Six senior athletes from Point Loma High School signed national letters of intent to continue their playing careers at various colleges and universities in a “Signing Party” held on Veterans Day at the San Diego Hall of Champions.
The annual event, the only one of its kind nationally, saw a record total of 206 athletes in 19 sports ink deals believed to total over $3 million in scholarship aid.
Most sports are covered in this “early period,” but a Feb. 4 “Signing Party II” will mark the first period for football prospects.
Leading the PLHS signees were five Lady Pointers who helped lead their teams to CIF titles last year in volleyball and soccer.
Madilyn Yeomans will be heading north to attend UCLA, where she will play for the Bruins’ NCAA Div. I beach volleyball program. The school competes in the Pacific-12 Conference and has won a record 112 NCAA national championships. She will join six other San Diego County members of the Bruins program.
Beach volleyball is a fully sanctioned NCAA sport that will have its first national championship in the spring of 2016.
Also moving on as a beach volleyball player is Sarah Szostak, who will be traveling east to become a member of the Springhill College team. Based in Mobile, Ala., the private Roman Catholic Jesuit liberal arts college was established in 1830. With only about 1,500 students, the Badgers compete in the NCAA Div. II Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
A third Lady Pointer volleyball player, Yuliya Ushakova, will be playing for the UC Riverside team. The Highlanders, a NCAA Div. I school, play in the Big West Conference. Previously, while a Div. II team, UCR won national championships in women’s volleyball. The team recently set a school record for most wins in a season of Big West play.
Yeomans, Szostak and Ushakova were all key members of the Lady Pointer volleyball team that won last year’s CIF Div. I championship. The team was eliminated in this year’s quarterfinals.
Two top players from last season’s 21-2-3 record Lady Pointers CIF Div. II championship soccer team signed letters of intent at schools whose mascots are horses.
Striker Jordan Patane will attend California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo after registering 13 goals and 23 assists for a team-leading 49 points as a junior. The Mustangs field NCAA Div. I teams and play in the Big West Conference. Home games are played in the Alex G. Spanos Stadium on campus, where the Mustangs rarely lose to conference opponents.
Patane’s teammate Natasha Camacho-Bier will head east to the campus of Mercy College, home of the Mavericks. Located in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., the college’s teams play in NCAA Div. II and the East Coast Conference. After netting four goals and adding 13 assists last year, Camacho-Bier, along with Patane, will be counted on as the Lady Pointers attempt to repeat their championship season when play begins next month.
Baseball player Cole van den Helder emerged as the ace of the Pointer pitching staff last year as a junior, compiling a 7-0 record, a 1.53 ERA and striking out 74 hitters in 55 innings. He will again lead the Pointers into the 2015 season before taking his talents north to the University of Oregon.
He will join a Ducks program that competes in the NCAA Div. I Pacific-12 Conference and has major rivalries with University of Washington and Oregon State University. The 2015 recruiting class is rated the nation’s eighth-best according to Collegiate Baseball newspaper.
Signed letters of intent guarantee a scholarship and require athletes to attend the college for one year. 
The National Letter of Intent program is administered by the NCAA’s Eligibility Center. College coaches are prohibited from attending signings.