Now a veteran on the national team set to earn her 54th cap, rising junior Beth Yeager will be representing USA Field Hockey in her first Olympics. Team USA, ranked No. 24 in the world and the lowest in their preliminary pool of six nations, is riding high off of a somewhat surprising qualification to the Olympic Games.
Yeager’s style of play on the field is tough and uncompromising, gaining her the admiration of her teammates — some of whom once saw her as a target in their high school careers. From picking up the sport on a whim to qualifying for the biggest stage in the world, Yeager has turned her inauspicious start in her standout sport into a platform for her to play at the pinnacle of the game and represent the red, white, and blue.
Yeager wasn’t a natural field hockey player — she picked up the sport on the recommendation of one of her cousins.
“I played a lot of sports growing up, and I needed a fall sport,” Yeager told The Daily Princetonian. “I wasn’t a huge fan of soccer, so my mom signed me up for a field hockey camp at my middle school, and then I just stuck with it.”
While her skills took a few years to develop and catch the eyes of recruiters, Yeager quickly fell in love with the sport.
“I just had a lot of fun, like learning and pushing myself in the sport,” Yeager said. “Out of all the sports I played, I think it was the one that [I] never dreaded going to practice.”
With a love of the sport firmly established, Yeager invested time and energy in order to take her skills to the next level.
“In the eighth grade, I started playing for a club team called WC Eagles in Pennsylvania,” Yeager added. “I’m from Connecticut, so I started commuting there a couple times a week … and each year [I] had a new goal for what I wanted to achieve. At first it was like, maybe I can play this in college.”
The countless trips across the Hudson and her growing E-Z Pass balance would soon pay off. Yeager began to appear on the radar of Princeton’s recruiters through her standout performance with the WC Eagles, a Pennsylvania field hockey club that is well known for churning out Olympic athletes, including four Americans in the 2024 Games. While with the Eagles, Yeager helped her team to a U-14 National Club Championship, while earning junior national team invites along the way.
“We knew of her because of the talent level she was at, and she was playing for the club team the WC Eagles, and we knew she was going to be a star,” Associate Head Coach Dina Rizzo told the ‘Prince.’
Due to the recruiting rules at the time, which allowed contact between athletes and recruiters at any age, Yeager and Princeton were able to meet early on in Yeager’s high school journey.
“[Her freshman year,] she came to campus to visit and meet with us, and she basically had said she only really wanted to look at a couple schools, and Princeton was one of them,” Rizzo added. “Obviously we were super excited about it, and we gave her an offer and she accepted it right then and there.”
Yeager concurred about the ease of the process, and said that “when I came, the environment and the atmosphere that I experienced really reaffirmed that it was the place for me. I really loved the campus and the feel of the team, the camaraderie that the team had, and it was just something that I really wanted to be a part of.”
Although she had a commitment to Princeton locked up, Yeager didn’t take her foot off the gas in high school.
“After [getting into college], it was trying to get on junior national teams, and then once I was on junior national teams, trying to get on senior teams,” Yeager said. “It was a progression throughout my career of modifying my goals as I went.”
Aside from the national team, Yeager was a force to be reckoned with in high school, playing at the Sacred Heart School in Greenwich, Conn. Yeager’s performance on the high school circuit is still talked about on the team today.
“I grew up playing against her throughout high school, and [Sacred Heart] were our biggest rivals,” Princeton senior forward and co-captain Grace Schulze, also from Greenwich, recounted to the ‘Prince.’ “We [always needed] to just man-mark her, to shut her down, because she was just like that — a competitor.”
Following her arrival on Princeton’s campus, Yeager had any and all opportunity to be blinded by the bright lights of joining a team whose last competitive season ended in the national championship game, but she quickly focused on becoming a leader on the Tiger squad.
“It was very easy to come into the team, because our team has a great culture,” Yeager recalled. “My job [of adjusting] was actually pretty simple because of the amount of talent that was around me.”
Rizzo praised Yeager for her work ethic, and said that Yeager put in the work necessary in order to succeed at the college level.
“The kid worked so hard; she would run through a brick wall,” Rizzo said. “We were very lucky to get her [with] the skill, but also the desire to just compete … [she] competes every second, every minute that we have, so that’s where the difference was with her compared to a lot of kids at her age.”
Yeager’s work yielded results that were nothing short of outstanding, culminating in the first Tiger to earn a first-team field hockey All-American in her first year. For Yeager, she gradually overcame the challenges presented by new opponents, quickly turning the corner to become a star.
“Everything in college happens a lot faster than in high school or in club field hockey, so the biggest challenge is just being able to anticipate things quickly and be able to read the next play faster than your opponents,” Yeager said. “Around our UConn game, towards the end of September, was when I started to feel more comfortable and confident, like I was starting to get the hang of it.”
Along with being a first-team All-American, Yeager was also the second-ever first-year to win Ivy Field Hockey Player of the Year and finished second in Division I in points per game and third in goals per game.
Progressing into her sophomore campaign, Yeager made the superb look normal, once again collecting first-team All-American honors in addition to being the unanimous Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year. Yeager knew a break would be coming the following year, though, as she joined the U.S. senior national team to attempt to qualify for the Olympics.
For Yeager and the rest of the U.S. team, the path to Paris began with a matchup against a familiar foe — No. 6 ranked India — the same team that dashed the United States’ qualifying hopes in 2020. This time around, though, Team USA emerged with a 1–0 victory against India in the first qualifying round, and while there was lots of work to be done to qualify, Yeager and the national team were off to the races.
“It was a pretty big moment from that standpoint, because we had to climb a mountain that had … a shadow over our program for the past four years,” Yeager said about the win over India. “We always believed that we could get that kind of result, but then seeing it come to fruition just gave us a lot more confidence. So, I think it was actually at that moment that we truly believed that we would qualify and that we didn’t just have potential to do it.”
The Americans did just that, qualifying for the Olympics through a semifinal victory over No. 9 Japan, officially punching their ticket to Paris. Yeager, after being named to the team in the beginning of the year, is looking forward to representing her country on the biggest stage.
“Just thinking about walking out onto the field is really, really special. I think it’s something that, like, hasn’t completely hit me yet,” Yeager said. “One of the great things about playing for the national team is that you get to represent your country as well.”
The United States will begin their pursuit of a gold medal with five group stage matchups, starting with current world No. 6 Argentina on July 27. As the lowest-ranked team in a tough group, Yeager and the United States will have their work cut out for them in order to advance to the next round.
“Right now, there's just a lot more focus, but also, more emphasis on joy and having fun and appreciating the moment we're in,” Yeager continued. “So, I think at the moment, it's definitely like a relentless and disciplined attitude. We're training very hard, probably harder than we have all year, but it's also a really fun atmosphere.”
Max Hines is a senior Sports writer for the ‘Prince.’
Cole Keller is a head Sports editor for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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