Even as she went through high school, Katherine Stoltenberg had a pretty good idea of what she eventually wanted to do with her life.

I would like to be physical education teacher and coach, I knew that probably before I even went to college, said Stoltenberg, a Montgomery High graduate who has taken over as the new head tennis coach at Stuart Country Day School. I was an Education Studies major in college.

Stoltenberg, who graduated from Trinity College in Connecticut in 2011, is working as a pre-school aide at Stuart. Last year she was an assistant tennis coach at Montgomery and also coached middle school basketball at Stuart which she is planning to do this year as well.

After a strong athletic career in high school and college, Stoltenberg is well prepared for a career in coaching.

She played two years of soccer at Montgomery, followed by two years of tennis. She also played basketball and softball all four years for the Cougars. Following a softball career that saw her named the Princeton Packet Player of the Year as a senior, she started for four years at Trinity as well.

The reason I got into tennis was my assistant softball coach at Montgomery, Matt Vahrly, was an assistant tennis coach at time, Stoltenberg recalled. He was only my coach for one year and he was great. Now he coaches at Westfield and they were in the Tournament of Champions last year so he has become a great tennis coach.

That was great. And so were the softball coaches I had at Montgomery Johnny Rooney, Suzanne Trautwein and Tom Wain they were excellent coaches and learned a lot from them. And at Stuart, Missy. Bruvik has been such a great help to me. I have known the Bruviks a long time. Kelly and I played sports together growing up and having Missy at school helped me so much in basketball and has already helped me so much with tennis. It has been so nice being new to Stuart and knowing someone who has been there and can help me whenever I have questions about anything.

This will be Stoltenbergs first high school head coaching opportunity. She coaches a travel softball team in Montgomery, but coaching tennis has a different feel than basketball or softball.

It is a lot different coaching tennis in general than most sports, she said. In softball you are right there on field coaching at third base or first base or in the dugout. In basketball you are subbing and calling out plays. Tennis is different. You get a ladder, the girls are in place and you can only talk to them at certain times during a match.

It is a lot more sitting and watching and picking out small things. Maybe you can pick out a strength or a weakness of their opponent. But there is subbing once team is set. So it is a lot different than coaching the other sports.

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PRINCETON: Cougar at home at Stuart