Scots' Koechli in elite class
The awards have been coming in for College of Wooster senior soccer player Chantal Koechli.A center midfielder and four-year starter for the Scots, Koechli was a two-time North Coast Athletic Conference first-teamer the past two seasons and was named second-team all-Great Lakes Region recently. It’s no surprise, then, that she has been a cornerstone of the Scots, who were 11-4-4 this past season.
Those athletic honors pale, though, when she opens a book. ESPN Magazine named her first-team Academic All-America last year and she repeated that honor this season. That put her in some elite company, as she is only the second two-time Academic All-American at Wooster, joining 1980 grad Blake Moore, who went on to play in the NFL with Cincinnati and Green Bay.
Koechli carries a 3.97 grade-point average while majoring in molecular biology and biochemistry, and was “honored” to have received the award.
“I’ve had a wonderful experience at the college,” she said. “I have received great support from my teachers, teammates and coaches, who made it possible for me to succeed from an academic and athletic standpoint.”
Following graduation, Koechli plans to stay in school and earn her doctorate, but that doesn’t mean she is setting her sights on a white-collar career. Quite the contrary: she wants to get dirt under her nails.
“I’d like to work with agriculture on returning soil fertility,” she said. “To maintain good soil is hard; to ruin it is easy. A lot of countries don’t have good soil.”
That would allow her to travel, which would be an attractive component of her dream job. She is going to start by doing her grad work in Europe, where she has family.
“I’m looking at grad school in Europe,” Koechli said. “We have family in Switzerland, which is where my parents were born and raised. I was born there and we moved to the states when I was 1 1/2. I have a dual citizenship.”
The family eventually settled in Michigan, where she went to school and was a part of three state-bound teams in soccer. She graduated as her school’s valedictorian, “but I felt I had to work rather than have it come naturally.”
“My parents were very intelligent,” said Koechli. “They were always very encouraging in my childhood to read and explore new ideas. I can’t thank them enough for the resources provided me.
“I knew I didn’t want to stay in Michigan for college, so I looked at the East Coast and Midwest,” she added. “Wooster had what I was looking for academically and athletically, and when I visited I felt at home. I met the coaches and they were so welcoming.”
Head coach Dave Brown was certainly pleased she made her new home in Wooster.
“Chantal is very intelligent and players like that understand the nuances of the game, and helps them be more effective,” said Brown. “She’s been a leader by example: ‘This is how we do things.’”
Koechli is deserving of the award, Brown said. While her GPA is certainly impressive, “She is an all-region player on her athletic ability alone.”
“It’s not just that she is bright, but she has been a starter for four years and received all-conference player and all-region accolades,” said Brown. “When you graduate someone who has started four years, it leaves a big hole not just at the position, but in terms of their overall character and what they bring to the team outside their play.”