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After military aircraft jumps, ROTC member rejoins college soccer team

Student athlete misses season's start to earn airborne wings

by NYIT Media Relations

Old Westbury, NY (09/20/2018) — Ashley Johnson missed the opening two-plus weeks of the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) women's soccer season. She instead spent the time jumping out of military aircraft.

Johnson, who is on track to graduate in May 2019 with a bachelor's degree in health sciences, has balanced her classwork, playing women's soccer, and being a member of NYIT's Army ROTC program for the past three years.

Before arriving back in Old Westbury, N.Y., she spent three weeks at Airborne School in Fort Benning, Ga., learning how to properly jump out of an airplane. The final week of that program included five jumps from Boeing C-17 Globemaster III and Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft.

Johnson had never previously jumped from a plane.

"It was pretty exciting," she said. "I wasn't too nervous, because the two weeks before that you're doing a lot of training - a lot of learning how to exit the aircraft."

After graduation in May 2019, Johnson - a Sunrise, Fla., native - will commission as a second lieutenant and expects to serve as an Army officer for at least four years.

"But I will probably make a career out of it," she added.

She is the first member of her immediate family to enter the military.

"I wanted to try it out," Johnson said. "I have friends that were going through the West Point process of applying. I became interested. And then I tried it out [with ROTC] and just stuck."

Johnson has appeared in six soccer matches over her first three years at NYIT. Despite her limited playing time, she puts in the same effort as her teammates in practice. That's been a grueling endeavor at times since the ROTC workouts are at dawn and women's soccer practice often begins at 8 a.m.

"It's definitely pretty tough for me trying to balance the schedule," Johnson said. "At 5:30 or 6 a.m. is usually when I'll have ROTC work. And then I'll come here and have practice. Sometimes, when it's like an arm workout, it's easier. But when it's running and then coming back and running again, that's when it's pretty tough for me."

As for following the team during her absence, Johnson got to watch one match while away.

"We had off for Labor Day weekend," she said. "I was watching the game on my phone. I'm glad they've been doing so well, even though I haven't been a part of it."

NYIT (New York Institute of Technology) offers 90 degree programs, including undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees, in more than 50 fields of study, including architecture and design; arts and sciences; education; engineering and computing sciences; health professions; management; and osteopathic medicine. A non-profit independent, private institution of higher education, NYIT has 9,000 students at campuses in New York City (Manhattan) and Long Island (Old Westbury) in New York; Jonesboro, Arkansas; Vancouver, British Columbia; and in various programs around the world. NYIT sponsors 13 NCAA Division II programs.

NYIT is guided by its mission to provide career-oriented professional education, offer access to opportunity to all qualified students, and support applications-oriented research that benefits the larger world. More than 100,000 graduates have received degrees from NYIT. For more information, visit nyit.edu.

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Ashley Johnson at Fort Benning, Ga., after earning airborne wings.

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