Jenthe Kluyt can already imagine it. When the fifteen-year-old pre-university student finishes school in a year and a half, she will go to an American university. She will definitely study there, “study really hard” even, although she has no idea yet what exactly and, she says, it doesn’t really matter to her. She goes for something else: hockey.
That’s why she’s sitting in her goalkeeper’s outfit in the clubhouse of ‘s-Hertogenbosch on a Wednesday morning in early December. Outside, dozens of players run across the field, all wearing a blue or purple shirt with a back number. They all have the same dream as Kluyt: as a hockey player with a scholarship to an American university. And they all hope to impress the scouts and coaches of 35 American universities who watch everything the players do from the stands and write them down on their notepad, iPad or laptop.
Thanks to the jersey numbers and colors, they know exactly who is who: a large file contains the profiles of the players, containing not only their positions and qualities, but also school grades. Because the universities don’t just want good players, says Paul de Koning, who organized the ‘showcase’: “They don’t want party animals, but students who also perform in class.”
When he went to Brooklyn in 2007 to play football and study at a university, he had to arrange everything himself. . This had to be simpler, he thought, and in 2015 he helped the first two Dutch students get a sports scholarship at an American university. The company now guides 250 young Dutch people every year with something that they may have known until recently from series and films, but that rarely seemed to be within their own possibilities: a life as a sports student on an American campus.
Hundreds of talents
Precise figures are lacking, but it is certain that more and more Dutch students are choosing such a path. In addition to Kings Talent, there are a handful of professional organizations that recruit, guide and help hundreds of talented students every year to find a place at an American university and on a sports team. The amounts of scholarships awarded for this vary from around 20,000 euros to as much as €100,000. Most talents play football or hockey, but there are also swimmers, rowers, golfers, tennis players, basketball players, volleyball players and a few who play lacrosse.
Why are Dutch students so eager to play sports and study in America?
Timo Jansen did not dream of America, but of the Arena. Growing up in Oegstgeest, he was scouted by Ajax as a twelve-year-old and played youth football there for six years. He had talent and played with, among others, Jorrel Hato, who was sold to Chelsea last summer, but was also . When he played in the under-17s for the second season in a row and took his final exams, his father asked: isn’t America for you? Through an agency he came into contact with two Dutchmen who played football in California. They were sitting on the beach during a video call and told them that their house had a pool. Jansen: “Then I thought: maybe this is a good option.”
The facilities here are better than at Ajax
More than three years later, on a cold autumn day, he walks through the sports center of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, a town an hour’s train ride from Manhattan. Top-fit students in tracksuits walk back and forth. A noisy lacrosse team passes by, big guys who bark like fighting dogs and yell a few times before they enter the weight room. Opposite the building is the football stadium that can accommodate around fifty thousand people – and they are there for most matches. On the other side is the football stadium, which is less impressive with one stand of plastic benches.
Timo Jansen in action against Penn State University.
photo Rutgers Athletics
“But the facilities here are better than at Ajax,” says Jansen. He shows the training field: an excellent turf with the tactical outlines that you also see at top clubs. Behind it is an inflatable indoor hall that only the Ajax youth academy had in the Netherlands for a while, until it collapsed during a storm. Inside, each team has its own locker room, in a long hall with dozens of lockers. Jansen points to a hatch: he puts his dirty clothes there after training, and the next morning there will be a clean outfit ready in his locker. He and his teammates receive sports meals and vouchers to eat in healthy restaurants. All data from training and competitions is tracked and analyzed, there is a professional video analyst.
Live like a pro
In New Brunswick he lives like a professional. The rhythm of his life is not very different from that at Ajax, he says. In the morning he trains, in the afternoon he studies. But everything around it is different. That starts with football itself. During the season, which lasts four months, he plays on Tuesdays and Fridays. “Sometimes we fly to Michigan one week and to California the next and play a home game in between.”
And during those matches he runs like hell. “Football is less tactical, but much more intensive.” This is also because unlimited substitutions are allowed in the student competition. “Sometimes someone is brought in who is only instructed to press very hard for fifteen minutes. Or you suddenly play against eight other fit players in the second half.” “Because if your grades aren’t good, you don’t play. So you sit at the airport or in your hotel room on the books.”
Rutgers is one of the best college teams in the country in virtually every sport. And that is precisely why Jansen wanted to go there in his fourth year. He had a “really nice time” in Santa Barbara, but the level of football was disappointing. After a year and a half at a university in Albany, in northern New York state, he ended up at Rutgers in early 2025. “I had played three good seasons and scored a lot. They look very much at that here, which is why I started playing a bit more offensively than in the Netherlands. And I wanted to go to a team where I have a good chance of moving on to professional football.”
After the Christmas holidays, which he spends with family and friends in the Netherlands, Jansen will look for a professional club, because his time at Rutgers will be over next spring.
That is not unrealistic. were picked up from university teams in recent years by clubs from Major League Soccer, the highest level of football in the US. Paul de Koning accompanied them both; one had experience at FC Utrecht, the other came from an amateur club. Or take swimmer Nyls Korstanje, who first won the American university championships and eventually won medals at the European and World Championships.
Signboard
Hockey player Kluyt especially hopes that her American time will help her become the first goalkeeper somewhere in the Netherlands. “I am seventeen when I finish with the youth, then at most you become a second goalkeeper somewhere. But when I finish in the US, I will be 21, experienced and have a diploma.” Jansen also says: “I am young and will soon graduate, but I can also try as a professional. I have given myself three years to do so.”
But why are American universities so keen to attract Dutch sports students? College sports are enormous in the US, says De Koning. “It is the poster child of a university. They want … That is why they want to attract the best players and coaches travel all over the world looking for players who fit their team.” On the Rutgers campus, Jansen thinks for a moment and then says: “It’s about prestige.”
Shannon LeBlanc watches the training sessions along the edge of the hockey field in Den Bosch. For 25 years, she has coached the women’s hockey team at UMass Lowell, a major university in the state of Massachusetts. She has been to the hospital for the “seventh or eighth time”. showcase came from The King. Every year she knows that a number of her players will graduate and therefore have to be replaced. She looks all over the world for this, but especially in the Netherlands; There are four Dutch people in her current team.
“They often just have the qualities we are looking for,” says LeBlanc. Field hockey is much less popular in the US than ice hockey, while the Netherlands is among the world leaders in field hockey. “Talent is the most important thing. But when I see a good player, I immediately look at her school performance. If they are also good, we have a conversation. I want to see character in them, the absolute will to excel on the field and in the classroom. They have to growth minded are.”
Mentality. Perseverance. The will to win. That is exactly what seventeen-year-old Julia van ‘t Hoff longs for. In the Netherlands, her mother Suzanne says during the lunch break, hockey should be fun. But she wants to win. “Really winning,” says Julia, who now plays hockey in the third division at a club in Zeeland. A friend already plays sports and studies in America and his stories inspire her. “Since then, her school grades have improved considerably,” says mother Suzanne about her daughter. Julia nods. “The idea that I can go to America really motivates me. It seems super cool.”
It is not all free: parents pay “a few thousand euros” to have their son or daughter guided through the entire registration process by his company, says De Koning. Once a university and player are “matched”, a whole process follows with registration, scholarships and visas. “We don’t notice anything about the immigration restrictions imposed by President Trump,” says De Koning. “Parents have more questions about it than before, but nothing has actually changed for students.” He also says he didn’t notice anything about the extra screening of social media for political messages that the government had announced. “That screening of social media also took place before Trump.” Jansen also says that the political context has not changed life. “And it never really comes up in the locker room.”
Speed dating
At the end of the showcase, the scouts and coaches write on notes which players they want to talk to. About half of the more than sixty participants are invited for such a ‘speed date’ to get acquainted.
Kluyt and Van ‘t Hoff are not among them. “But there may still be opportunities at a lower level,” her mother says a day later. There she had already received offers from smaller universities, including one “in the middle of nowhere in Tennessee” – but Van ‘t Hoff wants to be close to a big city: “I want to see something of the world.” And if that doesn’t work either? “Then I want to go to teacher training college or study to become a nurse.” Kluyt is also not worried: she has the entire next school year before she wants to start a university in America in August 2027. “The earlier the better, but next year I have another chance.”
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