Dutch Import's Impact Transcends Statistics

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Pien Dicke played only one season of field hockey at the University of Virginia, but she’s still contributing to her college program.

After being named ACC Freshman of the Year in 2017, Dicke returned home to the Netherlands to enter its national team development system, and her star continues to rise in the sport.

In August, Dicke helped the Netherlands win the Olympic gold medal in Paris, She’s also a standout for the SCHC club in Bilthoven, a village in the Dutch province of Utrecht, where her younger teammates include Suze Leemans (pronounced SUE-sah LAY-mons). When she learned that Leemans was interested in enrolling at UVA and playing for head coach Ole Keusgen, Dicke raved about the University.

“She said that she loved it,” Leemans recalled. “She said that, if she could have, she would have stayed for four years. She really liked Ole as well. She had only good words to say.”

Leemans, a 5-foot-8 midfielder, signed with the Cavaliers in April and arrived in Charlottesville in late July. With five goals and two assists, she has 12 points this season, which ties her with Emma Watchilla for second on the team. (Dani Mendez-Trendler leads the Wahoos with 14 points).

Keusgen said Leemans’ statistics don’t fully reflect her impact on the field.

“She does way more than the stat sheets says, even defensively,” Keusgen said. “That never shows up. We hoped coming in that she would be fantastic, and she’s every bit what we hoped she would be.”

This has been an exceptional regular season for the Hoos, who will play twice more before the ACC tournament starts. Their first game comes Friday in Chapel Hill, N.C. At 5 p.m., No. 4 Virginia (12-2 overall, 5-1 ACC) meets No. 1 North Carolina (12-0, 5-0). The Tar Heels have won five of the past six NCAA championships.

For Leemans, who’d been to the United States only once, in 2018, before visiting Charlottesville in February, her experience at UVA has been everything she hoped it would be.

“I really love it here,” Leemans said. “The field hockey is so much fun.”

At the college level in the U.S., she said, the sports differs from what she was accustomed to playing for her club in Holland, “but it makes sense because everybody here is ages between 18 and 22. Back home, the ages range from 18 to 30. So it’s a difference in experience. It’s just really a different kind of game, I think. But it’s fun over here in that there’s just more space for creativity, just more space in general, I think.”

She’s only 20, but Leemans came to UVA as a graduate student, having earned a bachelor’s degree in law in three years at Utretcht University in the Netherlands. Utretcht is about at 30 miles southeast of Amsterdam.

At UVA, she’s enrolled in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Eventually, Leemans plans to earn a master’s in criminal law and become a public prosecutor back in Holland, but she’s enjoying what she’s learning in Batten.

“It’s really interesting,” she said, “because it’s so different than law and anything I’ve ever learned. And especially doing something like leadership over here, it’s really cool because we don’t really have that in Holland back home.”

Leemans, who’s fluent in Dutch and English, lives with teammates Noa Boterman and Jans Croon. Boterman is from Laren, a town in the Netherlands. Croon was born in the Netherlands and lived there until she was 13, when she moved to the U.S.

“Especially the first few weeks, you have to adjust to the language, to the people, to the environment, to everything,” Leemans said, “so it’s really nice to have someone who you can speak your own language with and you share the same cultural background. So it’s been great. They’ve helped me a lot and I really like it.”

When she’s with Boterman and Croon, Leemans said, they converse in Dutch. When they’re around others who don’t know that language, including another roommate, UVA tennis player Nicole Kiefer, they stick to English. Her teammates have helped Leemans get familiar with the Charlottesville area’s many attractions.

“Obviously, during season now it’s so busy,” Leemans said, “and you don’t have the time to do those kinds of stuff, but in pre-season we did have more time and, yeah, it’s really nice here. It’s pretty, with all kinds of different things to do.”

Her parents visited Charlottesville a few weeks ago, “and they had more time to go around and do stuff,” Leemans said. “So they went on hikes, and they love it here as well.”

Keusgens marvels at how seamlessly Leemans’ transition has gone this year.

“The concern is always there, because at the end of the day you never know, because it is so new, but she is so confident and so mature already, it didn’t create any problems whatsoever,” Keusgen said. “She was integrated from day one. That sounds a little exaggerated, but that’s exactly what it is. She moved into an apartment right away with Noa and Jans, so from day one they were kind of close.”

Leemans was born in Gouda, about 50 miles south of Amsterdam. When she was two years old, her family moved to Velp, a village near the Dutch city of Arnhem, which is not far from Germany. She lived there until enrolling at Utretcht University, where she was able to pursue an area of interest.

“I’ve always been into detectives and true crime and listening to crime podcasts,” she said. And so when she learned that her university offered a bachelor’s degree in law, Leemans said, “I was like, ‘Wow, this is perfect.’ ”

She’s fan of both American and Dutch crime podcasts, including one titled “Napleiten.” It’s produced in the Netherlands, and its hosts “speak with lawyers and public prosecutors and judges on cases they’ve done,” Leemans said, “and they also delve a bit more into the law behind the case. So that’s very interesting to me.”

Leemans didn’t want to immediately start a master’s program in the Netherlands after earning her bachelor’s degree, “because then I would be done when I was 21, and for me, it was just a bit too early.”

One of her mentors suggested that Leemans consider attending a university in the U.S. and playing field hockey there. “And I knew a lot of girls who did it, teammates, friends,” Leemans said. “It’s very common thing to do.”

She wasn’t sure initially if she’d be eligible to play in the NCAA, “but I looked into it and reached out to an agency that helps out with connecting Dutch girls with colleges, and it turned out it was still possible,” Leeman said. “And then UVA reached out and I went on a visit here and it’s been great.”

Keusgen said the coaching staff’s recruiting strategy is to first “sell the University, which is an easy sell, obviously, in combination with Charlottesville. But then it is our team, I think, that made a big difference. Just the environment we create, the warm welcome that everyone receives here. She said the team made all the difference.”

Leemans enjoyed watching Olympic field hockey with her new teammates over the summer. The Netherlands took gold in both the men’s and women’s tournaments, to the chagrin of Keusgen, who’s from Germany.

She and her Dutch teammates “had a bit of a rivalry with Ole,” Leemans recalled, laughing. “It was so much fun.”

Leemans, who turns 21 in February, arrived on Grounds with two seasons of eligibility remaining, and she hopes to play for the Cavaliers again next fall while working on a master’s degree in Batten.

Keusgen would love to have her for a second season.

“She scores goals and assists, but in terms of leadership and setting the tone in practice and games, that is something people don’t necessarily see, particularly not in numbers,” Keusgen said. “But she’s a program-changing player, not only on the field but in the environment she creates.

“She’s an outstanding student. She’s still very young. You forget she’s so young because she appears so mature already. She’s a very bright student, so we’re very grateful that she picked us.”

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