Skip to main content

Jazz Moreno

ACE in South Africa: 2019
School
Duke University
Class
2020
Team
Softball (Women's)
Hometown
Elk Grove, CA
Major(s)
Neuroscience
Minor(s) / Certificate(s)
Global health/Pre-Med
Jazz’s Blog Posts from ACE in South Africa: 2019
Profile View Jazz’s Student-Athlete profile on goduke.com

“I think it is worth it because not only are you making a difference in a community but also I am going to gain perspective and experience. Being a Duke student, you kind of get stuck in a bubble and you forget how fortunate we are here, and that not everyone is as lucky and not everyone has as many opportunities as we do. Why not do this? Why not take 3 weeks out of our summer when it could potentially help out a community’s life.”

Jazz Moreno’s past experience with service includes participating in youth sports camps, Boys and Girls Club service, the Durham soup kitchen, Habitat for Humanity, tutoring, a retirement home, Toys for Tots, and Durham Miracle League.

ACE Ambassador Profile

Girl crouching down with two children

Jazz Moreno is a senior on the Duke Softball team and a California Native. At Duke, he is pursuing a major in Neuroscience along with a minor in Evolutionary Anthropology. She is involved in Duke Athletics, showing commitment as a mentor for the ACTION program in addition to giving lessons to youth softball players. Currently, she is working in Dr. Kwatra’s Gliblastoma Lab. Jazz Moreno’s past experience with service includes participating in youth sports camps, Boys and Girls Club service, the Durham soup kitchen, Habitat for Humanity, tutoring, a retirement home, Toys for Tots, and Durham Miracle League. While in the township of Zola, Jazz grew close with the children and hopes to better understand worldwide issues and cultural differences. Jazz looks forward to giving back to the ACE program as an ACE ambassador to help future student-athletes understand their purpose and importance of understanding cultures and social issues in the countries they will be working in.

Want to hear more about Jazz’s ACE experience? Contact Jazz.

Dear Future #ACEathletes,

  • Best advice for learning about ACE: Go to the information sessions. Talk to as many athletes as you can about the program that has gone. Talk to Emily, she is a big resource. I think making sure you can be flexible and personable with people. Also, make sure that you have a volunteer background
  • Best advice for getting started at your program: It was an easy transition. We had a set plan laid out right before we started our first week about how the days would operate. We did a lot of games like heads up, mafia, card games, would you rather. A lot of games that involved staying pretty interactive and not on our phones really ever. We were all really close within the first two days. It was insane
  • Tips for getting to know your community: Whenever we were in the township we would all try to interact with the kids as much as possible not really interactive with each other. Our focus was the kids and adults not us. I change how view people that you do not know what anyone goes through and to really appreciate what you have instead of focusing on what you do not have
  • Tips for training: We all trained right after working in the township every day. Our strength coaches sent us all workouts but we all as an ACE group we did core together before we all separate to do our workouts. We also did each other workouts.
  • Tips for bringing ACE back to your team: I told them about all I learned about selfless these kids were and welcoming they were. They taught me a lot about appreciating these little things in life and also being understanding of other cultures. Also, seeing and understanding culture injustices.
  • Reasons for staying involved in ACE: I think it is a good reminder of what I did and how impacting it was for myself and that I want others to experience that. I think that definitely gave me insight into the outside world because we as student-athletes we get in our own bubble and lose sight of bigger things.