He plays field hockey, the U.S. way

Olivier "Oliver" Everts stands out at Conestoga field hockey practices, and not only because he's the lone boy on the team.

At 6-foot-2 and a lean 160 pounds, he is clearly the tallest player on the field. His stick seems to be about the same length as everyone else's, so he bends over considerably to control or hit the ball.

The 13-year-old freshman also has stood out during games. Everts is the leading goal-scorer on a talented Conestoga team this season. He has 15 goals for the Pioneers, who are 11-1-1.

Everts isn't simply some boy athlete trying a girls' sport on a whim. He has experience, having played boys' field hockey in the Netherlands before emigrating a year and a half ago.

He is in a new country on a new continent, playing an old sport that has dealt him a new twist, and excelling.

"He's very hungry in the circle," Conestoga coach Karen Gately said. "I started him off at mid and occasionally I'll put him in the midfield, but he loves to score goals. You'll see occasionally forwards like this, that just when they see the ball, they attack it. That's Oliver. . . . And he's so strong that his shots are unpredictable and hard to stop."

Everts (pronounced EH-verts) and his family left their home near Amsterdam because his father relocated for his job. His father works for Elsevier, a publisher of science and health information that has its headquarters in Amsterdam and an office in Philadelphia.

Before moving, the family researched U.S. field hockey online and learned that it was a girls' sport here. Everts is allowed to compete with the girls' team because boys' field hockey isn't offered.

"I wasn't used to playing with girls, but it's fun," said Everts, who speaks with only a slight accent. "It's the same thing."

Well, not exactly.

In the Netherlands, he said, he played on turf fields. Conestoga's field is grass, a slower surface, although some Pioneers opponents have turf. Teams also sent the ball across the field more in the Netherlands when progressing toward the goal, he said, whereas here, teams move mostly forward.

There's one difference, though, that trumps all that. Like all boys who play field hockey - and there are few - Everts has to wear a kilt during games.

"It's not what I'm used to," he said, and getting used to it has been rough. His kilt has two buttons that fasten with loops. The loops are a bit too big for the buttons, so the kilt tends to fall occasionally. Once, it started slipping while Everts was preparing to take a corner during a game. Fortunately, he was given time to re-button it.

Wardrobe malfunctions aside, Everts has fit in well with the Pioneers, and that's not easy for someone who has played mostly all-boys' sports, has a brother and no sisters, and suddenly finds himself spending a lot of time with 40 girls and no guys.

"He puts up with 40 girls really well," said midfielder Claire McDugall, who has scored six goals this season and is part of a captain trio with fellow seniors Britta Hjelm (nine goals) and Nicole Stevenson.

"He's around us so much, especially when we have night games. It's just a lot of time. Girls talk a lot, and he just kind of goes with it."

Everts is only the second boy to play for Gately in her six-plus years as Pioneers coach. The first was Jon Geerts, a Belgian who, like Everts, had played boys' field hockey in his home country.

"I will say this, and I said this when I had Jon," Gately said. "Girls play rougher against him [Everts] than they would against a girl. I think they feel like they need to make up for the fact that he's a boy and they get more physical. I mean, girls have been carded that play against him."

In contrast, she added, Everts is not a rough player.

"I've had refs tell me he's less physical than half the girls out there," Gately said.