UWEC Athletics Hall of Fame
Kari Blasczyk ranks as one of the most decorated Blugold athletes ever as a member of veteran coach Sean Yengo’s soccer team. She is the second soccer player to be inducted into the Blugold Hall of Fame, preceded only by Tammy Brandt. She is one of six Blugolds who were selected to the 24-player WIAC All-Centennial soccer team in 2012. She was an NSCAA Third Team All-American in 2000 and also earned Academic All-American honors as a Third Team at-large pick in 2000. She was UWEC’s nominee for NCAA Woman of the Year in 2001, the same year she was a Blugold Super Six recipient. A four-year starter and three-time All-Conference First Team pick, Blasczyk set the school single season goals and points records as a senior in 2000. At the time of her induction, her totals of 20 goals and 47 points still ranked second on the single season list. She still ranked fourth in career goals and points with 44 goals and 112 points. She was a three-time team offensive Player of the Year as voted by her teammates and the team scoring leader her sophomore, junior and senior seasons. Blasczyk played on two of the winningest teams in school history as her 1998 squad was 16-5-1 and the 2000 team was 15-5. During her career, the Blugolds fashioned a 23-8-1 conference record and a 54-25-3 overall mark.
Blasczyk graduated summa cum laude in December, 2002 from UWEC with a 3.83 GPA in nursing. She obtained her Master of Science in Nursing Education from Bellin College in Green Bay. Before returning to her hometown where she was a three-sport athlete and the Most Outstanding Senior Athlete at Appleton East in 1997, Blasczyk’s first job was at Saint Michael’s Hospital in Milwaukee as an Emergency Department (ED) Registered Nurse (RN). She has since worked as an RN at Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital-AMG Surgery Center in Appleton, served as the Trauma and Injury Prevention Nurse at ThedaCare Regional Medical Center-Neenah, and worked as an adjunct faculty instructor at UW-Oshkosh. At the time of her induction, Blasczyk had been a nursing instructor at Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton and continued to work as an RN in the ED at ThedaCare Regional Medical Center-Appleton where she had been employed for 12 years. While she played in multiple soccer leagues after graduation, she now enjoys the sport of running and had completed two full marathons and numerous half marathons. At the time of her induction, she and her husband Tim were parents of three children.
