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Most NCAA Div. III student-athletes cite time management as the key to their success, and no one may know this better than Kerri Horst, as she played three sports while at The College of Wooster, with two that overlapped during the same season in softball and track & field (women’s basketball was the other), combining for seven all-conference honors among other accomplishments.
The demands placed on a student-athlete, especially one playing three sports, can be taxing, and even more so at a school with rigorous academics like Wooster, but Horst not only handled the pressure, she excelled during the most challenging of times.
The best way to show this is not through her records or honors, as impressive as they are, but by sharing what Horst calls the most memorable moment of her career. It happened during the last days of her senior year. Horst had a decision to make on Friday, May 3, 2002 – play for the softball team at the North Coast Athletic Conference Tournament or compete in the javelin at the NCAC Track & Field Championships.
The choice was easy for Horst. She did both, of course.
Early in the day, Horst was in Granville, Ohio, where she batted leadoff and drove in a run, helping the Fighting Scots notch a narrow 6-5 win over Allegheny College in softball action. Then, Horst hit the road, about an hour north, to Delaware, Ohio, where she not only made it in time for the javelin, but won the first conference championship of her career with a still-standing school record of 126 feet, 1 inch.
Days like this were the norm (minus the travel) for Horst, who remembers going to softball practice, and then fitting in her track workouts between classes. All the hard work was worth it, though, as Horst put together an athletic résumé unlike many others ever have at Wooster.
As a softball player, Horst was part of the “new” varsity program in 2000 (first year back since 1986) as a sophomore, and then helped lead the Scots to a significant jump, taking second-place in the NCAC in just their second year back, followed by a tie for second-place her senior season. Horst garnered an all-conference certificate each year, highlighted by first-team as a junior, and she was later voted on to the NCAC All-Decade Team (1993-04). Also notable, she still ranks third all-time at the school with a career batting average of .333.
On the track, Horst was a four-time all-NCAC award winner. In addition to the javelin, her other top efforts came in the heptathlon as she finished third as a sophomore (3,702 points) and freshman (3,513 points), while just missing top-three as a junior with a personal-best 3,743 points. Horst also regularly scored points at the conference level in the 100 and 400 hurdles and was a key member on relay teams.
Not to be overlooked, Horst was an integral player with the women’s basketball team all four years. She started 57 of 96 career games, excelling mainly as a defensive sparkplug (133 steals), although she did pour in 500-plus points (554) as well, with a career-high 8.6 scoring average her sophomore year.
Horst, who majored in sociology with a minor in early childhood education at Wooster, is now in her eighth year as a first grade teacher at nearby Northwestern Elementary School, the same school district where she was once a student. The Wayne County product has also coached eight years of jayvee basketball and seven years of track at Northwestern High School.
Horst and her husband, Greg Kostohryz, reside in West Salem, Ohio, with their young sons, Keagan (4) and Zakary (infant).