Four senior athletes verbally committed to colleges for Division I sports between January and June this past year. Lauren Foehr, McKenzie Cooke, Claire Jackson, and McKenna Bonkowski are all committed to compete in their various sports during the 2017-18 school year.

Foehr verbally committed to University of San Diego to play soccer in April, and will officially sign on Feb. 1, 2017. She has been playing soccer since she was in kindergarten and has had plans to compete collegiately since the eighth grade.

Foehr said that she loves the competitiveness of the sport and being able to be outdoors when she is playing something she loves.

“I like that I get to meet so many different people through [soccer] that share a common love for the sport,” Foehr said.

Cooke will be playing volleyball at Yale University after verbally committing in January. Though she is only verbally committed, she is officially one of Yale’s five athletic recruits for 2017. She cannot sign with Yale until she has applied and been accepted into the school. Being officially recruited also means that the Yale coach will sponsor her through her admissions process.

At the end of her freshman year, Cooke began looking at colleges where she could play volleyball. Yale took interest in her during her sophomore year.

Cooke has been playing volleyball since she was 11 years old. According to Cooke, playing volleyball gives her the opportunity to meet new people and to get better at something that she loves.

“I like how I can play with a bunch of girls from different schools during club season, and get to know girls I maybe wouldn’t be associated with during high school season,” Cooke said.

Jackson will attend Rutgers University to play volleyball in the Big Ten Conference after verbally committing in May. Like Cooke, Jackson is also only verbally committed until she applies and is accepted to Rutgers. Jackson chose Rutgers because of the coach’s style of leadership and its large size of about 35,000 undergraduate students.

“I’m an outgoing person, so I really wanted to be able to meet new people every day,” Jackson said.

Bonkowski verbally committed to University of California Berkeley for rowing. Wanting to do something other than gymnastics, a sport she participated in up until then, Bonkowski began rowing her freshman year.

According to Bonkowski, she quit gymnastics on the first day of rowing tryouts as she immediately fell in love with the sport. The Cal coach called her in June to offer her a spot on the team.

“I said yes right away on the phone. She said, ‘Are you sure? Do you want to talk to your parents?’” Bonkowski said. “I was like, ‘Nope! It’s good! I want to do it now!’”