A competitor on the first-ever club field hockey team at SUNY Cortland in the late 1960s, Leslie Schall White ’70 went on to establish field hockey as the first girls’ sport at Whitney Point (N.Y.) Central School District in 1972 before guiding the program into a perennial powerhouse over the next three decades.
White, who grew up in Brownville, N.Y., had never been exposed to field hockey prior to college. At SUNY Cortland, she discovered the sport through Valerie Drake, a physical education instructor from England. White recalls being impressed by the British educator’s dedication and love for the sport and her ability to impart those traits to her. White joined the newly formed Field Hockey Club. She also was active in student government, the pep band and cheerleading.
She earned both her bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in physical education from SUNY Cortland,
In 1970, White joined Whitney Point as a physical educator. Two years later in the wake of Title IX legislation, she organized the school’s first female athletic squad in field hockey. From 1972-2002, White’s squads posted a 309-123-65 win-loss-ties record during 29 seasons in the most competitive scholastic field hockey area in New York state. Her teams won seven regional, six divisional, six sectional and two inter-regional championships. Between 1995-2001, her squads made the state finals five times and, in 1999, won the New York State Public High School Athletic Association (NYSPHSAA) Class A Championship.
Besides the many benefits of competing in sports, several of her field hockey players received scholarships to attend universities, colleges and junior colleges while competing with and against some of the best players in the nation. Her Whitney Point coaching staff developed one of the first grass-roots programs in field hockey for girls in third through sixth grade.
The 1991 Whitney Point Central Teacher of the Year, White was named the Northeast Region Field Hockey Coach of the Year by the National Federation Coaches Association in 2000. She was inducted into the NYSPHSAA Section IV Hall of Fame in 2003.
White has been active within Section IV. She served on the section’s first interscholastic council for women in the early 1970s and later as vice president of its Women’s Athletic Council. She was the section’s Susquenango League representative and, for more than a quarter-of-a-century, its badminton and table tennis coordinator.
Within her community, her Badminton for Heart fundraisers raised more than $10,000 for the American Heart Association.
Since her retirement in 2003, White has assisted her church, Calvary’s Love, in Johnson City, N.Y., as a volunteer and as a Sunday school teacher. She has done outreach work among the poor in Mexico and has helped with clothing drives.
She has two daughters, Jennifer White Walters ’90 and Emily White DeLucia ’96, and a son, Michael, a U.S. Marine veteran.
