Among the best athletes of his generation to compete for St. Francis College Brooklyn and in the Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA), Igor Mladenovic led the Terriers to three CWPA Championships and National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) appearances along with a 78-35 four-year record during his tenure in Brooklyn.

A native of Belgrade, Serbia, Mladenovic started his time in New York by splitting time with All-America Honorable Mention goalkeeper Nikola Djuric to help lead SFC to a CWPA crown and a berth in the NCAA Final Four during the 2010 season.

The Most Valuable Player of the 2010 Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Championship hosted by Harvard University as the Terriers took down Fordham University (19-7 W), Princeton University (7-6 W) and Brown University (13-9 W), he was recognized with All-Northern Division Second Team honors following a season in which the Terriers claimed the Northern Division crown with a 7-0 regular season mark before stopping Connecticut College (22-3 W), Fordham (11-7 W) and Brown (14-7 W) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the division championship tournament.  At the Eastern Championship hosted by Bucknell University, he aided SFC in turning back Johns Hopkins University (9-8 W), Bucknell (10-9 W) and the United States Naval Academy (8-4 W) for the league title to earn a spot in the NCAA Championship field where the Terriers fell to the University of Southern California (10-7 L) and Loyola Marymount University (9-7 L) to claim Fourth Place and cap off a 23-5 season.

In 2011, he returned to the SFC cage to anchor the Terriers to a 6-0 Northern Division regular season mark and defeats of both Iona University (13-3 W) and Brown (11-10 W OT SD) at MIT for another division title.  At the Eastern Championship hosted by Harvard, he backstopped St. Francis Brooklyn to victories over Johns Hopkins (14-12 W) and Brown (16-10 W) with a semifinal defeat by Princeton (13-11 L OT) to claim Third Place and complete a 15-9 season.  For his season performance, Mladenovic earned his second All-Northern Division Second Team nod.

As a junior in 2012, he made his mark on the national stage by garnering Association of Collegiate Water Polo Coaches (ACWPC) All-America Third Team recognition for a season in which he posted 225 saves with 192 goals against in 84 quarters with 37 steals, seven assists, 11 penalty shots saved and three goals during a 17-9 campaign according to the SFC records.  An All-Northern Division First Team honoree, he helped the Terriers earn a second place finish during the Northern Division regular season prior to stopping Connecticut College (14-3 W), Harvard (17-14 W) and regular season titlist/host Brown (8-7 W) to capture the program’s third consecutive Northern Division Championship.  At the Eastern Championship hosted by Princeton, Mladenovic earned his inaugural All-Tournament award by earning First Team recognition as St. Francis Brooklyn sank Navy (14-10 W), Mercyhurst University (12-11 W) and Bucknell (10-9 W OT) to claim the program’s second league title in three years.  At the NCAA Championship hosted by the University of Southern California, St. Francis fell to the University of California-Los Angeles (17-3 L) before overcoming the United States Air Force Academy (14-8 W) behind 16 saves and an All-NCAA Championship First Team performance by Mladenovic to take home Third Place.

Mladenovic’s First Team All-NCAA Championship award places him in elite company as Dan O’Connell (1983, Loyola University Chicago), Luis Limardo (1995, University of Massachusetts), Brian Stahl (1996 & 2000, Massachusetts), John Vasek (1997, Queens College), Pat Kain (1999, Massachusetts), Michael Vieira (2002, Queens) and Thomas Nelson (2011, Princeton) are the only other athletes from an institution east of the California state line to receive recognition as the elite-of the-best at an NCAA Men’s Water Polo Championship tournament.

The Third Place finish marked the seventh time a CWPA institution claimed a top three finish at the NCAA Championship via competition joining Massachusetts (1999), Princeton (2009, 2011), Queens College (1997, 2002) and Navy (2007).  Since the elimination of the NCAA Championship Third Place game prior to the start of the 2016 season, both non-advancing semifinal teams were credited with Third Place – a mark both Harvard (2016) and Princeton (2023) have achieved over the subsequent years.

Mladenovic capped off his intercollegiate career in 2013 by allowing 175 goals with 232 saves and 50 steals in a 23-12 season for the Terriers to repeat as Northern and CWPA Champions.

St. Francis finished 10-2 to claim the Northern Division regular season title before handling Connecticut College (17-1 W), Brown (10-7 W) and host Harvard (12-4 W) at the Northern Division Championship tournament.  At the Eastern Championship hosted by Brown, the Terriers stopped George Washington University (14-6 W), Bucknell (10-6 W) and Princeton (11-9 W) to repeat as CWPA Champions and earn another berth to the NCAA Championship.

At the NCAA Championship hosted by Stanford University, the Terriers took down the University of California-San Diego (6-5 W) before falling against the University of Southern California (10-3 L) and the host Cardinal (17-2 L) to earn a Fourth Place finish.

For his efforts, he received All-NCAA Tournament Second Team recognition to join Mike Mulvey (2008 Second Team; 2007 Second Team) and Aaron Recko (2007 Second Team; 2006 Second Team) of the United States Naval Academy along with Stahl (2000, 1996) and Kain (2000, 1999) of Massachusetts as the only two-time All-NCAA Tournament selections from outside California.  The number of athletes selected each season has fluctuated as a Second Team was not selected for All-Tournament honors prior to 2004.

He concluded his time in an SFC cap by earning Northern Division Most Valuable Player (MVP) and All-Northern Division First Team status to accompany repeating as an ACWPC All-America Third Team honoree.

A 2015 graduate of St. Francis with Bachelor of Science degrees in Accounting and Economics prior to earning a Masters of Science, he completed his tenure in Brooklyn by serving as a volunteer assistant coach for the St. Francis Brooklyn teams during the 2013 (Northern Division – Third Place; CWPA Championship – Fourth Place) and 2014 (Northern Division – Third Place; CWPA Championship – Fifth Place) seasons.

A scholar and an athlete, Mladenovic achieved his athletic success while also maintaining a 3.65 cumulative grade point average and holding a 20 hours per week internship at Merrill Lynch.

Away from campus and work, he found time to volunteer to coach high school water polo with the Brooklyn Heights water polo club and participated in the Wounded Warrior Project by aiding disabled soldiers with swimming and scuba diving.

He is currently the Senior Manager for Capital Markets with Ernst & Young in New York and is a founding member of the Serbian Philanthropic Association, an organization that helps charities such as BELhospice (a beacon of hope and comfort for terminally ill children in Serbia) and The Feel to Heal program (led by the Novak Djokovic Foundation to help empowers children with essential emotional intelligence skills, vital for personal and professional success) among other causes for the betterment of society.