Haley Dando a top scholar athlete

By Mike Zummo
Posted 5/21/20

If you’re at a Newburgh Free Academy athletic event, there’s a good chance Haley Dando is there. In the fall, she was a key member of Newburgh’s girls’ soccer team. During …

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Haley Dando a top scholar athlete

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If you’re at a Newburgh Free Academy athletic event, there’s a good chance Haley Dando is there.
In the fall, she was a key member of Newburgh’s girls’ soccer team. During other seasons, you would see her off to the side with her camera in hand, shooting pictures of the action for the school’s athletics website.

She’s also in the top 20 percent of Newburgh Free Academy’s senior class and was recently recognized as an Orange County Interscholastic Athletic Association scholar-athlete. Raj Patel was named the school’s male scholar athlete.

“What it means to me is that not only can you prioritize your time with being able to put all your effort into a sport, also have good grades at the same time and do things for your community,” Dando said. “It’s really about being able to prioritize your time and be able to contribute to everybody.”

Dando has been a member of the varsity girls’ soccer team since she was a freshman and been a captain for the last two seasons.

“You can tell from listening to her talk how mature she is and how organized she is,” Newburgh girls’ soccer coach Dave Doulin said. “A lot of the other teammates fed off that. She’s great at time management and very committed. A lot of them learned that from Haley.”

Outside of sports, she was a member of the National Honor Society, Science Honor Society and Spanish Honor Society. She volunteers as a soccer coach for 3- and 4-year-olds. She has raised money for families at Maria Ferreira Children’s Hospital through “Go the Distance Walk.” She mentors kids her age who are going through a surgery she previously experienced. Haley is also a Blood Drive Leader.

That’s a lot for anyone, but she said she never had trouble prioritizing her time.

“For me, it’s kind of easy,” Dando said. “This year it was a lot easier because I got out of school kind of early. I do my homework right away so afterward, I can do whatever I want, whether it’s going to all the games and getting as many pictures of as many sports, or hanging with friends, but not anymore, but then, yes.”
Next year, Dando plans to attend the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, where she will major in architecture and minor in photography. She hasn’t decided if she will play an intramural sport while she’s there.

“It’s all about how time consuming their program will be,” she said. “So, I don’t want to make a commitment to anything like that. School comes first and there’s so much to do around Boston. I’m going to feel all my options out before committing to anything.”

One of her proudest moments off the sports field was setting up the photography page on the district’s athletics website.

“No matter what condition I’m at in my life, I can always pick up a camera and do that,” Dando said. “It opened up doors in Newburgh alone because you meet so many people and can have conversations with people.”

Senior year was dealt a blow in March when school was shut down in the middle of March due to COVID-19 pandemic and then closed for the remainder of the academic year early this month. Gone with that are most of the trappings and events that go along with senior year, although Newburgh Enlarged City School District officials are working on a graduation ceremony.

“It definitely has been really difficult and definitely some sad days,” Dando said. “It’s not only just spending time with your friends. You look forward to – at least I have and I know my friends have – big moments like prom. Especially my friends who are baseball players who have Senior Nights. You look forward to those moments like that.”

Doulin said the award has evolved over the past decade.

“It’s a big deal and up until about 10 years ago, they just picked the kid with the highest grade-point-average that happened to play a sport,” he said. “It evolved to the more rounded student who is a good athlete and not just about grades. It’s a little bit of everything. Haley is a perfect example of that. She can do a lot of things.”

Editor’s note: Read about Newburgh’s male scholar athlete Raj Patel in next week’s Mid Hudson Times.