Chantal van Dongeren spends much of her time playing sports.

And when she isn't on the soccer field or basketball court?

She's probably writing about sports.

The Central Bucks East senior’s jam-packed schedule includes playing soccer and basketball and serving as a writer and editor in chief of the school newspaper.

Van Dongeren has found a commonality in all three.

It isn’t always glamorous, and it’s always a lot of work.

“I appreciate the value in being a multi-sport athlete,” van Dongeren said. “There is a beauty in having two distinct seasons where you can always start fresh. One year I was injured during basketball season, but I had a great soccer season.”

Van Dongeren’s main role in both is defense. She led the Patriots to the district quarterfinals and a PIAA state girls soccer playoff berth last month, and just weeks later she has helped the basketball team to a 6-1 start.

She is tasked with guarding the opposing team’s top player in both sports.

“I try to take the best player out of the equation and make things easier for my teammates,” van Dongeren said. “I carry over the same principles for both sports. In basketball, speed is an underrated aspect of defense. I always want to keep the player I'm guarding in front of me.”

While opponents may dread their matchups with van Dongeren, she is much less fearsome in her role as editor.

“I think there are ways of working with writers to put their abilities and personal writing style to their advantage,” van Dongeren said.

While she has written on a variety of topics, van Dongeren has found sports to be a natural fit, and she’s appreciated the opportunity to shine the spotlight on teammates.

“There’s been so much attention on boys sports, because those teams have had a lot of success, particularly in basketball,” van Dongeren said. “I want to make sure girls' sports also receive recognition.”

Chantal van Dongeren's got game

This year, the girls basketball team is certainly something to write home about.

As of Thursday night, the Patriots were 6-1, fourth in the District One Class 6A standings and first in the SOL Colonial Division after a huge win against North Penn on Wednesday.

“That was one of the best games I’ve ever played in,” van Dongeren said.

It was a true van Dongeren classic: she didn’t score a point, but the Patriots wouldn’t have won without her.

“Defense is where I can contribute best,” van Dongeren said. “As long as someone is scoring, I am happy.”

“(Going into the season), there were high expectations for North Penn and CB East, and that win, along with the win against Pennridge, really set the tone for our season.”

Van Dongeren, a team captain and one of the team’s two seniors along with Anna Barry, likes to lead by example when she is on the court. She also spends a lot of time scouting her opponents and analyzing film.

An analytical mind 

While sports are a huge part of van Dongeren’s life, they aren’t her main priority.

While she’s had interest from several colleges to continue her soccer career, athletics take a back seat to academics in choosing a school. Van Dongeren plans to major in biological engineering, a field she chose after being inspired by a biology course in her sophomore year. But she knew long before high school that she would pursue a STEM field.

“I have two wonderful female role models,” said van Dongeren, who is taking six AP courses this year. “My grandmother, Cassandra Lopez, was the second woman to earn an engineering degree from the University of Puerto Rico, and my mother, Sandra Velez, graduated from MIT.

“I’d love to play soccer, but I’m looking for a school to fit my academic needs first.”

Fitting it all in

The biggest challenge in van Dongeren’s life? It’s not facing the high-scoring competition in the SOL, or finding a good story to write. It’s finding the time to do all of it.

“I have a planner where I schedule everything out,” said van Dongeren, who also plays club soccer but had to give up playing AAU basketball to fit everything in. “I know I won’t want to study or work on a project when I get home from a basketball game, so I carve out time after practice or on weekends.”

You can often find van Dongeren at the local Panera bright and early on a weekend morning with her laptop, working on college essays, watching film of an upcoming opponent, editing stories or finishing AP calculus homework.

But she also makes sure to find time for family.

“Last summer my grandmother visited from the Netherlands and I was worried about where to take her in my small town that would compare to her country,” said van Dongeren, who was awed by the beauty of the Netherlands when she visited as a child. “We ended up going to Fonthill Castle, and it was actually the first time I went inside.

“Afterward, my grandmother told me that she really loves Doylestown.”

Always the multi-tasker, van Dongeren put her experience at the castle to good use and wrote a story about it.

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This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Girls High School Basketball: van Dongeren leads defense for CB East