By Dylan Howlett
In the lurching arc that is child development, fourth grade offers a host of age-appropriate preoccupations. The deepening complexities of friendships. The allure of both defining and stretching boundaries. The gleeful solicitations of opinions, and secrets, and inside jokes from peers. It is not, for most, a time of career planning, or of promises fulfilled to familial legacies.
Karson Yon ’24 was different. How could she not be? By the time she had reached fourth grade, her sixth year at Durham Academy after she enrolled as a pre-kindergarten student, Yon knew her genetic proclivities and all that it portended for her distant future. Her father, Larry, played basketball at North Carolina Central University, where her mother, Cheron, also ran track. Yon’s older sister, Kennedy Yon ’22, would eventually join the women’s soccer team at Florida International University; she is currently a sophomore midfielder.
It was settled, then. Karson Yon knew — as a fourth-grader — that she would become a collegiate athlete.
“Friday,” Yon said, “is probably going to be one of the biggest moments in my life.”
She’s not alone. Friday marks DA’s Fall Signing Day, when a half-dozen Cavaliers and their families will celebrate their commitment to Division I athletics programs. The crowd in the Upper School quad will include Yon and her parents, surrounded by the maroon and gold of the University of Minnesota, where Yon — who has compiled an exceptional club soccer career outside of DA — will play on the women’s soccer team. It will be a culmination, for student-athletes and their families, of years of early wakeups and long car rides, words of consolation and full-throated support.
It is a day for dreams fulfilled, and dreams just begun.
Will Cooley ’24, Diving — Columbia University
Four-time qualifier for USA Diving Junior National Championships (2019, 2021–2023)
Nine-time invitational winner
2021 regional champion, USA Diving Junior Region 2
16th-place finisher in 16–18 Boys Platform, 2023 USA Diving Junior National Championships
There are few visuals quite so arresting in life as the perfect dive, when the surface of a pool shimmers, then gurgles, as the diver melts into splashless depths. There’s nothing like it, Will Cooley ’24 says, except the moments before, which he’s known ever since he started diving at his local pool as a 10-year-old.
“I really love being in the air,” said Cooley, who will sign Friday with Columbia’s swimming and diving team. “It’s very comfortable for me because I’ve been in it so often. When you jump off the higher platform, you relax all your body. You have to squeeze before you hit the water, but for three seconds, you’re weightless. It’s like skydiving.”
Or, in the case of Cooley, more like falling with style. He has enjoyed a decorated club career and has emerged as a perennial qualifier for USA Diving Junior Nationals, where he placed 16th in the 2023 16–18 boys platform competition. The event is as precise as it is unsparing, particularly on a diver’s wrists and elbows. Cooley says he limits his platform practice to one or two sessions per week to avoid injury.
As of next fall, his new training center will be Columbia’s Percy Uris Natatorium, though he anticipates exploring more than his new campus. “There’s just so much to do in the city,” said Cooley, who frequently visited his aunt and uncle at their Brooklyn residence throughout his childhood.
But he’s already looking ahead to the year of his college graduation, which coincides with another lifelong dream. Cooley said he hopes to attend the U.S. Olympic Trials in 2027 in advance of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics just a few months after his intended graduation. Until then, Cooley has established the more intermediate goal of a different acrobatic discipline: literal skydiving, which he can’t attempt until he turns 18 next year. A diver, of course, looks to achieve weightlessness wherever, or however, they can find it.
Evelyn Guyer ’24, Lacrosse — Lafayette College
Attacking midfielder, DA Lacrosse
Three-time All-State honoree (2021–2023)
TISAC Player of the Year (2023)
Three-time All-Conference honoree (2021–2023)
USA Lacrosse All-Academic (2023)
153 goals in 49 games at DA
Evelyn Guyer ’24 saw herself at a larger, football-oriented school — until she didn’t. In conversations with Katie McEnroe, her college counselor, Guyer realized she appreciated the smaller class sizes to which she had grown accustomed at DA. And during her junior year, she had so enjoyed taking Mathematics of Finance with Upper School math teacher Ashu Saxena that she had already considered pursuing an economics or finance degree in college. So when she visited a larger school and was told lacrosse practices would be held from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Guyer balked. “OK,” she said. “When do you go to class?”
The answer at Lafayette, which offered Guyer a spot on its women’s lacrosse team, was simple: during the school day, when professors also make themselves available within a dedicated lunch hour to meet with students who want additional support. The fit, Guyer said, was seamless.
The lacrosse program undoubtedly feels the same. Lafayette will add a prolific attacking midfielder who has garnered three consecutive All-State and All-Conference honors. Guyer, who also was a member of DA’s back-to-back state champion girls golf team, has scored 153 goals in 49 career games at DA, where she has formed a formidable attacking duo with Howard signee Kyla Newkirk ’24.
The tandem is, at first glance, diametrically opposed. Newkirk plays with an outward ferocity that has earned her recognition from her teammates, while Guyer is a cerebral playmaker who defers to Newkirk if she realizes her friend is overwhelming their opponent. “I’m not a very vocal person when I’m out on the field,” said Guyer, who grew up in the Philadelphia area about 80 miles south of Lafayette. “I’m kind of just in my zone.”
That is precisely where she’ll be, too, on the field, and in the classroom, at Lafayette.
Peter Morano ’24, Soccer — High Point University
Goalkeeper, U17 North Carolina FC Academy
In December 2022, Peter Morano ’24 attended a camp at High Point University for prospective recruits. He had never been to the school’s campus, and he had only just learned about the university — and its soccer program — from a friend who had been recruited.
Morano unwittingly arrived at the university’s front gates in time for High Point University Christmas Drive, a holiday tradition that bedecks the grounds with lights, garland and 10-foot nutcracker statues. What is this place? Morano thought. This might be Disneyland. “It was breathtaking,” he said. “It was one of the nicest college campuses I’ve ever seen.”
He was in his seventh year as a year-round player with NCFC Academy, which helped him transition from a one-time striker who clamored for goals to a sought-after goalkeeper intent on preventing them. “There’s a good amount of confidence that it takes,” Morano said of his oft-tortured position, “but also just the free will to go out and do whatever.”
That same free-wheeling disposition served Morano well when he began entertaining High Point as a possible soccer destination. He found the coaching staff both refreshingly honest about his performance and enduringly receptive to his interest. Much like Guyer and Lafayette, Morano connected with High Point’s DA-esque commitment to smaller class sizes, and the admissions representative with whom he spoke was personable and welcoming. “They made it seem like if this is my goal, that’s their goal too, and this is how they’re going to get me there,” Morano said.
He will graduate from DA in December 2023 to start training with his new team, for which he hopes to start in goal by the start of his first season next fall. It won’t, however, eclipse his academic ambition. Morano has been accepted to the Honors Scholars Program at High Point, where he hopes to pursue business and psychology studies. And while Morano’s soccer career blossomed outside of DA, he is unmistakably a Cavalier. “I don’t think I could have done it without DA,” he says. Morano found a tireless supporter in DA Director of Athletics Andy Pogach, who taught Morano in Middle School PE, and in Lori Reade, the student development and career exploration counselor and Morano’s class advisor who supported him throughout his recruiting process.
It is, in essence, the befuddling paradox of goalkeeping: to stand in the way of goals, all the while reaching for them.
“I’ve had the best experience, and I’m someone who will always vouch for DA,” Morano said. “Even though I didn’t play DA sports, it really did get me to where I am.”
Kyla Newkirk ’24, Lacrosse — Howard University
Attack, DA Lacrosse
All-State honoree (2023)
All-Conference honoree (2023)
98 goals in 49 games at DA
The on-field chemistry between Newkirk and Guyer is both evident and elusive. They have combined to lead the Cavaliers to three consecutive conference titles and undefeated TISAC seasons after joining the varsity program as Middle Schoolers. But their communication on the attack — a flurry of head nods, furtive glances and staccato-like directives — borders on the telepathic.
Yet Newkirk, who next fall will join the women’s lacrosse team at Howard, betrays her emotions on the field a little easier than her clandestine synergy with Guyer.
“I am pretty intense, especially if I get pretty angry during a game,” said Newkirk, who in the past has received the lacrosse team’s Intensity Award. “You’ve gotta get me a little riled up during a game because then I just go off. I just want to start shooting every time, especially if we have a turnover. I’m going to get on that ride and try to track them down.”
That tenacity stands in stark contrast with Newkirk’s magnanimous flair away from lacrosse. For three years, she organized the assembling and distribution of Kyla’s Kare Kits, which provided toiletries and other essentials to the homeless. Her initiative earned the adulation of Durham City Council in 2016, which issued a proclamation celebrating March 22 as “Kyla Newkirk Day.” She also served as an intern for Superior Court Judge Josephine Kerr Davis in Durham, and the experience spurred Newkirk to consider an eventual career in criminal law.
She connected immediately with the coaching staff at Howard, whose assistant coach, Alexis Joseph, previously served as Newkirk’s club lacrosse coach. Newkirk will soon call herself an undergraduate at one of the nation’s oldest HBCUs, which has as many schools and colleges (14) as DA has grade levels. “That shift is going to be different for me, but I’m also excited to take on the challenge,” Newkirk said. “It’s going to be fun.”
Her whole lacrosse journey, Newkirk said, has been defined by change and adaptation. She once tried out for a club team and was cut, and her eventual club team underwent significant leadership and coaching changes that eventually prompted Guyer, who had also been Newkirk’s club teammate, to play for another team. What hasn’t changed — and what won’t change at Howard — is Newkirk’s uncompromising tenacity.
“I’m a little feisty,” Newkirk said, laughing. “It’s under control, but I can get a little feisty.”
Evan Pfeil ’24, Track and Field — Davidson College
DA school record holder in long jump
Anchor on fastest 4x200-meter relay team in school history (2023)
Anchor on conference-winning 4x100-meter relay team (2023)
Third-fastest 100-meter time in school history
Fourth-best high jump in school history
In James Bohanek’s 17 years at DA, the Upper School theatre teacher and director has distinguished himself as a casting extraordinaire. So it was little surprise when, in service of the 2024 winter musical Into the Woods, Bohanek had some distinct parameters for the role of The Mysterious Man, a character who appears, then disappears, in a flash. He needed someone fast.
He needed Evan Pfeil.
While Pfeil accepted the role of the peripatetic character in the Upper School’s upcoming production, his value to collegiate track programs — as DA’s school record holder in the long jump and trusted anchor leg in its boys relays — was far less enigmatic. Next fall, Davidson will cast Pfeil in its ensemble of jumpers and sprinters, all the while providing a “great fit,” he said, for his academic passion.
“Ever since I was 3, and ever since I could write, I wanted to do some form of storytelling,” said Pfeil, who also led the Cavaliers to a 2023 conference title in the boys 4x100-meter relay.
The writing is specific, both to Pfeil and to Davidson’s course offerings. He wants to land a career as a storyteller and screenwriter for video games, which he can pursue at Davidson through its unique digital studies program. Pfeil considers “The Legend of Zelda” series as a paragon of storytelling — particularly in its devotion to immersive worlds and environmental narratives — and he has already concocted a few original ideas.
The future video game collaborator is the unquestioned leader on the DA relay teams, which represent his favorite event in the sport. “One, it’s really fun to watch,” said Pfeil, who also anchored the school’s fastest 4x200-meter boys relay team. “Two, when you’re running for a group of people, for the community that you built as a relay team, you feel so much better about yourself doing it.”
The spirit of togetherness, and symbiosis, is not too different from a team that develops a video game, or a cast that comes together to put on an intricate, and fleet-footed, theatre production.
“It feels really good having people to rely on, and having those people rely on you,” Pfeil said.
Karson Yon ’24, Soccer — University of Minnesota
Defender, NC Courage
The average winter temperature in Minneapolis, home to the University of Minnesota, is 25 degrees Fahrenheit — or about 27 degrees below the average winter temperature in Durham. “The weather is definitely going to be something that I’ll have to adjust to,” Yon said.
But she won’t have to adjust to the idea of playing soccer in Minnesota. “The school spirit there is crazy, which is something I love,” Yon said. “I think I just wanted to try something new.”
A hockey-obsessed, lake-dotted state that borders Canada surely qualifies as something new. Yet much like her fourth-grade aspirations of playing a sport in college, Yon knew this was a part of her plan. She had wanted to play in the Big 10, having been bullish on the quality of the conference’s soccer pedigree and on the growth of the conference thanks to realignment, which will see USC, UCLA, the University of Oregon and the University of Washington join the league in 2024. “I think it’s going to be a real powerhouse conference, and I’m really excited to be a part of that,” Yon said.
Minnesota also fit the bill of a larger state school, which appealed to Yon after spending 14 years in a smaller environment at DA. She is leaning toward studying kinesiology and special education, which would position Yon to become an occupational therapist. She still has her eyes on continuing her playing career in the National Women’s Soccer League, the preeminent professional circuit for women’s players in the U.S.
Throughout her time with her NC Courage club program, Yon emerged as a multihyphenate who has spent time as midfielder, forward and defender, the latter of which Yon will play full time at Minnesota. Her path isn’t too dissimilar from that of Crystal Dunn, the former UNC women’s star who has become a stalwart defender on the U.S. Women’s National Team. Dunn was a member of the U.S. team that won the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, and she has made two Olympic rosters. Dunn and Kennedy Yon overlapped during their youth soccer careers, and they frequently trained together. Karson Yon would stand on the sidelines, watching her sister and a future international soccer player share a field as she dreamed of her own starry future.
“A lot of my journey,” Yon said, “has come from my family.”
By next fall, the Yons will have two Division I soccer players to watch and follow. Minnesota and Florida International don’t have any plans to play each other in the regular season; the Yons could meet only in the NCAA tournament, which Florida International hasn’t reached since 2011. When her first match begins, and the whistle blows through the temperate air of a Minnesota autumn, Yon will be forgiven if the echoes meander back to her fourth-grade classroom at DA, where a realization will become — some 1,600 miles northwest — a dream fully realized.
“It was always what I wanted to do,” Yon said.
Bria Irizarry contributed additional reporting.