Volleyball,Basketball,Track&Field
Favorite team: Eagles
Favorite memory competing in sports: In the beginning of the basketball season, we had a game against Council Rock South; we were down by 20 points by halftime. During the second half, we started closing the gap, and at the end of the fourth quarter, we were two points down with less than thirty seconds left. Our coach called a timeout to create a plan so we could tie the game and go into overtime. As we went back out on the court, the plan did not go as we hoped, but my teammate saw me cutting to the basketball where she passed it to me, and I got the layup that tied the game. We then went into overtime winning the game.
Funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports:During halftime of one of our games in the beginning of the season, we were beating a team that has beaten us in the past. We all walked into the locker room happy and cheering, and as we sat down, we heard the other team go into their locker room quietly. The door slammed shut as their coach walked in. Then all we heard was their coach screaming at them that they are playing like crap and should not be losing to us. We all got quiet in our locker room as we could hear everything that was being said. The looks we were giving each other made us laugh so hard, but we had to hold it in until they got quiet, which meant they went back to the court.
Music on mobile device: Country and alternative
Future plans: Graduate college with my MBA in accounting.
Words to live by: “Your greatness is not what you have; it's what you give.”
Goal before turning 30: Have a good steady job and start thinking about having a family.
One thing people don’t know about me:I would like to own a bakery one day.
By Ed Morrone
For a majority of athletes at the high school level, overall amount of talent tends to dictate their standing in their team’s pecking order.
As for William Tennent senior and three-sport athlete Jess Rutkowsky, well, she’ll freely admit she’s not the smoothest shooter, fastest runner or most finessed dribbler. However, what Rutkowsky lacks in pure basketball talent, she makes up for in not being afraid to get her hands dirty.
And she loves every second of it.
One of the many definitions of the word grit is the body’s ability to crave contact, and Rutkowsky’s persona fits that description like a glove. During the past two girls’ basketball seasons at Tennent, you wouldn’t often find Rutkowsky’s name with the highest amount of points in the box score, but if you watched the games more closely, it would become evident that she does the things that don’t show up on a stat sheet, vital intangibles that every team needs.
“She’s a gritty player, and she fits that description to a T,” Tennent girls basketball coach Laura Whitney said. “It’s easy to point out the best players with the most points, and that’s who a lot of people will recognize. Jess is smart, and she understands her role, which is to do all of the little things for us rather than leading us in scoring.
“I joke with her that the last two years, she’s been our ‘Rudy.’ She leaves everything on the floor, and she’s so consistent, effort-wise. She prides herself on defense, and most games we put her on the other team’s best player. She takes it personal to hold them below their points average. She’s also aggressive and knows how to sacrifice her body and dive on the floor for loose balls. She’s not our tallest player, but most games she led us in defensive rebounds and taking charges. Jess plays within herself and never tries to do too much.”
In addition to basketball, Rutkowsky plays volleyball in the fall and is a thrower for the track team in the spring. When pressed to pick her “top sport,” she went with track because it’s the one she has the best chance to compete in at the next level, but Rutkowsky has been playing basketball the longest. Coming from a family of hoops players, she’s been playing since she was 6 years old and was always drawn to the aggression and contact the game fostered.
“My role is the hustler,” she said. “I know where I stand, so I can’t lollygag. If the ball is on the ground, I’m going to go get it. I might not be dribbling down the court to take a layup, but I can get it to the person who can. I’m not afraid for someone to jump on my back, because I’ll do the same to them. I don’t let the fear of getting injured run my game. I put all I have into what needs to be done, and I’ll get it to the girls who can dribble and shoot and let them do what they need to do.
“I can be an aggressive person, so I guess I just get something out of being an aggressive player. It’s satisfying in a sense. It’s hard to explain — you know you’re helping, even if you aren’t getting the stats. I don’t need the spotlight and I don’t need to hear my name in the announcements saying I scored 15 points. I just hang backstage, making sure everything that needs to get done, gets done.”
It’s no surprise to hear that Rutkowsky is so confident in having carved out her identity, as she is very self-assured in everything she does. And she does a lot. She played just about every sport imaginable growing up, from soccer to softball to field hockey. The three she participates in at the high school level were the ones that stuck, and all for similar variations of the same core reasons.
For volleyball, Rutkowsky said she loved the intensity of it, and was “not afraid to get nailed in the face.” As far as track goes, she gravitated toward the shotput, discus and javelin because she realized right away that running was not her specialty and wanted to help her team in a different manner. Throwers on a track team may not get as much attention as the runners and sprinters, but as has already been established, Rutkowsky has never needed the focus to be on her so long as she is able to help her team succeed.
“Track is a very individualized sport where you focus on your skill and technique,” she said. “You realize pretty quickly that what you do affects the rest of the team as a whole. It’s a family within a family.”
Whitney first met Rutkowsky when she became Tennent’s girls’ basketball coach two years ago and knew right away that she had a special, unique player on her hands. Despite suffering a foot injury during volleyball season, Rutkowsky still attended Whitney’s open workouts to be around the team and learn the new system.
“She told me that coaches never knew where to play her,” Whitney said. “She wasn’t a big enough post player, and she didn’t have the handle or shot of a guard. She’s an in-between type of player, and she always came to me and asked what she could do to become a better team player. She understands and realizes she’s not the most talented player, and she doesn’t make excuses for that. She just wants to do what she can to help the team.”
All of this is not to say that Rutkowsky is not a talented basketball player, either. Just because she does most of her dirty work in the trenches doesn’t mean she can’t affect the outcome of a game; in fact, she did just that in Tennent’s biggest win of the season on Dec. 12 against Council Rock South.
In that game, Tennent fell behind by 20 points but refused to quit. They chipped away at the deficit until they found themselves down by just two with under 30 seconds left. Whitney called timeout to draw up a play, but the play broke down on the court. Rutkowsky found herself open cutting to the basket, and a teammate fed her for the game-tying layup. Tennent went on to win that game in overtime, 53-50.
“That was just one specific moment where she capitalized by using her smartness,” Whitney said. “Hard work beats talent every day, and she contributed to the team in so many different ways. It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog, and she proved that in every game we played. In the Council Rock South game, the play broke down, and Jess was smart enough to cut across the court and find open space in the middle of the lane for the tying layup. That was her one shining moment. She doesn’t get all of the accolades, but in that moment, her hard work paid off and she made the right decision to help the team.”
Added Rutkowsky: “For me that stuck out as a different kind of game. For once, we didn’t just lay down and get run over by the other team. Even though it was a struggle, we fought and pushed back as a team and showed how good we could be. It was definitely a ‘Wow, I can’t believe it’ kind of moment.”
With basketball season in the rearview mirror, Rutkowsky has turned her attention to her throwing responsibilities with the Tennent track team. She is hoping to qualify for districts, and said she’s not far off in the process. She gravitated toward shotput in middle school when she realized she didn’t possess the requisite speed to be a running star, and picked up javelin and discus once she got to high school. Rutkowsky originally gave throwing a try because she thought it looked neat, but was amazed to find out how much skill throwing actually took and stuck with it because she was addicted to the challenge.
“At first, you kind of just fall into it after wanting to try it because it looks cool,” she said. “I wanted to be part of a team, part of a family, and since I knew I wasn’t the fastest or didn’t have the best stamina, I figured, ‘OK, why don’t I try this?’ But trying to get the skill down is more difficult than some people might think. It takes a lot of training, and it’s not just like throwing a ball or a Frisbee; if you throw wrong in track, you can seriously injure yourself, so it takes time and understanding to get your release down, a lot more effort than people probably think.”
Rutkowsky said she’s not 100 percent sure where she is going to commit to college, but she is working toward that goal. She wants to throw at the next level, mainly because she’s not ready to not be a part of a team anymore after being involved in so many sports for a large chunk of her life.
Wherever she ends up, Rutkowsky has proven to be an ace when it comes to time management. Not only does she compete in three sports at the varsity level, but she ranks in the top-50 of her class academically and is heavily involved in multiple extracurricular activities. With her sights set on studying accounting in college, she is secretary of Tennent’s National Business Honor Society, while also participating in the school’s Future Business Leaders of America and Math National Honor Society. She even tutors other students who are struggling in math once a month, which begs the question: how is there enough time in the day for Rutkowsky to manhandle all of these responsibilities?
“I’ve always been going from one practice or game to the next, so I’m used to not having a lot of time,” she said. “I know I don’t have time to sit around and watch TV, and that made it easier to keep moving and get things done. When you know you have practice or a game, you can’t push off your schoolwork, so I just try to figure out a schedule, whether it’s in between car rides or at lunch so that when I do get home, I can go to bed.”
Rutkowsky is a classic overachiever, so it’s not surprising to surmise she will be a successful member of the track team and accounting student wherever she ends up going to college. As far as future goals go, she wants to graduate with an MBA in accounting, have a good, steady job and think about starting a family by the time she’s 30. A very goal-oriented person in general, Rutkowsky said she’d even want to open her own bakery one day.
“I’ve been baking forever,” she said. “I put my music on and mix up whatever I’m making; it’s me time, in a sense. I guess it comes from doing Christmas cookies and baking for 12 hours a day. It can be stressful, but it’s so much fun to see how something that looks like such a mess can turn out so nice.”
And while Rutkowsky is so much more than just a multi-sport athlete, playing sports has helped define her. Competition has given her life structure, in addition to teaching her how to be part of a team and properly manage her time, lessons that will go a long way as she gets ready to graduate high school and enter the scary, unpredictable world of adulthood.
“Sports have definitely helped,” she said. “If I never touched a ball or didn’t play a sport, I’d be nothing like I am now. I’d probably be extremely lazy and not do the work I need to do. I might be in the bottom-50 of my class instead of the top. Sports have shaped me to be hardworking and give everything my all in whatever I do.
“It’s also taught me leadership, to know when to take charge and to know my role. It teaches me to work well with others, and when challenges and obstacles arise, how to overcome them. Don’t just give up when you hit a wall; instead, climb over that wall and get through it.”
