Diede van Laar '25 Recruiting Profile

Hi Coaches, thank you for taking the time to get to know me a little! My name is Diede and I'm 17 years old. I come from Utrecht, the Netherlands. This is my 3rd season playing soccer and I absolutely love it. In the past two seasons I've learned a lot. Not only have I mastered the basics of goalkeeping, but I also found my own unique way of goalkeeping. I think that I can make a good candidate for your team because I love learning new things, I am a very disciplined and focused person. If I would ask my teammates to describe me, I think they would say I’m a leader, and a perfectionist. Sometimes being a perfectionist is hard, because I always critique myself and I’m never happy with my performance because I know what I’m capable of, and if I didn’t fully show what I’m capable of, I’m not satisfied. Even Though I’m hard on myself, I think it makes me better because I strive for perfection. What I also think makes me different from others is that I have a very long background in gymnastics. I’ve done gymnastics since I was 4 years old.  Even though I quit 5 years ago, I notice the advantages it gives me physically and mentally like, flexibility, coordination, strength building, discipline building, increased focus, and overall athleticism. Last summer I went to a trainingscamp  at AJAX, I am proud to say I received the award of most valuable goalkeeper at the end of the week. Academic wise I’m barely familiar with the American education system. In my country (the Netherlands) the grades go from 1-10, 10 being a perfect score. My average score is a 7. Also the education levels are already split at the age of 12, vmbo kader is the lowest level, VWO is the highest level. I am studying at VWO level, which I think is compatible with Honour level in the USA. Also, I am a participant of the charities club, which means I help plan and organize events and diners to raise money for charities. Furthermore,  and I’ve represented my year in meetings about what kids think should change in the school, my task is to collect the feedback from everyone in my year and find a solution for those things. In the little free time that I have, I work as a dentist assistant for Nieuwe Helden kindertandarts praktijk. It's a dentistry focused on children with special needs, children with anxiety, and children with lots of cavities. I'm also very proud to say that I have my own little class at school with freshmans that I offer to tutor and help with problems in and out of school.