van Aalsum leads Iowa field hockey through competitive Big Ten schedule

IOWA CITY — Dionne van Aalsum got hit twice in the foot against Northwestern. Hard.

The first one ricocheted off her right shin guard with a loud smack. Fans watching from Grant Field all had an audible reaction as Northwestern reset the play. The next play, the ball drove right into her foot again.

This time, she went down. The sharp pain forced her to limp off the field in the final moments of the third quarter. van Aalsum took a few moments to regain her compsure on the sideline while getting her foot checked out by the Iowa athletic trainers.

Field hockey coach Lisa Cellucci knew her veteran forward could finish the game, though. It was tied 1-1 through three quarters of field hockey. The Hawkeyes, sitting as the No. 10 team in the country, had a chance to topple the No. 1 team in the nation on home turf, and start 2-0 Big Ten play.

“That woman has fought through pain her entire career,” Cellucci said. “You know, when she goes down, she's never really out, so I wasn't surprised at all.”

Though the Wildcats scored twice in the final frame to win, 3-1, van Aalsum’s return helped re-instate the effort Cellucci praised at the end of the game.

Specifically, Iowa’s defensive effort.

“We just found ourselves defending, defending, defending,” Cellucci said. “With that said, probably the best defensive game we've played all year.”

Iowa (7-2, 1-1 Big Ten) sits in sixth in the Big Ten, but is the only other team in the conference aside from first place Northwestern (10-0, 2-0 Big Ten) to have won every road game so far this season.

With five Big Ten programs ranked, Cellucci knows the conference is open for the taking. Iowa’s only two losses are to the country’s two most recent national champions — Northwestern, the reigning champions, and North Carolina, the dynasty in the national conversation nearly every season.

Both games against the two foes, Iowa scored the first goal. Both times were goals scored by van Aalsum.

“It's really nice for us to just get those opportunities, even if it's not a goal in the first place, it's like a realization, ‘oh, this is working,’” van Aaslum said. “We can keep doing that and then building off of that. So I would say it's pretty important.”

van Aalsum leads the Hawkeyes with 17 goals, recording 40 shots on goal. She’s on pace to reach, or even surpass, her career-high 28 goals from 2023. The Netherlands-born junior has started in all but one game of her collegiate career, too.

With how successful van Aalsum is, she’s often double-teamed by opponents. That’s where Cellucci wants her program to continue evolving through the final seven games of the regular season — find the other open forwards to generate quality chances, particularly in 11-on-11 scenarios and not just relying on penalty corners.

“I think it continues to give her confidence and the team,” Cellucci said. “She carries a lot every game, but she does have a supporting cast, and I think that's what we have to show. We had options to use other people, and we didn't find them in transition.”

Cellucci said at the beginning of the season she believes the Hawkeyes can show significant improvement from last year to now. Taking the best team in the country to the wire made that statement. Now it becomes going from a nail-biting ending to the all-important upset victory.

“They're a really good team, and we are too,” van Aalsum said. “So play against them, yes, it's a tough game, but ... besides the results, we played a really good game and a lot of effort.”

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