Natalie Vatter: Embracing the Challenges of College Soccer
Baylor Soccer is a team full of newcomers. Fifteen of the 31 players on Michelle Lenard’s squad are new to Baylor University this season. A further 12 are in just their second season in the green and gold.
Transfers are nothing new to this team as Coach Lenard brought in five in 2022 and four more before this season kicked off. However, every transferring athlete has had a journey with its own hurdles and quirks.
For Natalie Vatter, a redshirt freshman defender for the Bears, each step was about embracing the challenge in front of her.
After graduating from Mountain Vista High School in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, Vatter originally chose to attend and play collegiate soccer at Ole Miss. But challenges quickly started presenting themselves to Natalie down in Oxford Mississippi.
Vatter had to redshirt her freshman season (2022), which can be a major challenge to fierce competitors and those who “love the grind”. Natalie is one of those self-confessed workaholics, for lack of a better term.
“I think that passion for the game has really carried me through all the way. Because I just love it. And I love training. I love the hard work.”
The work needs an outlet though; a payoff. And after playing games year-round through high school — as practically all girls who end up playing Division I soccer do — the burden of a redshirt starts to become apparent. The games, the competition, are taken from you. The joy of seeing all the hard work come to fruition is absent.
“I didn't really expect to redshirt going in my freshman year. And so it was something that was definitely hard mentally to deal with. What was hard was going into each practice and knowing that I was a redshirt and not going to play in any of the games.”
That jarring change can throw people out of balance. It can cut right down to the core of who you are.
“Just still finding my passion for the game and having to push myself to keep working in the practices, even though I wasn't going to be competing … it was definitely tough.”
But Vatter embraced that challenge. She worked her way through that fall at Ole Miss and, with the help of a couple of her coaches at Ole Miss as well as her old club soccer coaches, she entered the transfer portal and started looking for a school that better fit her.
Now, Ole Miss, like many SEC programs, plays a bit more direct which is not the way Natalie played coming up. She developed in a more possession-based system. Exactly the kind of system Michelle Lenard had just implemented at Baylor.
“My biggest thing was looking for a school that fit the possession style play that I grew up playing.”
And that was the key to connecting Vatter to Baylor.
“We knew her from prior to going to college initially,” said Baylor head coach Michelle Lenard, “And we knew her club coaching staff, and we knew that she matched our style of play.”
Vatter’s skill set fit what a program very much in a rebuild needed but that wasn’t all to the mutual interest that developed.
“She was a well-balanced soccer player who's simple doesn't try to do too much,” said Lenard, “[a player] who makes really simple decisions really well consistently, who can defend who can build out who's disciplined, and who understands the way that we want to try to play the game… on top of that, she's just fun, outgoing, really easy to get along with person.”
On Natalie’s part, it was more than just a soccer fit too.
“My parents would actually send me like some videos of Michelle talking, and they just really liked everything that she said... the coaches all just seemed like genuine people, and like they care about the girls more as people than as soccer players. And then as far as the school, I really liked the Christian aspect of it. So that was definitely a big thing.”
From there it was just a matter of taking the leap. But everything that transferring entailed can not be glossed over. It was scary for Vatter.
As a winter transfer, not only was there pressure to find a landing spot in a shorter window -- which was a source of nerves for Vatter -- but also the challenge of integrating with a team at a less common time for newcomers.
Natalie considered going back to Ole Miss and waiting till the summer to transfer, but she prioritized giving herself time to get used to a new team, coaches and university. She wanted to be back on the field for real games, and a winter transfer gave her the best odds of doing just that.
It took time and there were some struggles, but thanks to the extra semester and her disposition to lean into the hard work, Vatter saw herself through.
After working hard at Ole Miss to learn the more direct playstyle, getting up to speed with the particulars of the way Baylor played a completely different style was hard. Baylor assistant coach Cole Ouren was particularly helpful for this, and Vatter worked with him to acclimate.
Beyond that, Natalie dealt with some patellar tendonitis in the fall at Ole Miss. Another hurdle to work past and another factor that resulted in faltering confidence.
But thanks to her work ethic and time and some help from her new teammates, Vatter regained it all.
“It's hard transferring and coming into a new school and finding that confidence again. And so I think it took me a little bit longer than I thought to get that back.”
In the spring, Vatter roomed with fellow transfers Tyler Isgrig (TCU) and Hannah Boughton (Missouri) who went through the same process of a winter transfer.
“I think that definitely made the whole process a lot easier… We were all experiencing it together. And we could talk about our past experiences at the other schools, and then we could adjust to this whole new environment.”
That group gelled together, along with fellow spring addition and freshman Skylar Zinnecker who completed the unit of four.
Now, they have a combined 17 starts out of a possible 20, with Vatter registering five of those and 350 minutes of game time. She also has two assists to boot.
“It's such a cool environment,” Natalie said, “Especially the team that we have now in the fall. Everyone is just always having fun.”
Now, it looks as if it is just about continuing to improve for both Vatter and the team.
After overcoming the transfer, the style switch, and the patellar tendonitis, Vatter’s “love the grind” mindset is focused on two things: improving her left foot and helping the team as a whole improve its pace of play.
And while she’s doing that, she’ll probably just keep embracing the challenges.
“She's just consistent every day like you can count on her to be super fit, to listen and pay attention in meetings to give you her best effort every day at training,” said Coach Lenard, “She's a great teammate. She's super encouraging. She's fun and light-hearted. And she just embraces it. She's a soccer lover.”