From Belgium to Syracuse and Back Again: Orange Defender Zoe Van de Cloot
After a disappointing 2-1 loss to the University of Miami in their first ACC game of the season, the Syracuse women’s soccer team regrouped and boarded a plane with their destination being their familiar New York campus. One member of that group instead was heading home – defender Zoe Van de Cloot broke off from her team and hopped on a flight to Belgium, ready to participate in a training camp with her country’s international team.
In her third year with the squad, Van de Cloot has become a regular starter for the 2023 edition of the Syracuse women’s soccer team. While the Orange sit in the basement of the ACC without a win in-conference, Van de Cloot has been a standout. The defender plays with heart and a seemingly endless drive even in games that are out of reach. But Van de Cloot hasn’t started all 17 possible games for Syracuse – she missed back-to-back matchups with Florida State and Virginia Tech in mid-September to train with the Belgian international team.
Van de Cloot grew up in Zoersel, Belgium, and found the beautiful game at a very young age. Her footballing story began when she was six – “I had a cousin who played, and I went to his games,” Van de Cloot said. “My friends were there and I kinda played on the sidelines with my friends and the coach was like, come to practice.”
She was a natural, joining the boys’ team KFC Antonia by the time she was eight. Van de Cloot developed into a quick and versatile defender, and when she was just 12 years old, her coach received a letter that would change the young girl’s life – an invitation to join the Belgian national U-15 team.
“I think they just sent my coach… a letter. There’s another girl who lives like 20 minutes from me who was like ‘oh were you selected?’ so we were both selected, and we were like best friends,” Van de Cloot recounted. “So, it was really fun, we went to the base camp for the first time together and it was like ‘oh shit, it’s like for real now.’
It’s a surreal feeling for anyone to represent their country on an international stage, and for some footballers it’s lifelong dream that may never be fulfilled. For Van de Cloot, that first international call-up came at a young age. But she wasn’t satisfied with playing at the youth level, and said it was a long-term goal of hers to play for the top team – one that was achieved in the summer of 2023.
“This summer I was selected for the first time with the first team, and it was the biggest honor I could have in my soccer career. That was really fun, and I’m still trying to be there every time I can, consistently with the first team,” Van de Cloot said. “I think for me it’s the biggest achievement I can do, so I’m really happy with it. It makes me proud.”
But before Van de Cloot was able to take the step forward to the first team, she had a couple of pit stops she had to make on the way. The first one was nearly as foreign as the moon to an 18-year-old girl who grew up in the outskirts of the Belgian province of Antwerp – the University of Central Arkansas.
Van de Cloot arrived in Arkansas as one of the less than four percent of the student body made up by international students at the university, and the only international member of the soccer team she was joining. While Van de Cloot is a fluent speaker these days, her English was shaky at the time. “I could say like hi, how are you…” Van de Cloot remembered. “I watched a lot of Netflix TV shows because I knew I was going, but I was very nervous.”
The freshman was taken under the wing of older girls on the team immediately, with her first days in America highlighted by trips to Starbucks and Dunkin. “It was quite funny – the first day I arrived my roommates decorated my room, because I lived in a dorm, they had a basket of all American candy, American drinks, they were like ‘try this, try this’,” Van de Cloot smiled.
Despite the warm welcome, there were definite hurdles in the adjustment period. Van de Cloot tells stories about how it took her nearly a month to start to understand certain terms in English, saying that “it was kind of rough at the beginning when Coach was communicating with me on the sidelines while I was playing and I was like, I just don’t understand you.”
For most of the international students at Central Arkansas, the most valuable resources can be found in the university’s classrooms and libraries. But for Van de Cloot, the best education she could get was to be found with her teammates. “I had to speak English because I was with them the whole time,” Van de Cloot said. “If I was not on a team, I probably wouldn’t have spoken to that many people because I was nervous, and my English probably wouldn’t have improved that fast.”
Van de Cloot’s English wasn’t the only thing improving – the defender’s first season playing “soccer” instead of “football” was a success. The defender started all 18 games she played for the Bears, scoring two goals and registering six assists. While her high level of play earned her a transfer to a higher-level ACC school, Van de Cloot is grateful for her time in Arkansas. “I felt very welcome,” she said. “I’m still very close with them right now, even though I only spent a year with them.”
Syracuse, New York ended up being the next stop for Van de Cloot. She became a part of the starting lineup in the first game of her sophomore year and has been on head coach Nicky Adam’s team sheet 33 times over her three seasons in orange and blue. The versatile defender says that she’s grown a lot as a player over her three seasons in Syracuse and has been garnering praise back in Belgium for how she’s improved. “One of the biggest things is my physicality, like I got a lot faster,” Van de Cloot said. “Now at home they’re like really impressed, as I’m stronger than most girls.”
Van de Cloot believes that her physical improvement is a result of not only the training regimen the women on the soccer team go through every day but also the difference in the American collegiate game, which she says is more physical and direct. “At the beginning I was very small, and I wasn’t as strong, and here it’s important to be fast, strong, all that stuff,” she said. “I think that’s one of the biggest differences [between soccer in the U.S. and Belgium].”
Another key point that Van de Cloot believes she’s learned from playing in Syracuse that helps her succeed with the national team has to do with mentality. While in Belgium most teams only play once a week, it’s regular in collegiate soccer to be playing twice. Van de Cloot explained how this has helped improve her mindset - “You play Thursday, and you win, or you lose it doesn’t really matter, because Sunday you have a new game,” she said. “For every game it’s a new fight, and it doesn’t matter what happened – you have to go 100% again.”
But mentality alone isn’t enough to fully get away from the grind of a long season, especially one where wins have been hard to find. Van de Cloot’s job is even harder than most players on the team, leaving the squad at times to fly back and forth to Belgium – something she says is very tough on her body. The defender was selected to train with the national team again in late October but is planning on staying in Syracuse to finish the collegiate season and complete her midterm exams.
“I think every month going home for two weeks is too much, it’s really fun to be home but at camp it’s a very strict schedule – we have meetings, we have team-building – we have no time off,” Van de Cloot says. “Whenever I fly back here, I’m jetlagged and then I have to play a game. For me, that’s tough.”
Although it’s a major commitment and interferes with her collegiate season, there’s a reason Van de Cloot is willing to make these concessions for the chance to play for her country. It’s easy to tell how much she cares about Belgium when she talks about the difference between playing for Syracuse and her national team. “I love playing for Syracuse, and it’s a big honor to play here, but for the national team I go every two months,” Van de Cloot said. “Then it’s the Belgian national anthem, and here it’s the American national anthem, so obviously for me the Belgian national anthem moves me a little bit more.”
At the end of the day, Van de Cloot just wants to play the game she loves. “Maybe I’m a little bit more nervous for the national team, but for both teams I just want to give it my all,” she said. “I like to play soccer so it’s not that different, I’m maybe just a little bit more nervous when I play at home [for Belgium].”
Van de Cloot is planning to take her fifth year and continue to play for Syracuse in 2024. After dual majoring in Finance and Supply Chain Management, the senior is still deciding what she wants to pursue with a potential master’s degree. Van de Cloot says that she plans to return to Europe after graduating to pursue her dream of playing soccer after college, still pursuing her dream to represent Belgium on an international stage.
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