Iowa field hockey freshman Dionne van Aalsum on pace to ‘rewrite record books’

IOWA CITY — As Iowa head field hockey coach Lisa Cellucci recruits athletes from across the world, other schools “negatively recruit all the time.”

“They’re like, ‘What are you going to do in Iowa?’” Cellucci said.

In Dionne van Aalsum’s case, the answer has been scoring a lot of goals.

Van Aalsum, despite only being a freshman, leads the country with 23 goals through 11 games, and it’s not particularly close.

The next-best player, Caroline Ramsey of Cornell, has 17 goals. Ohio State’s Makenna Webster has 14 goals.

Van Aalsum individually has more goals than most Division I field hockey programs have as entire teams. That includes two of Iowa’s next three opponents — Indiana and Louisville.

“She is on pace right now to just rewrite record books,” Cellucci told The Gazette.

Van Aalsum’s 2.06 goals per game, if continued through the rest of the season, would be substantially higher than any field hockey athlete in the previous 10 seasons. UConn’s Charlotte Veitner was the closest to van Aalsum’s current mark with 1.7 goals per game in 2015.

It’s not only the volume of the goals that stand out, but the consistency. Van Aalsum has scored at least one goal in 10 of the Hawkeyes’ 11 games this season. She scored two-plus goals in each of Iowa’s first eight games.

Van Aalsum is having plenty of fun in the process. She views playing college field hockey as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

“Every game and every practice is a fun moment for me,” van Aalsum said. “I’m really enjoying it.”

One of the bigger cultural surprises for the Dutch midfielder has been “that the sport is so big in college.”

“Because in the Netherlands, you don’t have that,” van Aalsum said. “Here, it’s like the most professional sport you can see, so that’s really cool to be a part of that.”

Van Aalsum attributed her success to “a lot of practice hours” and asking questions.

“If I don’t know something, just ask about it,” van Aalsum said. “And really put the effort into knowing how to play with the girls and just being more of a team every day.”

At “just under six feet,” van Aalsum brings a unique combination of size and speed.

“She's faster with the ball than she is without it,” Cellucci said. “She just turns it into another gear when she gets going.”

She also has a “great knack to be able to sense pressure” and react, Cellucci said.

“She has one of the highest hockey IQs on our team,” Cellucci said. “Tactically, this has been a pretty seamless transition for her.”

It helps that van Aalsum started playing field hockey at an early age. By the time she was in her later years of secondary school, she was playing in the highest youth league for her age group.

“The level of play and skill is so much higher there because they play on astroturf from such an early age,” Cellucci said. “It’s really, really set her up well.”

Cellucci has noticed a “quiet confidence” from van Aalsum.

“She knows she can get it done, and she just does it,” Cellucci said.

That confidence was especially on display as the Hawkeyes were having “a little bit of a tough time” early in their game last month against Vermont.

"I called her over and gave her a different penalty corner look that wasn’t on our set plays of what we were doing," Callucci said. "I'm like, 'Do you understand that?'"

It was not much of a question for Van Aalsum.

“Don’t worry about it, I got this,” Cellucci remembers Van Aalsum telling her. “I’ll get a few.”

Van Aalsum was not just talking about a few good looks. She was talking about a few goals, and she delivered with three goals in the win over the Catamounts.

"In the games that Dionne scored three or four goals, that’s like scoring 40 points in basketball,“ Cellucci said.

Many people have brought up the idea of van Aalsum being the “Caitlin Clark of field hockey,” but Cellucci is hesitant to put the pressure that comes with that label on van Aalsum.

“I can see why people are saying that,” Cellucci said. “I’ll take it because Caitlin Clark’s unbelievable. … But we still have a lot of hockey left to play, so let’s see how the second half of the season goes.”

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Opposing teams have taken notice of van Aalsum’s success and increasingly game-planned against her.

“They’re going to be a little bit more onto me, but that’s fine,” van Aalsum said. “I have to work with it, so just keep doing what I’m doing and just be more aware of the people around me.”

By the third weekend of the season, Cellucci noticed opponents “definitely had their eye on her.”

“The biggest learning curve for her is going to be now that she’s so identified and then teams double- and triple-teaming her,” Cellucci said.

That learning curve is unlikely to let up in the near future with four of the Hawkeyes’ six remaining regular-season opponents ranked in the top 10 of the coaches poll.

Already, van Aalsum has “really helped accelerate” the Hawkeyes’ rebuild after losing eight seniors last year, Cellucci said. Iowa was the No. 1 team in the country for several weeks this season and now is No. 3.

Iowa has scored more goals through the first 11 games of this season (45) than it scored in all 20 games in 2022 (40).

As is the case for any team ranked as highly as Iowa has been ranked, the Hawkeyes’ success has been a result of more than just the van Aalsum-led scoring outburst.

Iowa has held nine of 11 opponents to no more than one goal, with the exceptions being No. 1 North Carolina in overtime and then-No. 11 Ohio State.

“Iowa historically has always been so great defensively,” said Cellucci, a former goalkeeper at Iowa in the 1990s. “That’s kind of been our bread and butter.”

Now, Iowa has some scoring spice along with its metaphorical bread and butter.

“Having a goal-scorer like that and knowing that you can count on some efficiency, it’s been unbelievable,” Cellucci said.

Remaining games for No. 3 Iowa field hockey

Oct. 6 vs. No. 2 Northwestern (3 p.m., Big Ten Network)

Oct. 13 at Indiana (2 p.m.)

Oct. 15 at No. 5 Louisville (11 a.m.)

Oct. 20 at No. 9 Maryland (4 p.m.)

Oct. 22 at No. 16 Penn State (11 a.m.)

Oct. 27 vs. No. 6 Rutgers (4 p.m., B1G+ streaming service)

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Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com