One of Maryland field hockey (11-1, B1G 5-0) newcomers has transitioned seamlessly from the Ivy League cellar to a National Champion contender in the best field hockey conference in the country.
Graduate student midfielder Danielle van Rootselaar transferred from Brown to Maryland this season and has been one of the Terps’ top players.
Van Rootselaar is easy to spot on the pitch with her height, standing at six feet and her red hair pulled back in a ponytail.
In three seasons at Brown, van Rootselaar scored 25 goals, tallied 16 assists, and led Brown in goals last season with 12. With van Rootselaar, Brown’s best season was 2018, when the Bears finished with a 7-10 record.
The Terps have surpassed that record and look to win their first regular season Big Ten Title since 2019.
“I think everyone on the Brown team really looks up to the Big Ten and ACC,” van Rootselaar said at fall media day back in August. “We are almost like fangirls. I can tell you every single person on the Brown team knows every single player on the Maryland team. We would watch their games in the locker room.”
Now, her former teammates look up to her.
At Maryland, instead of being the star, van Rootselaar gets to play alongside a plethora of talented players in her quest to win a National Championship.
So far, van Rootselaar has scored nine goals, second highest on the team, recorded two assists, and leads the team in shots with 66. van Rootselaar has scored seven goals off penalty corners, and the others were unassisted.
“I think she’s never had the luxury of trusting a lot of people around her, and every day at training and every game, she starts to trust more so she can be freed up to do what she is great at,” head coach Missy Meharg said.” She’s a one-on-one beast; she’ll win that battle.”
Van Rootselaar has fit right in, winning her teammates over before even playing a game with them as she is already one of three team captains for the 2022 season.
“Her want to just be great and do great, and she came in here so strong and ready to play,” defender Rayne Wright said. “It just made her integration into the team so great because she is looking at the same goal, wanting to do the same things as us, and it’s just been awesome.”
Despite the increase of talent around her, van Rootselaar is still finding ways to shine on the pitch.
van Rootselaar single-handedly has won three games for Maryland, including the Terps’ two biggest wins of the season.
Van Rootselaar scored all four of Maryland’s goals this past weekend, including two overtime game-winners, earning Maryland upsets against both No. 2 Northwestern, the defending National Champions, and No. 3 Iowa.
van Rootselaar also scored the lone goal in the team’s match against Stanford back in August.
After her four goal weekend performance, van Rootselaar took home the Big Ten and NFHCA Division I Offensive Player of the Week awards.
At Brown, the best teams van Rootselaar faced were Harvard and Princeton a combined six times, but this season will face 12 ranked teams, many she had never faced before.
“So what she’s done actually to train to be ready to be here is remarkable,” Meharg said at fall media day back in August. “I’m blown away at how prepared you (Danielle) are.”
Still, van Rootselaar radiates with confidence no matter the opponent or ranking.
“It’s maybe easier for me to go into hard games like these because they’ve played Northwestern and Iowa so many times, but I don’t know what they play like,” van Rootselaar said. “I don’t know that they’re that good, so I go into it more open-minded.”
Van Rootselaar is a major contributor on a team eyeing another deep postseason run and looking for their first National Championship since 2011.
By the season’s end, Maryland will have faced six of the current teams in the top ten.
