Natalie was named the Big Ten Field Hockey Offensive Player of the Year for captaining the Nittany Lions to an undefeated Big Ten Championship. Penn State Coach Char Morett claimed Big Ten Coach of the Year honors also.
I’ve known Natalie for about six years. While she was in high school, she worked at the Tavern where her paternal grandfather was a bar part time bartender (as I’ve mentioned before, her maternal grandfather was John Bach a former Penn State basketball coach and current assistant coach with the Chicago Bulls). I also dated her mother for a while after I moved back to State College.
It’s been interesting watch Natalie develop from an overwhelmed walk-on freshman to the All Big Ten (and probable All-American) player that she is today. I can remember during her freshman year, Natalie coming to me frustrated saying that the only reason that she was on the team was that her coach Char was good friends with Tavern owner (and my former roommate) Pat Daugherty and was just doing Pat a favor by letting her walk on. While that wasn’t true (Char is a good friend of mine and when I specifically asked her she said “absolutely not – Natalie just doesn’t realize how good she is”), it was an indicator of how insecure Natalie was at the time.
Since then her self confidence has grown considerably but she still remains quite unassuming. She was genuinely surprised when she was named one of the team’s tri-captains at the beginning of the season – and she was really overwhelmed when I told her that Char had leaked it to me that she was actually the leading vote-getter for captain. Typical of Natalie, she underestimated how popular she was with her teammates.
Now she’s adding “rock star” (the nickname given to her by her field hockey teammates) to her personal portfolio. Her musical career seems to be following the same path as her athletic career. Two years ago, with a ton of coaxing, you might get her to tackle a tune at a karaoke night or, if you were really lucky, she would belt out one of her personal compositions on her keyboard at home. Nowadays, she’s front and center as the lead singer for the “JR and Natalie” band. Once field hockey season is over and she has more time to practice with the band, she’ll be playing keyboard with them and they’ll be doing some of her original songs (she was positively gushing the other day when she told me how exciting it was to hear the whole band doing her music during practice sessions.
Next challenge for her? Maybe the world of fashion. “W Magazine”, a New York based monthly was on campus a couple of weeks ago interviewing Natalie for a feature on college fashion and style. They took a bunch of photographs of her and her apartment but whether the article makes it to print or not remains to be seen. Considering the roll that she is on now, I wouldn’t bet against it. One thing is for sure, if Nat makes the magazine, you’ll hear about it here first.