Mendez-Trendler Pursuing Lofty Goals

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — The day may well come when Dani Mendez-Trendler has to choose between pursuing a medical degree and continuing her field hockey career, but a decision won’t be required anytime soon. Mendez-Trendler, a member of the United States’ Under-21 national team, has just started her third year at the University of Virginia, where she’s majoring in biology.

One of her goals is to play for the U.S. senior national team at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. That, Mendez-Trendler said, “would be an awesome and amazing experience.”  Then again, she might opt to head straight to med school after graduating from UVA.

“There’s definitely a lot of different pathways that I could take,” Mendez-Trendler said, “and that’s a conversation that I’ve been having with my family, recently, about the next steps. But right now, I think the best advice I’m just giving myself is just to take it day by day. There’s no rush. There’s so much time and I’m so young that I just need to take it day by day and just let life take its course and see how things go.”

Her pre-med schedule is demanding, Mendez-Trendler said, and she occasionally has to miss class when the field hockey team is on the road. “But all the professors have been very accommodating, really understanding, supportive even, and they have everything online pretty much, so that’s been really nice,” she said. “And it’s allowed me to not fall behind on work as well. It’s just balancing everything. I do work on the bus, on the plane. So any time I have any sort of free time when I’m traveling to do work, that’s when I’m taking advantage of it and doing so.”

This is her third year as a starter for the Wahoos, who advanced to the NCAA semifinals in 2023. Mendez-Trendler, an attacking midfielder who was born and raised in the Baltimore area, led Virginia in goals scored (nine) and points (27) and was second on the team in assists (nine). She was a third-team All-American in 2022 and a first-team all-region selection in 2023.

Mendez scored the game-winning goals against Saint Joseph’s and Maryland in last year’s NCAA tournament.

“She’s a rare combination of skill and power, which especially when you play up front gives you opportunities that not a lot of players can provide, and she does that almost perfectly,” UVA head coach Ole Keusgen said. “When there’s not much space, she has the ability to create her own situation pretty much out of nothing.”

That a career in medicine interests Mendez-Trendler is no surprise. Her father is an anesthesiologist and her mother is a certified registered nurse anesthetist. Both work at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

“I feel like I’ve just been around it so much my entire life,” said Mendez-Trendler, who gravitated toward STEM classes as a student at Garrison Forest School in Owings Mill, Md.

Her participation on the U21 national team has limited her availability for internships in the medical field, but she’s shadowed doctors at Hopkins, “so that’s been a really cool experience,” Mendez-Trendler said.

That field hockey became her sport of choice is no surprise, either. Her mother, the former Aileen Trendler, was a first-team All-American in field hockey at Iowa and helped the Hawkeyes win the NCAA title in 1986.

“She loved competing, she loved playing,” Mendez-Trendler said. “I guess that’s where I got my competitive spirit from.”

As a young girl, she played soccer on a team that her mother coached. “I just didn’t like soccer at all, I just didn’t enjoy it,” Mendez-Trendler recalled. “I wanted to quit really bad, and my mom told me I had to pick another sport. I knew she’d played field hockey, so I told her I wanted to try it out. She was a little bit hesitant at first, because she didn’t think I’d be committed to it, but I really convinced her that I would. Then we just started practicing in the driveway, and she’s teaching me little skills and dribbling through cones and all that good stuff. I fell in love with it and never looked back.”

Mendez-Trendler’s talent did not go unnoticed. She made a junior national team when she was 14 and has played with USA Field Hockey ever since.

“Getting to compete and travel around the world has been really awesome,” she said, “and playing at the highest level of competition has been really cool too. So it’s been a really great experience.”

Mendez-Trendler committed to UVA in the fall of her junior year at Garrison Forest. After seriously considering several schools, she decided Virginia offered the best opportunity for her to “grow, not only a player and athlete, but also as a person in general. I just feel like UVA has that environment where everyone’s always working hard. I look around and everyone’s grinding it out, and that gives me motivation to do the same. So I feel like UVA just has that energy that I enjoy the most.”

Her international résumé continues to grow. Mendez-Trendler has played for the U21 national team in Ireland, Barbados, Chile and Canada. In July, she and her UVA teammates Jans Croon and Mia Abello helped the United States finish runner-up at the Junior Pan American Championships in British Columbia.

“It’s really cool that we get to connect in another way and get to represent the country together,” said Mendez-Trendler, who turned 20 in June.

Her focus this fall is on her college team. The third-ranked Cavaliers play their home opener Friday at Turf Field. Virginia (1-0) meets Temple (2-0) at 5 p.m. The Owls’ head coach is former UVA great Michelle Vittesse, whose assistant is another former Virginia standout, her sister Carissa.

UVA plays No. 11 Liberty in Lynchburg on Sunday afternoon.

This is Keusgen’s first season as the Hoos’ head coach, though he’s been part of the program since 2015. He was promoted from assistant coach to associate head coach in May 2021 and then was named acting head coach before the start of last year’s ACC tournament. UVA removed “acting” from his title after the season.

In its six games under Keusgen last year, Virginia posted a 4-2 record, with both losses to eventual NCAA champion North Carolina. In the NCAA quarterfinals, UVA blanked Maryland 4-0 in College Park to reach the Final Four for the first time since 2019.

“Just being able to do that, I think, was an awesome experience and a great step in progressing our program and getting the respect that our program does rightly deserve,” Mendez-Trendler said.

She’s not the only veteran back from last year’s team. The Cavaliers’ other returning players include Croon, Abello, Noa Boterman, Taryn Tkachuk, Emily Field, Minnie Pollock, twins Lily and Meghen Hengerer, and goalkeepers Tyler Kennedy and Nilou Lempers.

In a poll of the league’s coaches, the Hoos were picked to win the ACC, and they’ve embraced those expectations.

“We’re definitely more motivated than ever,” Mendez-Trendler said. “We really want to beat out the competition. We’re hungry to be the best and we want to win and we want to dominate, to be honest. So it’s just giving us a lot of motivation, and I think it shows at practice. We’re always going at it with each other but in a good, spirited way.”

Keusgen has implemented a new system that gives players more freedom on the field. “There’s not really a certain way that we want to play,” Mendez-Trendler said. “He wants us to play free and just make the right decisions, to be honest, and I respect that he allows us to play with that freedom. So that’s been great, and the players have loved Ole coaching. He’s been with us for such a long time and he’s just been great. Everyone loves him, everyone respects him. So he’s been doing a phenomenal job with taking over the team and inspiring us to just go out there and compete and be our best selves and get one percent better every day.”

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