Each year the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) selects one scholar athlete from each member school who exemplifies excellence in the classroom as well as on the athletic field.##M:[more]## This year’s honorees are Jaclyn Orloff, a soccer and lacrosse captain at High School North, and Everett Schlawin, a runner on High School South’s cross country team and winter and spring track teams.
Jaclyn Orloff:
Busy Doctor-to-Be?
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it,” wrote Henry David Thoreau. This bit of 19th century wisdom describes High School North’s Jaclyn Orloff, who, above almost everything else, likes to be busy. In the process she meets with more than her share of success.
An outstanding scholar, Jaclyn is also a four year varsity soccer player and four year lacrosse player (three years on the varsity) and served as senior captain for both teams. She plays soccer all year long on her travel team. She also has worked on the spring musical as a stage designer and stage crew member throughout her high school career. She is the secretary of school’s Interact Club, a National Honor Society member, teaches CCD classes to seventh graders at her church, Saint David the King, and has worked on several “Habitat for Humanity” projects.
She also characterizes herself as extremely independent and self-disciplined. “I love being really busy and always having things to occupy my time,” she says. “I think it keeps me focused. That’s why I am involved in so many things. A lot of people say, don’t you just want to relax and take it easy for awhile? I’m not the type that needs that.”
While some student athletes have a tough time balancing the demands of academics and sports, Jaclyn says she thrives under such pressure. “I play year-round for a travel soccer team and soccer and lacrosse in school,” she says. “I find that my grades are better during the seasons that I am playing sports. I think that’s because I have a stricter schedule and have to get things done. When you are lazy and have time off, it is easy to procrastinate. The discipline of the season helps a lot.
She has also enjoyed her role as a member of stage crew for the school play each winter. “I paint the scenery,” she says. “My freshman year, my biology teacher, Mr. Corriveau, who directs the play each year, kind of got me hooked on it. I tried it out, loved it, and have stuck with it ever since.”
Despite her ability to perform on the athletic field and in the classroom, performing on stage is something that Jaclyn has never been drawn toward. “I’m the type of person who likes to be behind the scenes,” she says. “I don’t to talk in front of a large group of people.”
But being versatile enough to take part in both theater and athletics has provided Jaclyn with some unique rewards. “You meet so many different people and you make so many friends if you do everything,” she says. “The athlete crowd is so different from the people who do stage crew. There are not too many people who cross over like that. I have friends in both groups. I love that.”
It is on the soccer field that Jaclyn says feels most comfortable. “My passion is soccer,” she says, “I always have the most fun during the soccer season. I love being with the team and close to all the girls. I love the team atmosphere, having so many friends, working hard together, and this past season was so exciting.”
Every player wants to end her high school career on top and Jaclyn’s senior soccer season last fall proved to be one for the memory books. The Knights won the Central Jersey Group III championship and put together a 14-3-1 record.
“We came into the season knowing that we were going to have a strong team,” explains Jaclyn. “We had nine returning starters and only one or two positions where there was even the potential for new blood. We came into the season with the feeling that we were going to work as hard as we could and get as far as we could. We went further than we had ever been, our team was very close, and we had so much fun doing it.”
In her duties as co-captain (with fellow senior Lauren Eccleston), Jaclyn said that she was forced to express a part of her personality that often remains hidden. “I’m not the type to get all super pepped-up although I’m pretty serious and intense before a game,” says Jaclyn. “But during the game, if we are not playing well and things aren’t going our way, I always talk to the girls and tell them it’s time to get things together. I try to calm everyone down.”
While many soccer players favor the pure exhilaration of scoring goals or setting up another player with a nifty pass, Jaclyn prefers the defensive — and often pressure packed — position of sweeper. “It can be an intimidating to a lot of people because if you mess up, there’s no one back there but the goalie,” says Jaclyn. “No one can clean up your mistakes.”
She also says that a sweeper needs a different mind set from some other positions. “It requires a lot of patience to be a good sweeper,” says Jaclyn. “You’ve got to be see the whole field and view the flow of the game. I love it. I’m pretty observant, I like to be back there telling everyone what is happening. A lot of people hate the position, but I love it.” While it helps to be a fast runner, she says speed is not essential. “I’m not particularly fast,” says Jaclyn. “If you don’t have the speed, you can make up for it with your brain.”
A resident of West Windsor since she was 10 years old, Jaclyn was born in Pittsburgh. Her mother is a pediatrician while her father, a physician, works for Novartis Pharmaceuticals. She has a sister who is a junior at North, and a younger brother who is in the fifth grade at Village Elementary School. She has played recreation league soccer since before she can remember and has been on a travel soccer team since she was in the fourth grade.
She will be attending Bates College in Maine, in the southern part of the state. Not yet certain exactly what her major will be, Jaclyn says it is likely to be one of the sciences. Two of her favorite classes at North include biology and chemistry. Becoming a doctor — like her parents — is definitely a possibility. “I want to stay involved in sports in some way,” she says “If I went down that path I would definitely look into orthopedics, sports medicine, physical therapy, or something like that. I want to stay close to athletics.”
But she also hopes to play soccer at the college level. “My coach, Kevin MacKenzie, spoke with the coach up there and they had a great conversation,” says Jaclyn. “He liked the Bates coaching philosophy. They are going to work me hard at practice so that games are easy. If I make the team it will be a great opportunity for me.”
She has mixed feelings about the end of her high school days, “I am definitely going to miss all my friends and there certainly will be people who I won’t see again,” she says. “But I am going to be starting a whole new chapter of my life, both academically and athletically. I can’t wait to move on.”
Jaclyn expects that her high octane personality that keeps busy will serve her well throughout her college years. “After our last lacrosse game my mom said to me, ‘I’m sad that this is your last high school sporting event that I am going to see, but I’m not going to say that it is your last lacrosse game. I bet you that sometime over your four years you are going to end up playing lacrosse also. Hopefully I will get to see you play again.’ That’s just how I am, because when I get bored I always say, OK, what sport can I play now?”
Everett Schlawin
Everett Schlawin is not your typical high school athlete. Captain of the cross country and track teams, Schlawin is an outstanding scholar as well as an astronomy and chess buff. “I’m not really a great player and I just know the basic skills,” he says. “I’ve played for 13 years.” Schlawin also plays violin and piano in the school orchestra and continues to take private music lessons.
He has also had a consecutive day running streak of more than 500 days in a row, starting on New Year’s Day, 2004. “Some days I just did two miles real slow, but I just keep the pattern,” he says. “There hasn’t been any weather that made it too dangerous.” His streak will come to an end later this spring. “I’ll have to stop when I get my wisdom teeth taken out.”
Chris Bond, his cross country coach, calls him “the most important aspect of the team. He is the leader. He is the guy who shows up every day. He is the guy who works hardest in the workouts. He kept the guys together, motivated and inspired them. He does things like organize going to the movies after we get done with a race. We got done with our Briarwood Invitationals, all in the rain, people wanted to get home and forget about it all. But after the meet he was setting up taking the guys over to the Princeton football game. From a coach’s perspective he is priceless.” But for Schlawin, being a leader is all in a day’s work. “I just try to be responsible and to organize everyone,” he says
A resident of West Windsor, Schlawin lives in the shadow of High School South. “It’s great because I can bike to school every day,” he says. “Even if I have a car, it is still really nice to bicycle in.” His mother works for the Princeton Packet and his father teaches math and science at the Princeton Charter School. He has an older brother who graduated from Bates.
He will attend Oberlin College in Ohio, with a likely major in physics or astronomy and will run track and cross country. This summer he will work at PPPL in Plainsboro on what he calls a “dusty plasma experiment. “It’s a small project that mostly has high school students working on it,” he says.
Although he ran a bit in middle school, Schlawin really marks his freshman year as the beginning of his running career. “Racing is very much a mental thing,” says Schlawin. “Maybe it is something that I don’t have the natural ability at. But you can work on it and you can get better.”
Schlawin says that his peak athletic experience in high school was the cross country season last fall that lost out on the county championship by a single point. “We were so close,” he says. “The team made a lot of progress in four years. But next year we will be stronger.”
Tennis Letdown
Pirate’s head tennis coach Jim Giovacchini’s bid for an undefeated season came crashing to a halt on June 1 in the semifinal round of the NJSIAA Tournament of Champions. Entering the match with a record of 25-0, High School South saw the luster of its season dim just a bit in a 4-1 loss to Delbarton at Mercer County Park.
Third singles player Russell Nitzberg, a senior, registered the Pirates’ only point by defeating Conor Pigott, 6-3, 6-7, (3-7), 7-5, and finished the season with a personal record of 25-0. First singles Shintaro Mori lost his third match in a row, losing in straight sets, 6-3, 6-1. Second singles Leland Richardson ultimately lost in three sets, 6-7 (4-7), 6-4, 6-1.
Doubles pairings Greg Kelley, also a senior, and Dennis Tuan lost 6-3, 6-2, while the second doubles duo of Ben Cornfeld and Steven Fernandez lost 6-2, 3-6, 6-4.
Despite the loss the Pirates had an outstanding season, winning their first NJSIAA Group IV State and Central championships in five years. Losing only Nitzberg and Kelley to graduation among its top lineup, Giovacchini’s team expects to be nearly as strong in 2006 as it was this year.
Ennis Plans a Rest
Even runners get that exhausted run down feeling. After starting the year off last fall as one of the top cross country runners in the state, South junior distance runner Joe Ennis finished the spring track season as an also ran, finishing a distant fourth in the states. “I haven’t been injured,” says Ennis. “I’m just exhausted.”
After running steadily through the fall, winter track, and spring track seasons, Ennis says that it is time for a rest, albeit a brief one. He will be curtailing his running schedule until mid-July when training for the fall cross country season begins. Nearly two years ago, Ennis suddenly quit the cross country team at High School South shortly after being named co-captain: a rare honor for a then-sophomore.
Ennis says that he will run all three track sports next year — his senior season — as well. “I think that I’m going to be not quite so intense during the winter track season,” he says.
