On Monday night, the Harvard Crimson women’s soccer team will convene somewhere and tune into ESPN to see where its next match will take place.

Sitting front and center will be freshman goalkeeper Bethany Kanten, who has earned the right to represent her team in the field of 64 in the 2011 DI NCAA women’s soccer tournament.

Kanten has surged up the depth chart at Harvard to earn a shot at leading a talented Crimson squad (11-4-1 overall, 5-0-1 in conference play) into the postseason.

Harvard head coach Ray Leone said Kanten is a revelation at one of the crucial positions on the soccer field.

“We couldn’t be happier with her,” he said. “She’s tough as nails, she really is. She crashed into somebody in practice the other day and the girl didn’t get up for, like, five minutes. It was like a football hit.

“She’s just a physical player. She’s done a great job and her communication job, as a freshman, is the best I’ve ever seen.”

Kanten, a 2011 graduate of Park City High School, was regarded as one of the best goalkeepers in the state before heading back East to play for the Crimson. She said prior to the start of the season she didn’t really expect to start, but knew she would give it everything she had.

“I definitely wanted to play and I wasn’t going to just sit on the bench without training as hard as I can every day,” she said. “I give it all I can every single day at practice. I think that’s what it takes to play as a freshman.”

Her attitude paid off.

The former Miner was named Ivy League Rookie of the Week twice in a three-week span this season and has been a major force in helping the Crimson clinch a share of the Ivy League title.

In a 3-2 overtime road loss to Rhode Island on Sept. 18, she made three saves, including one on a penalty kick. She made two overtime stops in a 2-1 win at Yale on Oct. 1 and stopped five shots in a 2-2 tie at Cornell on Oct. 8. She earned a shutout in a 2-0 win against Siena on Oct. 11 and stonewalled a career-best nine shots in a crucial 2-1 win against Brown.

On Oct. 29, Kanten stopped five shots in a 2-1 victory against Dartmouth to help Harvard clinch a share of the Ivy League championship.

“She’s a calm kid,” Leone said. “She doesn’t get rattled. And to her credit, these are big-time games that she is playing in and she’s done fantastic.”

Leone said one of the more ironic scenes he’s witnessed in his coaching career is watching a freshman goalie, not six months out of high school, commanding an all-senior backline.

“The backline is playing well with her,” he said. “The ball doesn’t know how old you are. If you can play, you can play.”

Steve Kanten, Bethany’s father, said goalkeepers in collegiate soccer are akin to college quarterbacks: The well of talent rarely runs dry in a program. He’s been able to see his daughter play in six games so far this season and said every single outing is as nerve-wracking as the one before.

“Being a goalie’s parent is just a heart attack,” he said. “If she gets scored on, Bethany’s got to be able to put that right behind her and get back in the game. When she has a great save, that’s good because it’s expected of her.”

Looking back on her first collegiate game, Bethany Kanten said the season-opening loss at Long Island on Sept. 2 wasn’t scary for her at all. However, the home-opener against Elon two days later, she said, was an entirely different story.

“All my friends I had just made were there and when I came in at halftime, I was so nervous,” she said, laughing. “I told myself, ‘If I don’t play good, I’m going to lose my new friends.'”

While she is excelling on the pitch, the Harvard classrooms are testing the young Kanten.

One class in particular has been a thorn in her side, just as it has been to previous freshman undergrads for as long as Harvard lore goes back.

“It’s infamous,” she said. “It’s a freshman writing class. Everybody gets B’s in it. There are all these stories of really famous writers who have gone through it and nobody was able to get an A.

“I think they all know that we’ve gotten A’s our whole lives, so they just want to knock us down.”

So, now that she’s 2,350 miles away from quiet Park City, what does she do for fun in the big city?

“I go into Boston with my roommates sometimes to go to dinner or go shopping,” she said. “My new hobby is to go on runs and go explore new little parts of the city on my runs. I’ve run down to MIT or Boston University. It’s fun. It’s not like going on a trail run.”

Kanten’s expectations remain high for the NCAA tournament looming next week. She said there’s no reason not to aim for the top of the mountain.

“It’s unreal to even think about,” she said. “At the beginning of the season, we had a team meeting and said we all wanted to win the Ivy League and wanted to win and to go as far as we can in the tournament.

“To be here now, two months later we actually did it.”

Ray Leone, in his fifth season at the helm, said he usually keeps a special eye on his freshmen players to ensure they’re comfortable and not overloaded with schoolwork.

“It’s never easy at Harvard,” he said, “But it’s fairly manageable. “

In three short months, Bethany Kanten seems to be managing quite well.