this time they comfortably defeated the hosting Red Dragons, 4-1 to officially clinch the four-peat. What made the moment even more special for Ackerman, was sharing it with her sister Sam who was a freshman on the 2015-winning team.
 
"I'm going to be honest it did," said Ackerman of the relief she felt after clinching the team's fourth title. "It felt like the weight of the world was off your shoulders and now we can just go into NCAA's, tear it up and go as far as we can. There was a little less pressure than the SUNYAC, like all right, we checked the box... and it felt incredible having my sister there with me, it just came full circle and it felt awesome."
 
Following the season, Ackerman was named to her second-straight Longstreth/NFHCA All-America selection to become the first in program history to be recognized as a two-time All-America. She was named as the program's first ever SUNYAC Offensive Player of the Year, along with being selected as the department's Carol Eckman Female Athlete of the Year recipient, a year prior of being named as the Heinz Ahlmeyer Jr. Award winner. Additionally, she ended her career as the program's all-time leader in goals (39) and points (98) and third all-time in assists (20), while never missing one start in her career, totaling 88 games played since her freshman season.
 
As much success as Ackerman had on the field, she matched the same work ethic in the classroom and all the extra curriculars she was a part of. She became president of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, helped in the curation of the Hawks Leadership Academy and earned SUNAYC All-Academic honors all four years after holding a cumulative grade point average above a 3.80 as a Communication Disorders major at SUNY New Paltz. As a senior in 2016, she was named a SUNY Chancellor's Award for Student Excellence winner by SUNY and was honored in a ceremony in Albany.
 
"I'm just someone who likes to be involved. I think it comes from the big family aspect, having a million things going on and to be selfless, sometimes having to sacrifice things from my siblings. I just love bettering myself and I think New Paltz is where I bloomed," Ackerman said. "I was pretty timid in high school, even as a player. I was definitely successful, but more of a timid player, didn't necessarily know my place and Shanna gave me this opportunity and I felt like New Paltz was where I flourished in all of my skill areas — being a better communicator and just being a better person… New Paltz was just my place.

"I just love bettering myself and I think New Paltz is where I bloomed. I was pretty timid in high school, even as a player. I was definitely successful, but more of a timid player, didn't necessarily know my place and Shanna gave me this opportunity and I felt like New Paltz was where I flourished in all my skill areas."

 
"I made a core group of friends there who supported me, a team who supported me and everyone who kind of always lifted me up and it pushed me to find my potential in all these different areas," she said. "I've always been a quiet leader, leader by example, but once I was given that platform this is what I can do, I just kind of went with it and tried to get involved in everything at SUNY New Paltz and found the areas that I really loved and that was everything surrounding field hockey and being an athlete, which kind of just gave me everything that allowed me to be successful in my career at this point. And now, I find myself getting super involved in everything in the school I work in, similarly to the way I was at New Paltz. Networking in different areas and pushing new boundaries."
 
After finishing her undergrad in 2016, Ackerman went onto pursue her master's at SUNY New Paltz, while also helping Szablinski as an assistant coach during the 2017 season. Since then, she started a position as a speech therapist in the Sachem School District, working primarily with special education students in kindergarten through second grade. Her days are spent in classrooms helping many students who are non-verbal, giving them functional communication strategies and tools to help them communicate.
   Although she had never worked with the specific technology needed for her new role, along with having minimal one-on-one experience with non-verbal students, Ackerman went back on her experience at SUNY New Paltz and continued to work through and educate herself to be the best possible professional in order to help her students.  
 
"It's a really cool program, because we're giving them functional communication skills, like asking us to go to the bathroom, telling us how they're feeling, expressing their most basic wants and needs which is something that we take for granted, so it's been a very humbling experience," Ackerman said. "This is my third year working here and this was a whole new population for me. I had never worked with kids with as many communication challenges as they do have and it really forced me out of my comfort zone for starters... my first year I really spent so much time researching and crash coursing on Youtube on how to best use these programs, and how to best implement language intervention programs for these kids because this was a population I hadn't really worked with much, especially on my own. With supervision sure, but now it was my turn to actually do this independently, so I think the work ethic that I learned at SUNY New Paltz carried over to this work environment because it pushed me to do so much on my own to help my students."
 
Despite working full time, Ackerman still manages to attend as many New Paltz field hockey games as she can, especially now that her youngest sister Hannah is on the team. This past season, Hannah helped the Hawks to the winningest season in program history — setting a new win record previously held by Ackerman's senior class — en route to becoming a First-Team All-SUNYAC and NFCA All-Region selection, while joining Dani as a fellow SUNYAC Tournament MVP.
 
"I was crying. I was going absolutely crazy, and it's the same thing, again going back to that same theme of being able to share in those successes just shows how I still feel so connected to the program," Ackerman said. "There's a bitterness in leaving things sometimes, where seeing people not wanting a program to do well after they leave, but that to me means that you weren't invested in that program enough to see the future success, but when New Paltz Field Hockey wins it's like the best day of my life. I am so excited and then seeing them win this year and then adding Hannah to the mix adds another emotional level to it for me that I am just so excited to see her keep winning… There's just something about New Paltz that makes [alumni] feel a part of it whether they are on the field or off the field."
 
Fittingly, both Hannah, Sam and most of Ackerman's old teammates and coaches were there to hear the news of her becoming the first field hockey alum to be inducted into the Hawks Hall of Fame. With nearly 60 people in attendance during the program's annual alumni game, Ackerman was reminded of the immense support she has had from her friends and family throughout her life. Sam maybe was even more excited than Dani when hearing her sister's honor. 
 
"It humbles me to see how happy she can be for another person," Ackerman said. "That's like getting an award she would strive to get. She didn't necessarily always get the accolades that I got, but to see her share in the excitement with me and not jealousy or coming to the same school as me and living in a shadow, she never acted like that. She was just super excited to see my successes and same with Hannah she is the exact same way. All my siblings are nothing but supportive and they are nothing but happy for me, which makes it that much more exciting."
 
Maybe the only two other people more elated were Ackerman's parents. James immediately looked up old statics to compare his daughter's career to some other current Hawks Hall of Famers, all while reminiscing on Dani's Hawks career.

"The first time I knew I wanted to tell my dad because he is so invested with stats and he's always on the website," Ackerman said. "He can tell me how I scored, when I scored, every last stat, so I wanted to tell him and my mom first and they were ecstatic, so pumped up about it. The next day my dad was telling me who was in the Hall of Fame already, he was stalking the website. I kept it a secret from my sisters, because I knew they were going to announce it at the alumni game. They were pumped. Sam is so expressive so when she's surprised by anything it's pretty cool. She's always been so happy for me, and a lot of siblings are not like that, sometimes I've seen other siblings get jealous of each other of their accomplishments, but since Day 1 when Sam stepped on the field with me, she has totally shared in every bit of excitement, award, accolade that has come my way."

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