It’s easy to spot Juliana Boon on a field hockey field. In a sport dominated by shorter players, she towers over most with her 6’1 frame. She’s the loudest voice amongst her teammates during games, waving her hands and her stick to set up her defense. The massive black pads and helmet she sports as armor stick out wherever she walks.
This same Boon is a redshirt first-year who will become the youngest goalkeeper to start an NCAA championship game since 2014, when her Northwestern squad plays Princeton
Sunday afternoon.
Boon slotted into Northwestern’s starting lineup this season to fill the shoes of Annabel Skubisz, the Wildcats’ longtime All-American keeper who helped the team to two national championships. After redshirting her 2024 season while Skubisz started, Boon came into 2025 with no NCAA experience under her belt and the tall task of replacing an all-time great. But with arguably the most pressure of anyone on Northwestern, Boon has delivered.
“I don’t even think of her as a first-year anymore,” Northwestern head coach Tracey Fuchs said of Boon. “By the time that we get to this point, it feels like she’s a sophomore or junior. But she’s a confident kid. She’s good with her skills, she’s a really good communicator and those are the attributes you want.”
Boon, the 2025 Big Ten Goalie of the Year, ranks third in the nation in goals against average (.777) and ninth for save percentage (.773). These statistics may seem surprising for someone relatively inexperienced, but those who know her aren’t surprised.
Talk to anyone about Boon, and they’ll emphasize her self-assuredness that radiates onto those around her. Skubisz, who is five years Boon’s senior, doesn’t view Boon as just a mentee but as someone who motivated her in practice during that 2024 redshirt season. After choosing to leave her native Netherlands for Houston at age 16, playing for a national title as a college freshman is far from daunting for Boon.
“Jules’ confidence expands past herself,” said Anna Unger, Boon’s goalkeeper coach at Texas Pride, her high school club. “It’s like she somehow influences the game around her to go her way — you just don’t see that.”
Boon’s first NCAA Tournament rodeo hasn’t been perfect. Against North Carolina in the national semi-finals, she allowed two early goals due to defensive mishaps. But after spending her season learning how to move on from those mistakes, she’ll carry those experiences when Northwestern faces Princeton in the title game.
As the last line of defense, it’s on Boon to hold down the fort against the Tigers. To ensure her and her team’s success, the fearlessness she’s become renowned for must show up once more.
“The moment I put that helmet on, that becomes a different person. That Jules is just a brick of confidence,” Boon said. “I want someone to not even see me make a save, but just see me sitting there and realize, ‘Oh this girl, she’s ready to do this.’”
Confidence is sometimes developed over time, but Boon had it from the womb. At age five, she once broke up a fight between two of her male friends. At age eight, she was comfortable enough to commute from her suburban neighborhood to the city of The Hague with her classmates. In Dutch school, she was the designated “trust person” — someone that her classmates could confide in without fearing that she’d rat them out.
Boon’s life came to a crossroads before her junior year of high school, when her mother, Johanna Jones, got a job in Houston. Her father, Mark Boon, would join his wife in America, while her older sister stayed in the Netherlands for college. The ultimate decision came down to Juliana Boon’s playing career — she could either remain in the world-renowned Dutch field hockey system or move to the U.S. with her parents. But after finding a perfect match in Houston’s St. John’s School and Texas Pride, she chose the latter option in search of new experiences.
“There was still a very big place for me to play, keep growing and learn new things, that was such a big decision factor for me,” Boon said. “Texas taught me to be a kinder person and a better person, because the people that I surrounded myself with have been nothing short of kind to me.”
Despite having a Dutch father and an American mother, Boon still spoke English as a second language. In school, she adapted to her new environment by creating glossaries of unfamiliar words and was not afraid to speak up in class when she couldn’t understand something. That translated into her time at Texas Pride, when her coaches were floored by the natural leadership she had as a foreign transfer student.
Unger initially thought Boon’s personality was just a product of the Netherlands, given that the Dutch had a reputation for being extremely direct. It soon became obvious that wasn’t the case.
“The more I worked with her, the more I worked with other Dutch players, I’m like, ‘nah, this is a Jules thing,’” Unger said. “I’ve never really seen somebody else do it the way she does it.”
At tournaments, Boon split time with current UNC goalie (and Annabel’s younger sister) Merrit Skubisz. Instead of sitting on the bench when she didn’t play, Boon would stand side-by-side with Pride head coach Tina Edmonds, telling her what changes she’d like to make on the field. The goalie also knew exactly who she wanted in her defensive penalty corner units as a high schooler, a decision that Unger says even college-aged players struggle with.
Boon’s bold nature also shows up on the field. Edmonds recalls a penalty shootout where the opposing team was hyping themselves up beforehand. But then Boon walked into her cage and banged on the goalpost’s two metal bars, rendering everyone silent.
“The other team, all the wind got taken out of their sails,” Edmonds said. “They’re like, ‘oh my god, this six-foot girl is about to go not even remotely let us score.’”
Texas Pride — which developed both Skubisz sisters and 2024 U.S. Olympic team starter Kelsey Bing — has become an American goalie factory. Training alongside three other Division I goalie commits in her class, Boon improved her strength training and adapted to the U.S. style of aggressive goalkeeping, combining it with the more defensive Dutch style. That created a player who was capable of stopping balls standing upright with just her hands and feet, but could also dive if needed.
But after two years of being a brick wall and playing well beyond her level, Boon would go to Northwestern, where she wasn’t even her team’s first option to start.
Like his daughter, Mark Boon isn’t hard to spot at Northwestern games. A tall man with a Dutch accent, he rocks a Texas cowboy hat at every contest he attends — a physical metaphor for how Juliana Boon sticks to her roots while adapting to her new environment.
Annabel Skubisz became fast friends with Boon when they overlapped, but she felt that Boon didn’t need much teaching on the technical side. Instead, Skubisz saw Boon as an equal, crediting the younger keeper for pushing her to improve her diving and hand-saves.
“Her coming in was just another thankful moment, another person to push me in practice,” Skubisz said of Boon. “She really pushed my ability to use ground skills with a dive, as well as my hands more, which was really fun to have around every day.”
Where Boon did need help from Skubisz was when she started making the once-rare “mistake” of letting in goals. After kickstarting her college career with four consecutive shutouts, Boon conceded a score in a near-upset to Louisville in September, which ripped the Band-Aid off for her to endure the inevitable.
Skubisz, even after she graduated, was there to tell Boon those moments weren’t the end of the world.
“What Annie always said is, there’s good saves, but there’s also good goals and that doesn’t make you any less of a goalkeeper,” Boon said.
Another major learning moment for Boon’s 2025 season was her first career loss as a starter, to Princeton at home in October. Normally, Fuchs thinks Boon excels at defending dragflick shots, but she allowed two Tiger goals off penalty corners. That game taught her that bad days would happen from time to time, and that losses need to be used as future motivation.
Northwestern’s possession dominance means the ball doesn’t always get to Boon. But when she’s behind her teammates, directing her defenders to be in the right positions, she views facing no shots as a bigger achievement than making several saves. And even though those around her describe Boon as level-headed and respectful off the field, she knows who she is on the field and isn’t afraid to show it. Whether it be hitting the goalpost or counting out loud before a penalty shootout, her presence is permeating even when she doesn’t touch the ball.
“With that, and then the [goalie] pads, you can make such a statement and show so much attitude,” Boon said of her 6’1 height. “From an outside perspective, it looks a bit dorky. But if I can get you to even just look the other way for just a second, that means I’ve gotten in your head.”
Sunday morning will be the biggest moment in Boon’s young college career. Across from her will be players who got the best of her a month ago, taking advantage of her inexperience.
But with the never-faltering swagger that she’s shown through all the changing moments of her life, Boon has proven she can bounce back to deliver her team the trophy.
“I’m a big believer of, ‘don’t change my habits.’ So I’ve been doing the same thing since we started the season,” Boon said. “In that last huddle before you get on the field, that’s your moment of taking everything in — realize that this is your childhood dream and feed off that as much as you can.”
