CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The Harvard Volleyball team will add five incoming first-years to the 2023-24 team, head coach
Jennifer Weiss announced on Monday. The new student-athletes to join the team come August are Çagla Bayraktar, Yvette Easton,
Alexandra Farquhar,
Amelie Lima and
Ryleigh Patterson.
Çagla Bayraktar
Bayraktar makes the journey overseas to join the Crimson team from Kadikoy, Turkey, where she attended TED Istanbul College Private High School. An outside hitter, she played three years of high school volleyball and five years with four different club teams in the TVF league.
She served as a co-captain of the Turkish National Team in 2017, also racking up championships as the national high school champions in 2018 and wins in the Turkish Championship in 2017 and 2018.
In the classroom, Bayraktar was named an AP Scholar with Distinction in 2022 and a spot on the Honor Roll from 2018-23, earning the highest GPA in 2019, when she also won the Science award, Turkish literature award and Spanish award for her grade. Outside of sport and academics, she volunteered for ICAN and Paz de Cristo and enjoys making ceramics, painting and traveling.
Yvette Easton
Easton, a Westwood, Massachusetts native, will continue her athletic and academic career in her home state as a recent graduate of Westwood High School.
A defensive specialist/libero, she is a four-year letterwinner in volleyball and a two-year letterwinner in tennis. She captained her volleyball team from 2022-23 and earned first team All-state honors, was honored as the Tri-Valley League MVP in 2022, earned first-team all Tri-Valley honors three times, and was a two time team MVP.
She reported 934 career digs and led her team to the 2022 Tri-Valley League championship and the quarterfinals in the Massachusetts state tournament. On the academic side, she won multiple awards and scholarships including the Dartmouth Book Award, Rotary Club Community Service Award, Women's Empowerment Scholarship and Principal's Leadership Award. She was a three-year class president and a member of National Honor Society and French Honor Society.
Her father, Scott Easton '89 attended Harvard.
Farquhar hails from Santa Rosa, California, where she will soon graduate Cardinal Newman High School. An opposite hitter, she started on her varsity high school volleyball team every year since 2020. Additionally, she played for the Absolute Volleyball club from 2015-18.
She was named first team all-league North Bay from 2021-23 and her team won the North Coast Section and League titles in 2021, helping her team earn a spot on the top-26 teams in the country list from 2021-22. In 2023, she was named the Prep Dig player to watch and qualified for the open girls' junior national championship from 2021-23.
Off the court, Farquhar has performed over 100 hours of community service with the National Breast Cancer Foundation. She was named to the Principal's and Dean's List every year since 2019.
Her father, John Farquhar, played football at Duke University, where he graduated in 1995. He went on to play in the NFL for the Pittsburgh Steelers and New Orleans Saints from 1996-2000.
Lima is a native of Newport Beach, California, where she attends Mater Dei High School. A setter and right-side hitter, she played volleyball for four years in high school and has made appearances on nine different club or travel teams since 2015.
She has been listed on PrepVolleyball.com's class of 2023 watch list since 2020 and was named to their Super Setters list in 2021. Her team was ranked 16
th nationally and 8
th in California in 2022. Additionally her teams have ranked in the top 10 in the Premier Volleyball League, won a silver medal at the Las Vegas Classic, won a silver medal at the Nike Tournament of Champions and finished as the runner-up at the 2021 CIF SoCal Division I state tournament.
Outside of volleyball, she is a member of National Honor Society, is a co-founder and active chair of the Teens with Disabilities Awareness Club and has been named to the Principal's Excellence List for having a 4.0 GPA every year since 2020.
Her sister Anastasia Lima played beach volleyball at the University of Oregon from 2019-22.
Patterson joins the Crimson from Rancho Santa Fe, California, where she attended Cathedral Catholic High School. A middle blocker who earned a varsity letter for two years in high school and spent four years on the WAVE Volleyball club, Patterson is well-decorated.
She was named to the 2021 Redondo All-Tournament team, was a CIF Champion, earned first-team CIF honors and led her high school team in kills and blocks, which named her the MVP in 2022. Her team was the 2021 and 2022 CIF Open Division Champions as well as the 2022 California Open Division State Champions.
Outside of volleyball, Patterson served as a co-founder of the first Black Student Union at Torrey Pines, a leader of Cathedral Catholic's Black Student Union, and the treasurer and foundation chair of Jack and Jill of America.
Her father, Bruce Wayne Patterson hails from the University of North Carolina Charlotte, where he played basketball and graduated in 1996 before playing professionally in Europe for four years.
