Koehr enjoys balancing rigorous schedule, on and off the field

WASHINGTON - CUA student-athlete Daniel Koehr is not your typical college freshman. Not only is he juggling the ROTC program along with being a member of the lacrosse team, but he has also taken on a civil engineering major, which is known to be one of the most demanding programs at Catholic University.

Although he has a lot on his plate, Koehr has a determined and positive attitude about his rigorous schedule, and is committed to successfully balancing lacrosse and the ROTC program with his academics. Thus far into the semester, despite a few late nights and scheduling issues, Koehr seems to have everything under control and has started off his academic and athletic career on the right foot.

Koehr grew up in Warrenton, Virginia with his parents and eleven brothers and sisters.  He first got into lacrosse at the age of eleven, after watching his older brothers play.  No stranger to a hectic and busy lifestyle, Dan played soccer, football, swimming and lacrosse in high school.

Although Koehr could have taken his pick at which sport he wanted to pursue in college, it was his high school lacrosse coaches who pushed him towards playing collegiately. They emailed college coaches about Dan, knowing he had potential. However, Koehr didn’t set out to look for a college based on which sport he wanted to play. His priority was to get a good education.

Koehr ultimately chose CUA because of its impressive engineering school, and says that everything just fell into place from there. He contacted Head Coach Brooks Singer about playing lacrosse, and although he knew it would be difficult to be a student-athlete along with ROTC, he decided to go for it.

Coach Singer was intrigued by Koehr’s interest in being part of the ROTC program as well as the lacrosse team at CUA. “We have never attempted to have a student-athlete balance academics, lacrosse and ROTC, so Dan and I discussed how we were both committed to making this a real possibility,” Singer said.

Both programs have been understanding when there are conflicts with scheduling or schoolwork, however, Koehr has been able to make it all work on his own thus far.

Singer praises Koehr’s impressive ability to balance it all saying he gets all the credit for figuring out the logistics in order to make it work. From the beginning, Singer saw potential in Koehr to become an integral member of the team.  “He possesses a hard-working and positive attitude that every coach desires.  He’s a great teammate, and does whatever is asked of him to help better the program.” 

Koehr joined the team as a short stick defensive specialist and with the upcoming graduation of two seniors playing that position, Singer sees a bright future for him. “We anticipate that he is going to be a huge asset to the team”.

Although his coaches and teammates admire his ability to juggle all of his responsibilities, Koehr admits that being a student-athlete in ROTC is tough. “I spend a lot of late nights in Leahy Hall getting all of my work done”, he says.

While maintaining his busy schedule, Koehr keeps an eye towards a promising future. Post graduation, he will be a second lieutenant in the United States Army for at least four years. After that, he hopes to pursue a career related to civil engineering.

For now though, Koehr is just focused on getting through his freshman year. Fortunately, he has a great role model to look up to in balancing everything. “Whenever I think that I am busy, I just think of my dad. He’s raising twelve kids, runs several businesses, teaches classes at a high school, coaches the largest high school swim team in the area and does volunteer work on top of it all. When I think of it like that, it doesn’t seem like I am as busy.”

Story written by Tara Juliano ‘11