Sergio Stadler served as a paratrooper in Israel’s 1967-70 War of Attrition, but that’s not why he’s a hero to countless thousands of Marist School’s students, parents and alumni, including lots who got rich and famous. Here’s a hint. Just recently, Marist renamed its soccer stadium Stadler Field.
It’s not just soccer that made his name a household word. Stefanie Stadler, 66, his wife of 45 years, won fame, too, not for sports, but for heading the school’s acclaimed theater and dance programs.
Together they’ve just retired from the elite Catholic school after a combined total of 65 years on the faculty. She said the field was named for him, but alumni and school officials point out that it’s her name, too, atop the scoreboard.
He’s coached the girls’ varsity soccer teams to more than 400 victories since 1988, and girls’ volleyball since 1978, winning eight state titles.
But it’s not sports he’s best known for. It’s calculus. And Stefanie also has lots of success. One of her ex-students, Elena Ricardo, has a lead role now in the Broadway hit “Mama Mia.” Actress and sister Hallie said Stefanie is “a never ending font of genuine support and belief — a mentor.”
And politicians like Chris Carr, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, also sing her praises.
“Every time I get out and speak in public, I use what I learned from Stefanie,” he said. “She helped me get confidence, to project when talking, even to sing.”
Marshall Brain, 53, founder of HowStuffWorks, said his favorite memory is of Sergio urging students to “dig deeper” — and his tricks.
Brain once spent a weekend trying to figure out “how to trisect an angle with a compass.” He couldn’t. It was impossible, as he found out from Sergio.
Today, “on nearly anything I start, one of my first questions is, ‘is this even possible’?”
One of Sergio’s players, 2009 grad Kristen Meier, is the first Marist female to play pro soccer. Born in Buenes Aires and reared in Uruguay, Sergio moved to Israel in 1965 and joined the paratroopers in 1968.
Stefanie, bored with college after a year at UGA, moved to Israel to help after the Six-Day War of 1967. The two met on a kibbutz, she earned a nursing degree, they married and returned to Atlanta, where their three sons all attended Marist.
She was a nurse at Northside Hospital while Sergio obtained his teaching degree at Georgia State, which Stefanie did a few years later.
Being Jewish never got in the way of their jobs at a Catholic school, but perhaps an awkward moment or two. At his first faculty meeting, Sergio heard the priest, Father James Hartnett, use the name of Jesus.
“I introduced myself, and said, ‘I’m Jewish, and you evoked the name of Jesus many times, so I was wondering if this was the right place for me,” Sergio said. “Father Hartnett said, ‘I don’t think there’s any difference between Catholic math and Jewish math.’”
The current principal, Father Joel Knozen, said the Stadlers have “a terrific record of service, and everyone who’s come through here in a generation knows how exceptional their commitment has been.”
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