Sam Ortner | Student

The Builder

As the final whistle blew on DePauw’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 DePauw, 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 DePauw story. He’s also forged an academic passion and a career path he didn’t expect.

“I came into DePauw 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 DePauw, 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), DePauw Student Government (vice president of academic life)