Katie Stengel

Classroom

Stengel has a 3.41 GPA while majoring in health and exercise science, one of Wake Forest’s more difficult majors that often attracts pre-med students. She has successfully managed national team commitments that have kept her away from campus for weeks at a time, earning All-ACC Academic Team honors in her first three seasons and making the Dean’s List three times. Stengel is also a two-time Capital One Academic All-District First Team selection.
Stengel is well known for helping her teammates with their studying and has even tutored head coach Tony da Luz’s son in math. The valedictorian of her high school, she has continued her academic accomplishments while also establishing herself as one of the best soccer players in the country.

Character

Stengel owes her success to an incredible devotion to practice and commitment to self-improvement. She has earned virtually every accolade that a Division I athlete can earn at Wake Forest but still spends countless hours on the practice field in pursuit of perfection. No player works harder to improve than Katie Stengel. This commitment is contagious and has spread through our team, bringing the Wake Forest program more success than at any other period in history. Katie has also matured into a team captain and leads by example on and off the field.

Community

Stengel is a very visible student-athlete in the Wake Forest community. In 2012-13, Katie completed 21 hours of CHAMPS Cup Hours which are given for community involvement.She mentored young girls from the Carson, Calif. community while attending U.S. Youth National Team training camp there. teaching them how to be successful in life as well as at soccer. In Winston-Salem, she participated Project Pumpkin - a Halloween event for underprivilaged children and the field hockey team’s Melanoma Awarness Dodgeball Tournament, in addition to coaching kids at the El Nido Soccer Camp. She often attends Wake Forest games in other sports, supporting her fellow student-athletes.

Competition

Stengel enters the 2013 season as the most accomplished player in Wake Forest women’s soccer history. She is already the program’s all-time leading scorer, totaling 44 goals and 105 points in 63 games in a Wake Forest uniform. She is a three-time All-American, including a selection to the NSCAA All-America First Team in 2011. She was named the ACC’s Offensive Player of the Year in 2011 en route to leading the Demon Deacons to the NCAA College Cup, and still earned First Team All-ACC honors in 2012 despite missing half of the season while winning the FIFA Under-20 World Cup as a member of the Team USA.

But while others have accomplished those feats, some of Stengel’s achievements put her in rare company. She is the only player in ACC history to lead the league in goal-scoring as both a freshman and a sophomore, and the first player to be the league’s leading scorer in back-to-back seasons since Mia Hamm did so for North Carolina in the 1992 & 1993 She has a legitimate chance to become the first ACC player in 15 years to score 60 goals in her career.