The key to Meghan Schnur's soccer success has been versatility.

Score goals? No problem. She scored plenty of them at Butler High and at the University of Connecticut.

Prevent teams from scoring? Still no problem. Schnur has shifted gears to become one of the best defenders in the Women's Professional Soccer league as a member of the defending champion New Jersey Sky Blue FC.

Schnur left Sky Blue to play for the U.S. National Team this week in Omaha, Neb.

It's one more step toward her ultimate goal: playing for the United States in the 2011 Women's World Cup and the 2012 Olympics.

Schnur, 25, already has reached some pretty big milestones.

She played in all 20 matches for Sky Blue last season, amassing more than 1,700 minutes in helping the team win the first WPS championship.

Less than two weeks ago, she met President Barack Obama at the White House.

Schnur, though, said there is more she wants to accomplish.

"There's never any upper limit," Schnur said. "There's always room to top it and find greater success."

That might start today when the U.S. National Team takes on Sweden.

Schnur was one of 24 players called up to join the national team in a precursor match for the 2011 Women's World Cup.

Sweden is regarded as one of the favorites to win the event next year in Germany.

The two teams will also play in East Hartford, Conn., Saturday.

There was some doubt about whether Schnur would be ready to play after she suffered a knee injury that required minor surgery early in the WPS season.

Schnur's left knee has plagued her since her days at Butler, cutting short her senior season and leading one of her doctors to tell her she should hang up her cleats.

"They took a couple of loose bodies out of the joint," Schnur said. "I was back in two weeks."

Schnur has played in only seven matches for Sky Blue (5-5-3), but she will play today and Saturday against Sweden as a defender — a position Schnur admits she never thought she would play.

When she joined Sky Blue as the 11th overall pick in the 2009 WPS draft, Schnur the Scorer morphed into Schnur the Stopper.

"It's been a difficult transition, I won't lie," Schnur said. "At first, I don't really think I was very good at it. Well, not very confident."

But Schnur applied some of the physical skills to her new position that allowed her to record 55 goals and 55 assists in her career at Butler and 28 goals and 20 assists at UConn.

She also had to undergo a mental metamorphosis.

"Being a scorer is a different mentality than being a defender," Schnur said. "That was one of the hardest things to do. I still get too aggressive sometimes."

Schnur now takes pride in how many shutouts her team notches, not how many times she scores. It's often a thankless position, but she's OK with that.

"You have to own that responsibility," Schnur said. "I measure my success in two stages: How many times did I win the ball and how many times did my opponent get past me?"

Schnur could soon be measuring her career success by counting the World Cup and Olympic matches she plays.

Not bad for a self-proclaimed rugrat who played soccer with the boys as a 5-year-old in Butler.

"Whether I play for the U.S. National team and the Olympic team is all based on how I perform," Schnur said. "Every time I step on the field it is a test and I intend to pass."