Shying Away From a Setting Sun

Tomorrow at Stanford, Kim Yokers will almost assuredly play her final game as a Bear. She'll play all 90 minutes, like she always does, and she'll get fouled a lot by a Stanford midfield, the majority of whose game plan is dedicated to diminishing her effectiveness. She probably won't score a goal, but she'll probably start the play that leads to one.

Of course, it wasn't supposed to end this way for Yokers. The senior midfielder had participated in the NCAA tournament in each of her previous three years, but 2003 was going to be special. She was a captain and the undisputed best player on a Bears squad laden with senior leadership, sophomore talent and a heralded group of new freshman blood. The Sweet 16, maybe even the Final Four, lay just beyond the horizon.

Ah, but you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice, men, and a women's soccer team that never quite came together. Barring a large surprise from the powers that fill out tournament brackets, even a Cal victory over Stanford will not extend Yokers' collegiate career into the postseason.

"Beating Stanford, and knocking them out, that would be the perfect ending," says Yokers. "Well, maybe not perfect."

The imperfect ending has been a familiar story to Yokers over the last few months. She qualified for Team USA in the Under-21 Nordic Cup for the second consecutive year, but coach Chris Petrucelli inexplicably buried her somewhere between the bench and the stands. Team USA won the gold medal game, while the 90-minute player saw zero minutes of action.

Perhaps Petrucelli was merely dissuaded by ignorance, because coaches who have watched Yokers play more than once may have decided upon different substitution patterns.

"Kim has been such a tremendous player for Cal," says Washington coach Lesle Gallimore, who recruited Yokers out of Seattle. "It's been exciting to watch her develop."

Between the end of the Nordic Cup and the beginning of the Women's World Cup, the league of her future employment closed its doors. It seemed a foregone conclusion that Yokers would be the second athlete in as many years to go from a Bears jersey to one bearing a WUSA logo.

"She never questions her ability and her talent, and she has been the best player on the field in 90 percent of our games this season," says Cal coach Kevin Boyd. "She had a future in that league-if it returns-or any league she decides to play in."

In true lemons-to-lemonade fashion, Yokers has used the difficult experiences of the recent past to improve the present for herself and her teammates. Sixteen different players have started a game in the field this season, which has relegated many to a reserve role for the first time in their lives. Drawing upon her summer in Petrucelli's "system", Yokers took the glass-half-full approach.

"The (Under-21s) were difficult because of my role, but they helped me to relate to players here who weren't playing as much as they'd like," says Yokers. "I was able to talk to the team, and we've had a pretty good attitude."

One figures a good attitude would be a prerequisite to playing every minute of every game with an asthmatic condition that forces Yokers to use an inhaler before taking the field. It is unsurprising, therefore, that she grew up as a big admirer of Michelle Akers, the former US World Cup standout who played through chronic fatigue syndrome.

"Akers was such a strong player because she left her heart and soul in every game," says Yokers.

As decisive as the midfielder can be with the ball on a soccer pitch, her Gemini traits ("like two twins fighting") are just as evident off it. Yokers arrived at Cal intending to go the business track, but has since changed to a legal studies major. She is thinking (tentatively, of course) that she might like to work on human rights issues or in international law. She will likely have a good feel for international concerns when she continues her soccer career, although she's evidently not clear if that should take place in Boston, Brussels, or Beijing.

"I'm waiting for that moment when something strikes me, because I want to be truly inspired when I make any decisions," says Yokers.

In other words, win or lose tomorrow's game, you get the feeling that Kim Yokers has some more perfect endings left to write.

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