When ConVal senior Tori Yerkes first picked up the game of field hockey in sixth grade, the game came naturally to her.

There was no awkward introduction to the nuances of the sport when she joined the intramural team at South Meadow School, just an immediate love.

So in the fall of her seventh-grade school year, Yerkes tried out for the SMS team. She made the squad and started about half the games as the Pumas made it to the semifinals.

The following year, she started each game, as SMS made it all the way to the championship game before losing.

And that is when she really started to think about where field hockey could take her. She loved the game and was pretty good at it.

After a conversation with her father Scott, she decided she wanted to improve and get better before her first season at ConVal.

So she played for a winter travel team prior to her freshman year and got a big introduction to the speed and skill of the game, especially on turf.

It helped prepare her for the transition to high school field hockey, much like she is going to use the next six-plus months to prepare for her next challenge.

All that hard work paid off for Yerkes, as she is going to continue her career in the college ranks at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo.

Yerkes is one of a dozen recruits heading to the Lady Lions in 2012 and hopes to be one to make an immediate impact on the team.

“She’s a great student and a great athlete, and right off the bat she was a fit for us,” said Lindenwood coach Sarah Johnson.

Lindenwood is a school of just over 14,000 students just west of St. Louis and offers the major, exercise science, that Yerkes was interested in pursuing.

So not only could she play college field hockey, but also study the field that will provide her a career when her playing days are over.

“The main focus was finding the balance between academics and athletics,” Yerkes said.
For the past two years, Lindenwood has been going through the process for all its sports teams to become a member of NCAA Division II.

Next season, Yerkes’ first with the team, will be the third and final provisional year and if all goes well, the Lady Lions will be an official Division II program in 2013.

“It’s something special that you may not get at another school,” Johnson said.

She was good enough to play somewhere in Division I, but she wanted to enjoy college as well and not have the rigors of playing at the highest collegiate level dictate her life.

“I wasn’t really up for the whole DI thing,” Yerkes said. “It’s a lot of time and a lot of pressure.”

The idea of playing field hockey in college really started to take shape after her sophomore year at ConVal.

Yerkes had just completed her first full season of varsity, after double suiting as a freshman, and wasn’t ready to see it end in just a couple years.

“I was just thinking that if I didn’t [play], that the next two years would be my last two years playing field hockey and I didn’t want that,” said Yerkes.

By her junior year, she began compiling a list of schools that fit both her academic and athletic interests, and it grew to about 25 schools.

“A lot of times it was overwhelming,” Yerkes said. “It was a learning process. You had to think about so many factors.”

And Lindenwood wasn’t even on the list.

It wasn’t until Johnson contacted her after watching a video on her “Be Recruited” page that she really became interested in the school. Yerkes had mostly narrowed her search to the East Coast, but decided to check out Lindenwood anyway.

“We definitely wanted her and wanted to get her signed,” said Johnson. “Hopefully all the girls we are recruiting have the potential to be starters. I definitely see her having the potential.”

She took a visit right after the Cougars were eliminated from the playoffs in October and immediately fell in love with everything Lindenwood had to offer.

“A lot of it was about the coach and her drive,” said Yerkes. “She had a vision for the team that was similar to mine.”

Within a couple of weeks, Yerkes called Johnson with her decision. She will also receive a partial athletic scholarship, along with a merit scholarship for academics.

“It is awesome,” said Yerkes. “Something I love to do is paying for my education.”

Yerkes also came close to playing with her high school teammate Shauna Whittemore, who had looked at Lindenwood before Yerkes even knew about it, but Whittemore decided to stay closer to home and commit to Saint Anselm’s.

Yerkes will give the Lady Lions versatility. She can play almost any position on the field and has already shown during her high school days that she can handle it.

“I can play anywhere. I’m comfortable anywhere, but midfield is where I love to play,” she said.

While at ConVal, Yerkes had quite a career. She didn’t post ridiculous amounts of goals or assists, but her mere presence on the field caught the eyes of opposing coaches.

In three full years of varsity, Yerkes was twice named first-team all state as a junior and senior; once as a sophomore she was placed on the second team.

It will be a challenge jumping from Division II New Hampshire high school field hockey to the Division II college level, but Yerkes is ready.

This article appears in the Jan. 19, 2012, edition of the Ledger-Transcript.