I

t took Ian McIntyre 12 seconds to find a description for his starting goalkeeper. Each time the Syracuse head coach began to speak, he retracted. There aren’t many ways to fit Hendrik Hilpert into few words — his eccentric blend of sophistication, intelligence and neatness is hard to find in a 21-year-old.

“I’m trying to think of good words to describe him,” McIntyre said, before settling on, “He sometimes overthinks. He’s very analytical about his game, about components of who he is …

“The way he focuses on details is an important part of his decision.”

The German sophomore color-codes his calendar so certain events stand out to the eye, using orange marker to highlight Syracuse’s games and red for exams to make sure he doesn’t forget about them. He was one of two players on the team to get a perfect 4.0 grade point average last semester. In 2015, he created a Facebook page for his family’s dairy farm because he thought agriculture businesses needed to improve community engagement.

His intricate tendencies and advanced methods of thinking off the field lend themselves to success between the posts, where his attention to detail and desire for perfection have helped Hilpert become one of the best goalkeepers in the country’s top conference for No. 10 Syracuse.

“It’s just a way to keep calm, you know, to not freak out about things,” Hilpert said. “You cannot worry about where your stuff is, what you have to do next … I feel like I have to do it.”

Before he stepped under the lights of SU Soccer Stadium, Hilpert lived on his family’s farm two miles outside the German village of Eiterfeld. The farm has been there since 1976, jumpstarted by Hilpert’s grandparents, who also built a cowshed and a house the Hilperts still live in.

In 2003, Anja and Volker Hilpert, Hendrik’s parents, began expanding the farm’s livestock and facilities. They added a new cowshed and rotary milking parlor, on top of growing the farm’s livestock from 60 cows to the 360 mature dairy cows and 350 younger cattle on the farm today. The Hilperts recently added two goats and two sheep, in addition to running a biogas plant that generates enough renewable energy to provide a local school with heat and electricity.

Hendrik, who lived on the farm until he was 12 before going to soccer boarding schools, learned preparation, execution and dedication to a craft by observing his parents shoulder the brunt of the work. On Christmas, his family didn’t spend as much time together as others since his father came back into the house around 9 p.m. after spending the day working on the farm. Now, his parents wake up as early as 4 a.m. to milk cows. So when Hilpert is faced with the demands of being the starting goalkeeper on one of the best teams in the country, his drive comes from a plot of land almost 4,000 miles away.

“If one (piece) is missing or disregarded, a farmer cannot be successful,” Volker said in an email. “The complexity of a dairy farm is something very unique but can be translated into other areas of life too.”

That’s why Hilpert makes sure to be overly thorough when preparing for a game, facing a week of exams or even leaving a hotel on a road trip. His coaches say he analyzes film of himself at an advanced level. He says if he relied on a class syllabus to remember test dates and not his color-coded calendar he would “freak out.”

Sam Ogozalek | Staff Writer

Before the team departs hotels, Hilpert cleans his room even though he won’t sleep in it again. When he went to boarding school, he sometimes complained to his mother about his roommates being messier than he was. Every day at Syracuse, he cleans his room in his South Campus triple because it helps him sleep better knowing everything is where it should be.

Since a young age, Hilpert has always stretched beyond the conventional. He pestered his mom with questions about how she filled out the family’s tax returns so he could understand for himself. Last summer, he helped to open a Milchtankstelle (a vending machine for fresh milk that is next to the Hilpert’s biggest cowshed) so more people would come to the farm.

Every ounce of his curiosity is exhausted until something makes sense, every problem he faces met with a calculated solution.

“When you didn’t explain the entire story of an issue or the problem didn’t make sense to him,” Anja said, “he could be disappointed or even angry.”

Hilpert wasn’t even on Syracuse’s radar until Alex Bono left school early for the MLS Draft in January 2015. The Orange needed a goalkeeper in short time, so assistant coach Jukka Masalin took a detour on his overseas trip to spend a couple days with him. Masalin’s first impressions were that he was calm, intellectual and far more of an introvert than Bono, the local guy who knew everyone and loved to socialize.

Hilpert was more worried about himself first before he could orchestrate others like Bono did, and that’s not a bad thing, Masalin said. On the morning of a game earlier this season, Hilpert jogged by himself along Euclid Avenue in his warmups. Last year, he often ate alone at Ernie Davis Dining Hall. He has learned to zone out any distractions that might interfere with his life on or off the field, minimizing any stress that could throw off his mental equilibrium integral to on-field success.

“I think there’s a perfectionist around him…” Masalin said. “The German machine is sometimes very, very precise like, ‘Do it this way or there’s no other way.’”

Sam Ogozalek | Staff Writer

Written on Hilpert’s goalie gloves in black marker is the word “DREAMS” in a triangle formation. He’s combined the lessons learned on the farm from his parents with what he’s taught himself, about how he should think and act in order to achieve a state of mind that lends itself to peak performance.

Hilpert has become a hyper-focused perfectionist that seems to have a reason for every thought and action. It’s helped him find a mix of calmness and intensity, a combination that’s shaped the psyche of a budding star.

“Thinking with too many emotions leads to bad outcomes,” Hilpert said. “That forced me to kind of live this way and I plan on continuing to do so.”

Published on October 18, 2016 at 12:04 am

Contact Matt: mcschnei@syr.edu | @matt_schneidman