The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Dudziak earns ROTC scholarship
Wellington multi-sport athlete will try to walk on Toledo football team
Grace Dudziak has had a school year to remember.
In 2019, she became the first woman in Wellington High School history to earn a varsity letter for football, and also the first to score a point. And after what was one of the better seasons in recent memory for the Dukes, Dudziak was honored with first-team allcounty and all-district selections.
She also was named Lorain County player of the year in soccer, and was a team captain for the Wellington basketball team that finished second in the Lorain County League.
On April 2, she added another accomplishment to her list, securing a three-year advance designee ROTC scholarship at the University of Toledo, where she’ll train and study nursing.
Dudziak made her decision to attend Toledo her junior year at Wellington and then got to work on joining the ROTC program at the university. She worked with the staff at the Army ROTC Rocket Battalion to apply for scholarships.
“I was emailing constantly, and then I had to fill out the application, which we were checking on like every day,” she said. “There are three boards that award the scholarship, so I had to wait through two prior to the one that I actually got.
“I was really realistic at the end. I didn’t think I was going to get any. So I was just trying to work on getting a scholarship for a few years once I got to Toledo. But then I got a text from (a program representative), and he was like ‘You better be really happy’. It was probably one of the best days ever.”
It’s a day Dudziak and her mother Angela remember fondly.
“I was at work when this text came over,” Angela said. “We were literally jumping up and down in my office. That’s how exciting this was. It was pretty awesome.”
Dudziak wants to become an Army nurse after her ROTC experience at Toledo is over, something that she didn’t envision herself doing at the beginning of her high school career.
“I originally wanted to be a dermatologist, and then I was completely lost and I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” she said. “We focus on so many careers in that class (at Joint Vocational School) and then we went to Toledo and we started to talk to the recruiters from the Army and that’s when we found out what ROTC was and when we started researching it. I was like that’s what I want to do. And then me and my mom looked into careers in it, because I wanted to be a PT (physical trainer), and then I looked at nursing and I just fell in love with that.”
The extended quarantine period has been tough for Dudziak, who describes herself as someone who is always on the go. If it wasn’t for the suspension of the spring sports season, she would be with the Dukes’ track team.
“It’s terrible right now,” she said. “I don’t really know what to do, I’m always go-go-go, and it’s like now I have so much free time I don’t know what to do with myself. I’ve been trying to stay active and I’ve been going
out with my family and we walk a lot.”
One thing that Dudziak will be doing during the quarantine is kicking, practicing for her next athletic endeavor at Toledo, a tryout for the football team.
“I’m actually going to try out in August to walk-on,” she said. “It’s something I have to do, I just want to know if I am good enough to do it. I just want to try it, I’ve already got the ROTC thing, which I’ll be busy with. But kicking for a college would just be the icing on top.”
If she succeeds, she would be the second female kicker in the history of the Mid American Conference, joining Kent State’s April Goss, who became the second woman in NCAA history to score points in 2016.
The future Rocket is already an inspiration to many at Wellington High School after her career as a Duke, including her sister.
“Knowing that my little sister is coming in next year as a freshman, I feel like I have her and all of her friends that look up to me so much, because of all that I’ve done. I’ve had multiple of them that play soccer who are like ‘I want to try to be a kicker now’, and it makes me so happy that I’ve inspired them.”