When re-reading Elizabeth Meyer’s application for Trinity Christian College this week, admissions counselors did a double take.
“I know that when I die I will go to heaven and that my job here on Earth is to honor God in everything I do,” Meyer wrote last year when applying to the Palos Heights college where she was to play soccer this fall.
That sentiment, family said, reflected one of the 18-year-old’s deepest beliefs, and was as central to her core as the competitiveness that made her an all-conference high school athlete or the playful streak that won Miss Meyer fast friends.
In the two years since leaving the Chicago suburbs for Las Vegas, she not only led the Faith Lutheran High School girl’s soccer team to the state championship match, she amused teammates with games invented during tedious road trips. In one of her creations, Miss Meyer would place a watermelon on the lap of a sleeping teammate that could only be moved to the lap of another sleeping teammate.
If no one was asleep, tough luck.
“She was such a big tease and loved to get everybody going,” said her mother, Diane Meyer Vogelzang. “If her brother and sister were just sitting around she’d stir up the pot. Someone would get tackled or have something thrown at them.”
Known as Liz to family and friends, Miss Meyer died Monday, June 26, in a single-vehicle car accident in Las Vegas. Driving alone about 1 a.m. on a highway near her home, she is believed to have fallen asleep after a barbecue with friends.
In August, Miss Meyer was to begin attending Trinity Christian College, which her mother said would have been a merging of her two great loves: soccer and her faith.
In a visit to the campus last fall, she signed a letter of intent to attend the school of about 1,000 students, where the women’s soccer team won the National Christian College Athletic Association championship last year.
In a program with 37 players, she was one of 16 players given a scholarship, and was to be one of a few freshmen in the mix for varsity playing time, said coach Josh Lenarz, who is also director of admissions.
The coach said he encouraged Miss Meyer during her visit to discuss the scholarship offer with her family, but that the soccer defender knew where she wanted to be, especially with her best friend heading to the same school to play soccer. After a one-day visit to the campus, the feeling was mutual.
“Everyone fell in love with her,” Lenarz said. “She’s one of the ones that would have fit in from day one.”
While scrimmaging with the team, she showed herself to be “a definite leader, had great organizational skills and understood the game really well,” he said.
Born in Hinsdale, Miss Meyer was raised in Lombard with two younger siblings. The biggest challenge of her short life came when she was entering her teens, when her father, Peter Meyer, was diagnosed with adrenal cancer. Before he died in 2002, he told his daughter he wanted her to go to college and keep playing soccer, Miss Meyer’s mother said.
Miss Meyer used the story of watching her father die as part of her missionary work, her mother said, when she spent 10 days in Jamaica with a church group in 2003.
“One of the cool things about her was that she would let people know she’d been through a tough time, but that you get through it,” her mother said. “She would tell her story wherever she went.”
She moved with her family to Las Vegas in 2004 after her stepfather was hired as the director of the Nevada Cancer Institute. She was excited for a new start, but like any teen, worried about making friends and whether she would make the high school soccer team.
She indeed made the team, and was named second-team all conference her junior year–when the team reached, but lost, the championship game–and first-team all conference her senior year.
She also had little trouble making friends.
“She must have done very well because more than 100 kids have been through our house this week,” her mother said.
Other survivors include her stepfather, Nicholas Vogelzang; a brother, Brendan; a sister, Stephanie; and grandparents Thomas and Marian Meyer and Robert and Carolyn Keizer.
Visitation will be held from 3 to 9 p.m. Friday in Faith Christian Reformed Church, 1070 S. Prospect Ave., Elmhurst. Funeral services will begin at 10 a.m. Saturday in the church.
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jbnoel@tribune.com
