Trish Turner, a senior at La Jolla High School, wants to be a therapist so that she can help teenagers avoid going through what she went through. “When I was younger, I had a very hard time,” she says. “There’s personal. there’s family, there’s financial. “Growing up is very hard, and teenagers need someone to talk to. I can be that person to talk to.” Turner keeps an active schedule volunteering when she is not playing field hockey or soccer at La Jolla or doing homework. She helps at the Community Giving Garden, which her aunt Christine runs in Tierra Santa. She also visits elderly dementia patients, which she started when her grandmother had dementia and she visited her. “My aunt always taught me never to put myself before others,” she says. “I’ve been very fortunate. I have been given a lot in my life. I want to give back.” Turner tells some funny stories of the elderly folks she visits asking her to bring them chocolate. One lady told her, “I’m a rebel. Let’s go get some candy.” One gentleman, since passed away, always greeted Turner by telling her his wife was going to visit and about all the things she was going to bring him. Turner first met him when she was in the eighth grade. He was 84 years old. She later found out his wife had passed away before she, Turner, ever met him. Every time she left, he asked her when she was coming back. “I made a friend,” she says, smiling at the recollection. But her visits, she says, were a way to brighten his day and bring a smile to his face. “They really like visitors, and they like younger people,” she says. It gives them something different in their day and something to look forward to.” As a child, she had a unicycle and could ride it. She rode it around inside the unit – that must have raised some heads. Sometimes visiting can be uncomfortable, when the novelty of helping has worn off or the mood one brings in just isn’t bright, like some other days. In that case, Turner says. “It’s worth a short time of discomfort, to give something back.” Volunteering, like helping build a fence around the vegetable plot at the garden and painting the gazebo there to help provide a comfortable spot with shade, seems to set something right in Trish. To keep her head straight. She’s aware of other people’s struggles because of the ones she has gone through. Another outlet for her is sports. Ask her about her field hockey or soccer, and she clicks into something she really feels comfortable in. “I love running,” she says about her two sports, which involve a lot of legwork. “In field hockey, I play center middie (midfielder), so I do the most running.” The position also means she is heavily involved in the offense. She is aggressive on the attack. A tough adjustment during her junior year involved her transferring from Serra High, which required sitting out the first six weeks of each of the sports seasons: six weeks in the fall before she could play in field hockey games and the same in the winter with the high school soccer squad. “It was hard,” she says. “You watch the starting lineup being put together, and you can’t be in it. You want to keep your skills up, and you want to keep the coach aware of your skills so that when you can play you’ll have a chance.” The two transition periods were difficult for an athlete who, starting with softball then moving to soccer and later adding field hockey in high school, has always played a lot.
She’s really excited about her new coach in field hockey, Lisa Griffiths, who is taking the reins from Paula Conway. “Coach Conway really impacted me,” she says. “It’s hard losing her. But Coach Griffiths is working on us staying positive, moving forward.
“She has already organized a lot of team hikes. We had a beach run. She is very open. All of the girls we have have all been training. The new coach is great.”
Another element of her life as a senior is the college application process. The coach from Knox College in Galesburg, Ill. spotted Turner while scouting the November Nights tournament last fall and has since assured her of a spot on his Division III school’s varsity next year. Turner still has to complete the formal application process. How the $51,000-per-year expenses at the private school get covered remains yet to be seen, even with financial help. “It’s nerve-wracking,” says the Viking senior of the process. There is a lot of pressure.