Portland State senior Britney Yada is coming off her best tournament of the 2012-13 golf season, placing third at the UC Irvine Invitational on Feb. 26. Yada shot 75-74-71=220 in the 54-hole event and was later named the Big Sky Conference Golfer of the Week for the fifth time in her career. Yada, a native of Hilo, HI, returns to her home state to play in the Anuenue Spring Break Classic on Mar. 25-27. Yada has been on two Big Sky Conference Champion teams in her career and will look for a third title with her teammates in late April.

When Senior Britney Yada graduates this spring, she'll be leaving her club marks all over the Viking record book for women golfers… and will have made quite an impression on the Big Sky Conference .      

As the Big Sky Conference Tournament approaches in late April, she holds PSU records for season scoring average, 75.51 (2010-11… her sophomore year); career scoring average, 76.29; 54-hole tournament scoring, six-under par 210 (also a BSC Championship record), and 18-hole scoring, 67 (another big Sky Conference Championship record).       

As Head Golf Coach Kathleen Takaishi's first recruit, she has, at the very least, fulfilled Takaishi's hopes.    

“Her game was pretty good when she arrived, and it's matured since then,” said Takaishi.       

Pretty good, indeed!     

Her first year, Yada earned first-team All-Big Sky Conference honors, was a Big Sky Conference Golfer of the Week and the key player on the Big Sky Champion team. Oh, Yada also earned Academic All-Big Sky honors that year.      

It was simply the best freshman season in PSU golf history.  

And, her sophomore season was even better. That year, Yada won the Big Sky Championship in record fashion, shooting 72-68-70—210, the school and tournament record as she led the Vikings to a second straight Big Sky title. That year, she had eight straight top-10 tournament finishes and two straight tournament titles. Again… Academic All-Big Sky.      

Last season, she continued her brilliant career, maintaining every major PSU scoring record and, for the third straight year, was named All-Big Sky Conference. She led the team in scoring at 76.31 for the third straight year, the only Viking ever to accomplish that (and, yes…Academic All-Big Sky).      

“(Yada) has gotten more consistent over the years. She has fine-tuned her game. Her short game has gotten better,” Takaishi said.      

From her standpoint, Yada said the biggest change in her game over her career here has been mental.      

“I became a little more mentally accepting of mistakes and learning from my mistakes. I think those things come with maturity,” she said.     

Takaishi agreed about the maturity.      

“She has grown up as a person, has taken on a leadership role for the team,” she said. Yada “leads by example…she's always on time, works hard, puts in more hours on her own.”    

The transition to college on the mainland was less traumatic that she expected, Yada remembered.      

When she arrived, the Hilo, HI native thought she might be pretty homesick. It turned out there was a fairly large group of Hawai'ian Islanders here and that helped.      

“I wasn't homesick as much as I thought. There were a lot of Hawai'ian kids here and we related well to each other… others eating the same food and talking the same way cushioned the culture shock,” she recalled.      

It didn't eliminate it though.     

“When I first came here, I assumed everyone had an aloha spirit,” which she described as “caring about each other…very laid back”. The downside is that “people sometimes let people walk all over them. You never hear anyone honk their horn in Hawai'i.”      

It took awhile, but she began to realize that “kids here are taught to be more assertive… and that's good. I mean, here if someone cuts in front of you in line, you stand up for yourself.”        

When Yada saw Portland for the first time and met the Viking women's golf team, she knew she'd found a home… at least for the next four years.      

“Kathleen saw me at a tournament and showed the most interest in me and I really liked it here. I liked the city. I liked the team. That made the decision for me,” said Yada.     

And she's one of a handful of students who never blinked at the Rose City's reputation for rain (arguably better than the cold, snowy winters of many Big Sky schools anyway). In fact, Portland must have seemed almost semi-arid to the 18-year-old from Hilo, Hawaii.    

Hilo, you see, has between 130 and 200 inches of rainfall annually, depending on whether you live by the sea or higher up.  Portland “only” averages 37 plus inches.      

“It was the cold. That's what got to me, not the rain,” she said. Hilo's average high temperature is 79 to 83 degrees, with lows averaging 64 to 69.      

While that sounds ideal, Yada is delighted with the Pacific Northwest's four seasons.      

“I like seeing the leaves changing color and, although it doesn't snow much, it's cool when it does. I like changes in the year,” she said.      

Also, she likes the city. Compared to Hilo's population of 92,000, Portland seems huge. “I like the pace and feel of the city. I think I'm a big city kind of person. There's just more stuff to do. I like living downtown. You can use mass transit to go places. It's so easy. It's not like some small town campus school in the middle of nowhere.”      

Although Hawai'i's golf courses are hard to beat, Yada likes courses here and says each area has it's pluses.      

“I love the golf courses here. The game plays the same, but the courses are really different. In Hawai'i, it's all palm trees and rock. Here there are a lot of trees. Both are nice in a different way.” Her favorite courses are Langdon Farms (PSU's home course) and Pumpkin Ridge.      

Highlights of her Viking career (“so far,” she emphasized—“I have a feeling this is going to be a good year for me and for the team”) were “when our team won conference and I won conference” her sophomore year.     

That success was fueled by a “pretty good freshman experience, I had more confidence in my game. The team meshed well and fed off each other. We all played well.”      

Yada will graduate this spring with a degree in economics, but hopes there's more competitive golf in her future. She's hoping eventually to play professionally, following in the footsteps of former teammate and friend Tiffany Schoning, who graduated last year.      

“I've been talking with Tiffany and a number of other people. I think I'll start small, like Tiffany did, and play on a mini-tour, hoping to work up to the LPGA. It's a different lifestyle. Hard to make money with all the travel expenses, but if you really want it, you'll figure it out,” she said.    

And that might work, said Takaishi. “After school, it's up to her. She plays well. She knows how to hit a lot of strokes. She has a future in golf if she wants one,” she said.      

If that doesn't work, there's always graduate school.      

"If the tour doesn't work out, I'm not sure what I'll do. Graduate school will always be there, if I want to continue with golf, now is the time. I know I'd like always to be involved with golf,” she said.      

For now, though, she and Takaishi are focused on winning their third Big Sky championship is four seasons later this spring.

“We're really relying on her to lead because she's the only one with that experience," said Takaishi. "We're starting two freshmen, two sophomores and Britney. She's the only one who knows what it's about and how to do it.”