Jackie Short ’13

Jackie Short knows how to close. No, she’s not a trial lawyer, or a realtor, or a short-relief pitcher in major league baseball. 

Instead, she was second in the nation (!) with eight game-winning goals in her junior season of NCAA Division III Hornet soccer. Now, that’s closing! 

And Jackie was excellent throughout entire games as well. She earned all-conference second-team honors her first season as a Hornet. After that, it was All-MIAA first-team three consecutive years. 

Three times she led the Hornets in goals and points, and once in goals, assists and points. 

In her first season, she tied for second in the MIAA for goals and points, a feat she repeated in that stellar junior season. 

As a junior she also made the NSCAA All-Central Region second team, and she scored a goal in six consecutive games, which tied a Hornet record. 

Her senior year, Jackie made the MIAA Academic Honor Roll and was named Kalamazoo College’s Outstanding Female Athlete. She was the epitome of a student-athlete. 

Jackie matriculated to K from Troy Athens High School (Troy, Mich.). She majored in psychology and studied abroad in Madrid, Spain. Her Senior Individualized Project she titled “The Effects of Training Working Memory in Adults with Traumatic Brain Injury.” Somehow, she also made time to sing in the College’s a cappella group “The Limelights.” 

Since graduating from K, Jackie has specialized in hospital IT health systems in various Michigan hospitals, including Corewell Health System, Sparrow Health System/University of Michigan, and currently Henry Ford Health, where she was recently promoted to the position of systems architect. 

Jackie is a frequent presenter at national healthcare conferences, at which she discusses new initiatives in medical charting. 

“Kalamazoo College offered the best of everything,” says Jackie. “The best education, best opportunities and the best way to combine athletics and my studies.” 

For the past five years, Jackie has served as an assistant soccer coach for two Troy schools. She recently stepped back from that to spend more time with her four-year-old daughter, Zoey. She also has a “side hustle called Tiny Hands Studio, where,” she says, “I embroider apparel for friends and family.” Tiny Hands—a pretty good name for the “creative outlet” of an athlete feted for the feats of her great feet.