She picked on MCC competition for 4 years. Now Yates sets her sights on the Pac-12

Summer Yates committed verbally to the University of Washington when she was a freshman, but that didn’t take anything away from making things official.

The Chiawana High School soccer star signed her National Letter of Intent to play for the Huskies on Wednesday, and was thrilled to finally put pen to paper.

“I’ve been waiting for this for 3 years now,” Yates said “So to finally sign the paper, be heading to the university in less than 4 months, it’s exciting.”

Yates’ high school career was nothing short of outstanding. In leading the Riverhawks to three of their four program playoff appearances, she scored 99 goals, made the All-MCC first team in all four varsity seasons, made the All-State team twice, and was the All-MCC and Herald All-Area Player of the Year this fall. She accomplished all that while playing with U.S. Women’s National teams in Italy, China, the Netherlands, England and Australia, and still maintaining a 3.34 cumulative GPA throughout high school.

“As an athletic director, it’s been special for me to watch you play soccer,” Chiawana AD John Cazier said at Yates’ signing ceremony. “But what I care about far more is the kind of person that you are. Summer is as genuine a person as she is a soccer player.”

Before her college career gets under way, Yates is leaving town this weekend and heading to Lakewood Ranch, Fla. for a U.S. U-18 Women’s National Team training camp, where she hopes to make the roster for a late February tournament in Spain.

From there, the focus will start to shift toward preseason training with UW and getting her collegiate career underway.

“I hope I get pushed there and these girls that are 4 years older than me can push me to hopefully achieve my goals in the future, being a pro soccer player,” Yates said.

This story was originally published February 7, 2018 at 5:51 PM with the headline "She picked on MCC competition for 4 years. Now Yates sets her sights on the Pac-12."