Ä¢¹½´«Ã½

The Builder

As the final whistle blew on Ä¢¹½´«Ã½’s first men’s soccer regular season conference championship in 27 years, goalkeeper Sam Ortner approached his coach and told him just three words: “We built this.” 

Several years earlier, Ortner was a high school senior from Wisconsin exploring options for his athletic and academic future. During the recruitment process, he came in contact with Steven McCarthy, the soccer coach at a small college in Iowa. Ortner was so impressed that when he got a call from McCarthy sharing that he was taking a new job at a university in Indiana, Ortner decided to check it out for himself. 

“I took a visit to Ä¢¹½´«Ã½, and I immediately loved it,” says Ortner. “I really liked the campus. It was a very good academic school. And the soccer program had a lot of great history. I committed basically the next week.”

Ortner’s incoming class was the first group of Tigers McCarthy brought to Greencastle, and together they have helped build the program into a championship contender, winning back-to-back NCAC tournaments as well as the 2025 NCAC regular season title. But success on the soccer pitch is only part of Ortner’s Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ story. He’s also forged an academic passion and a career path he didn’t expect.

“I came into Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ thinking I was going to be a biochemistry major and go to medical school,” he says. “I took a chemistry class; it wasn’t really my thing. I took a biology class; it wasn't really my thing. But through the liberal arts aspect of Ä¢¹½´«Ã½, I also had to take a computer science class. Now I'm a computer science major, and I really enjoy it — all because the liberal arts exposed me to different things.”

Ortner plans to continue his studies in graduate school with the long-term goal of working in cybersecurity. A pair of summer internships at Republic Airways have reinforced this direction, giving him valuable opportunities to investigate alerts and build security tools for the company. He’s also accumulated a broad range of leadership experiences — on the soccer team, in student government and in organizations like Fellowship of Christian Athletes — that have prepared him for whatever he may face down the road.

“A goalkeeper is like a quarterback in football. They have to lead with their fellow captains, see the whole field and organize the defense. Those responsibilities have helped me develop as a leader. And it applies to cybersecurity, too, in the sense that everything is changing constantly and you have to make split-second decisions.”

Whether he’s creating security tools, serving his fellow students as a campus leader or helping the Tigers win championships, Ortner continues to build a winning future both on and off the field.

Hometown: Wauwatosa, Wisc.
Major: Computer science
Minors: Math, sociology
Activities: Men’s soccer, Fellowship of Christian Athletes (co-president), Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ Student Government (vice president of academic life)