Stevenson alum Van Zanten: Notre Dame women's soccer team will do whatever it takes to keep playing

Two years ago, Kiki Van Zanten was flush with gratitude.

The former Stevenson High School student had chosen to play club soccer instead of high school soccer as a freshman, sophomore and junior.

Van Zanten was serious about getting a college soccer scholarship, and good enough, too. She saw club soccer, which often plays at the same time as high school soccer, as her most direct route.

But club soccer is missing one thing. Lifelong friends.

As a senior in the spring of 2019, Van Zanten asked to join her high school team, hoping to get one last opportunity to play with the same girls she grew up with on Buffalo Grove's park district fields.

"I got to play a whole season with the girls I played with when I was 7 and 8 years old," Van Zanten said. "Playing high school soccer, you get to play with the friends that you grew up with, you get to play for your community.

"I'm really glad I got to play (for Stevenson) my senior year."

Now, two years later, soccer is again bringing out an overwhelming sense of gratitude in Van Zanten.

She is grateful for simply getting to play soccer at all.

A sophomore at Notre Dame, Van Zanten is playing in games. Against other college teams.

Sounds simple enough, but Van Zanten recognizes the heavy significance.

The Atlantic Coast Conference elected to play a women's soccer season this fall. But other conferences across the country, such as the Big Ten, decided to push the soccer season and other fall sports seasons to the spring, due to concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Like she did at Stevenson High School during her senior year, Van Zanten is again taking advantage of this unique opportunity. With 4 goals, she is Notre Dame's leading scorer three games into the season.

Van Zanten, a 5-foot-8 forward, is coming off her first career hat trick, a 3-goal effort for Notre Dame (2-1) in a 6-0 win at Miami on Sept. 20.

Van Zanten is picking up where she finished her freshman season in the fall of 2019 in which she scored four goals (ranking her fourth on the team), played in 20 games and made two starts.

"It's so amazing being able to have a season," Van Zanten said. "We all understand that we are extremely lucky to be playing right now, at a school that has the ability to create a safe environment for us to practice and play.

"Everyone on our team has been very good about recognizing the bigger picture and thinking about our goals at the end of the season and doing whatever it takes to get there."

While the University of Notre Dame has had outbreaks in the general student body and the football team was forced to cancel its Sept. 26 game at Wake Forest due to seven positive COVID tests on the team and 13 players in isolation, Van Zanten says the women's soccer team has stayed remarkably COVID-free.

"Our team has been really good about not hanging out with other sports, or going to large gatherings," Van Zanten said. "We have been so good with what we're doing on the field with disinfecting everything and having our own water bottles and our own pennies and we're not even allowed to touch the cones, little things like that ... they make difference.

"And we're being good off the field, too. We wear masks all the time, we social distance, we sanitize and wash our hands all the time. We're in small groups.

"We all are just so glad to get the chance to play. We want to play so bad that we will do whatever we can to stay healthy."

Twitter: @babcockmcgraw