Bryn Underwood, one of the best field hockey goalkeepers in AU history, has begun her international field hockey career with Whitford Hockey Club in Western Australia. She opened her season with the club on March 28.

Underwood had a historic career while at American University from 2020-2025. She was a three-time Patriot League Goalkeeper of the Year, a three-time First Team All-Patriot League selection, part of two Patriot League championship teams, and earned a total of 28 Patriot League and 13 NFHCA honors.

It’s in her blood — her mother, Kim Underwood (Schroll), captained the field hockey team at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, helping the program to win an NCAA Championship title in 1995.

Her daughter quickly followed in her footsteps, starting field hockey at the age of six in the Wilson School District of Reading, Pa. “I was very much the athletic kid who was not good at sports,” she said, “because I thought all I needed to do was run around and hit and kick things as hard as possible.”

Despite being one of the smallest kids in her class, she said, “I begged my mom to let me be the field hockey goalie. And she was like, ‘They don’t even make pads small enough for you.’” But when her mother signed her and her friends up for an indoor field hockey tournament, they needed a goalie. “And she was like, ‘Alright, if I can find pads small enough for you, do you want to be the goalie in this tournament this weekend?’ And I was like, ‘Yes.’”

Playing in that tournament — while wearing a patchwork of mismatched gear, some of which was duct-taped to her — inspired her to continue playing. “That lit a fire under my butt to be like, ‘I’m going to get better at this so that we can go win these tournaments.’”

Her first passion, though, was musical theater. “I thought that I wanted to pursue musical theater as a kid,” she said. “And then as I got older and I started getting more serious in field hockey, I was like, ‘Well, I want to find a way to do both.’”

She went with a healthy combination of dreams and realism, pursuing a major in business entertainment with a specialization in music performance. Along with the added criteria of playing field hockey competitively, American fit the bill.

“If I can play Division I,” she thought, “let's go play Division I and then do musical theater on the side and see what happens.”

Her list of accolades with AU field hockey largely speaks for itself. But that only tells part of her story at American. She earned the 2024 Stafford H. Cassell Award for her dedication to the school. She was the Vice President of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. She had three jobs. She did pursue musical theater alongside field hockey, performing in several productions. She even joined AU’s Division I track team for her last semester of college, landing on the indoor track top-10 list in the 3,000 meters.

“I've always been someone who’s been a jack of all trades,” she said.

While considering what she wanted to do after college, field hockey became a crucial piece of the picture.

But first, she wanted to be involved in the sport in a couple other ways. Underwood had been a color analyst for USA Field Hockey since 2023 and discovered a love for it. She hoped to continue pursuing this passion, and working within the NCAA system, before pursuing her own athletic goals.

She landed a temporary role at Syracuse as their field hockey program’s director of operations, but was also given the freedom to commentate for all of the team’s home games with ESPN and the Syracuse Sports Network, “which was an amazing experience,” she said. “[I had] everything I could have wanted within a field hockey season.”

Even before her role at Syracuse ended and she moved back to Reading, Underwood knew her plan was to play club field hockey in Australia. She singled out the location because she’d be able to stay in the U.S. for the NCAA season then begin Australia’s fall season in March.

“It was basically high school recruiting all over again,” she said. “I created a field hockey resume and I had a highlight reel of my past five years at American and I sent it out and was like, ‘Pick me.’”

She was selected later than she’d hoped, but Whitford had just the right situation for her, she said. “So my job essentially is to fill in as the premier league goalkeeper for the next two to three years and then train those goalkeepers to replace me when I leave,” she said.

In mid-March, she took the 40-hour journey to Western Australia, just in time to open the season with Whitford’s Premier League team on March 28.

“This is a huge aspiration of mine to go and play somewhere else, especially at a high level,” she said. “And if I get to go do that and help out another team in the process, genuinely the way this has panned out has worked out perfectly.”

For the third most popular sport in the world, playing club is “generational more than professional,” she said. In many cases, the club level is the closest an athlete can get to professional field hockey.

Underwood is making the most of this opportunity. Alongside playing for Whitford’s Premiere League team, she will also act as a goalkeeper coach for the club’s junior girls’ teams, act as head coach for their adult turf team, and officiate part-time. She also has a remote internship with an NIL company in the U.S. called MarketPryce. The jack of all trades in her lives on.

Her historic field hockey career at American prepared her to take the step into international play, she said. “My time as a DI athlete at American made me more fit physically than I’ve ever been in my life,” she said. “It’s the highest level of competition you can get in the U.S. to play. So it’s put me in a good spot of knowing the level of hockey that I need to be at.”

But, she added, though her contract with Whitford is limited, this is not just a stepping stone to something else for her.