On Aug. 20, junior Paige Pehrkon committed to Villanova University for field hockey, and will officially join the team in the 2026 school year.
Pehrkon has played on Marshall’s varsity girls field hockey team for three seasons, primarily playing as a midfielder. However, her playing career started before then.
“I did field hockey [when I was] younger,” Pehrkon said. “I did camps and stuff, but I started taking it seriously probably around seventh grade. I joined a club team, and I’ve been doing it seriously ever since.”
Pehrkon said that her interest to pursue field hockey in college started growing in eighth grade, prompting her to take the necessary steps to achieve her goal.
Her freshman year of high school was when her recruitment process began.
“I [was] doing a wide variety of camps and clinics and being really outspoken when on the field,” Pehrkon said.
At that point, Pehrkon’s performance on the field helped her gain recognition from college coaches and her recruitment process was in flight.
“I would say mainly end of freshman year, coaches started reaching out to [my] coach, and then [I] started emailing them,” she said.
After years of building up her potential, Pehrkon received the offer to play for Villanova University.
“It was really exciting,” Pehrkon said. “Villanova has always been one of the schools [that] I had on my list for my top choices, so it was really exciting to hear.”
With a roster of other college offers, Pehrkon chose Villanova for the other amenities it could offer her.
“It was a really good academic choice for me and I really just loved the team environment,” she said. “They had really nice, brand new [training] facilities, which I really liked about the school.”
Now that she has sealed the deal, Pehrkon has made a series of new goals to achieve with field hockey going into her rookie season of college.
“I hope to play well enough, and even be a big part of the team, and maybe get honor roles within Villanova field hockey, or Big East [Conference], which is their district,” Pehrkon said.
Although Pehrkon sees her field hockey career ending after college, she emphasized her goals of earning various accolades at Villanova within that time.
“I hope to obviously just continue it throughout college, and make sure I’m always really good in college, and continue to get different accolades, but then probably end [my career] there,” she said.