MERIDEN — At a USA Field Hockey training session this summer, Dartmouth coach Amy Fowler approached Kimball Union Academy coach Siobhan Whittemore about the opportunity to bring a national presence to the Upper Valley.

Fowler, regional coaching director for the Northeast at the national field hockey organization, had been hoping to get the USA Field Hockey Futures program into the Upper Valley for some time. Similar to Learn to Play through USA Ice Hockey, the initiative teaches middle school and high school athletes the basics of the game.

The conversation will bear fruit when the Wildcats host a Futures site at The Barn Field House on Sundays from January through May. There will be seven sessions, with each one running three hours in length.

“I’ve just been trying to find different ways to offer more opportunities for local kids,” Whittemore said in a phone interview last week. “I mean, we’re getting Vermont, New Hampshire, kind of really a big range signing up for the site. Just to be able to come over and develop the skills in the offseason because not everybody has the opportunity to obviously play on turf through the winter, or even some of our public schools throughout their regular season. So it’s just a really great opportunity for that.”

The Futures program started in the 1990s. Initially, New Hampshire and Maine had their own region, but since then it’s taken off. Across the United States there are nine regions — Northeast, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Chesapeake, South, Great Lakes, Central and West — that host workouts. In the Northeast alone there are 16 sites.

Each site is broken into three different levels. The standard site is meant for athletes new to Futures, while site level Nos. 1 and 2 are designated for athletes that were selected to the National Futures Championship or based on their performance in the previous year’s regional Futures tournament.

KUA is a standard site because it is entering its first season hosting a Futures session. Across those three hours, players will practice a curriculum created by Craig Parnham, a two-time Olympic athlete and three-time Olympic coach.

At the conclusion of the seven sessions, athletes will go on to play in a regional tournament at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell broken up into U19, U16 and U14 age groups. Athletes will be on a team from their site. Teams that win at the regional tournament will go on to play at the national tournament, where the chances of being scouted for a national team spot are strong.

One of the main draws that drove Whittemore to bring the program to KUA was to give her players an opportunity to play field hockey in the winter.

Students at prep schools usually don’t have a means of transportation, making participation on an out-of-season club team unlikely. Whittemore also can’t coach her players in the offseason due to NEPSAC restrictions.

“We’re lucky here. We have terrific players, and we have this indoor turf that the girls get to play in the offseason,” Whittemore said. “It definitely helps because the boarders here don’t have cars. They’re not really able to go and play in club teams and things like that. We don’t have any in the area. But you definitely thought about being able to bring something to campus.”

Added KUA athletic director Mike Doherty: “We’ve been a little bit low in numbers with our field hockey team over the last couple years. We see this as an opportunity to increase those numbers with some quality players and quality students.”

Fowler hopes that bringing Futures to the Upper Valley will continue to build participation numbers. The popularity of the game in the area has come back — two area schools, Windsor and Hanover, won high school state championships this fall — but Fowler wants to make sure the success and numbers continue to grow.

In the past, athletes would have to travel to Saint Anselm’s College or the University of Vermont to get to a Futures site. Now Fowler can give players the same opportunity while staying close to home, making it even more attractive to join.

“If this is a way to get kids exposed to it, awesome,” Fowler said in a phone interview on Tuesday morning. “I’m hoping that we’re building a pool of kids that want to actually play and do something, and possibly go to college or at least play through high school. I hope that automatically would happen, but my appreciation for just making sure national field hockey puts out a good product is important to me.”

Pete Nakos can be reached at 603-727-3306 or pnakos@vnews.com.