Oct. 30, 2000

Editor's Note: Articles such as this one by Carroll Fadal appear in each edition of the Baylor Bear Insider Report, available upon membership in the Baylor Bear Foundation. For information on joining the Bear Foundation, click here.

Here's a quick quiz, Baylor soccer fans: Over the last nine games, who's the leading goal- scorer? A hint: she also leads the team in shooting percentage for the entire season.

Chances are you guessed Molly Cameron or perhaps another heralded senior, Gina Castellano. Both of those guesses would be wrong. Over the last nine games, Baylor has been led in scoring by an 18-year-old freshman -- and a walk-on, at that -- Emily Fukuchi.

One of 16 freshmen on the Baylor roster, Fukuchi is among the farthest from home. She's a native of Cerritos, CA, one of three Californians in coach Nick Cowell's first-year class (along with Casey Cleveland and transfer Emily Koch). And that distance has been her biggest problem at Baylor.

"It's just far away from home," Fukuchi said, "and sometimes I have trouble with that. I'm an only child, too, so that makes it kind of hard. I didn't know it was going to be that hard, but some days, it's pretty hard."

Cowell agrees. "Emily has had a tougher time adjusting to the pace of college than she thought she would," he said. "She gets a little homesick, but it's getting better."

That improvement is obvious in her play. Although she had started only six games going into last weekend's play, she had appeared in all 15, and her five goals ranked her second to Cameron in scoring. And her .293 shooting percentage led the team. Her fifth was a big one, coming only 16 seconds after Texas Tech tied the Bears at 2 late in their Oct. 15 game in Lubbock and giving Baylor its fifth Big XII win.

Scoring goals is nothing new to Fukuchi. In four years at Whitney High School in Cerritos, she scored 71 goals and had 38 assists, earning all-league and team MVP honors.

"I had to be a scorer in high school," she said, "because our high school team wasn't that good. It was just me and another girl who goes to (University of California at) Berkeley now, so that was our whole team as far as scoring went."

But goals became as scarce as surfboards when Fukuchi got to Waco. In her first several games in a Baylor uniform, she had good scoring chances but couldn't quite put them away. The most notable came late in the Bears 1-1 tie with Arkansas during the Baylor tournament, when her sliding shot from just in front of the goal hit the crossbar.

She finally broke through in Baylor's ninth game, a 3-0 victory over Iowa State on Sept. 24. She found the net off assists from Cameron and Rachel Kacsmaryk 10 minutes into the second half, scoring the Bears' final goal. That one broke the dam, she scored five goals in seven games, and over that stretch, Baylor went 5-1-1.

"I think the first one just set it off," Fukuchi said, "because after that, I gained more confidence. Before, I just didn't think I could score, so when I shot, it was like, 'Well, I'm not going to score, so I'm not going to go in.' But now, I have more confidence. I'm more calm, more relaxed. It comes easier."

"People expect people like Emily Fukuchi to maybe score a goal every game," Cowell said, "and that's given her an expectation level that she probably didn't have coming in, because she really didn't expect to play this year."

Besides confidence, Fukuchi credits her recent success to becoming more comfortable with her teammates.

"All my goals have been coming basically from behind the defense," she said, "so I just set myself up pretty much in the same place, and almost all those goals came from the same play. I think we're learning to work together better and communicate better."

And as much as she enjoys her teammates on the field, it's the relationships she's built with them off the field that has eased her transition into life in Central Texas.

"That's probably the best thing for me at Baylor," she said. "I get along so well with everybody. It's kind of fun being different from all the Texans. I don't say 'y'all' or 'fixin' or things like that. Actually, I accidentally said 'y'all' a couple of times, but I cut myself off really quickly. When I talk to people from back home, they already say I have a Texas accent."

It was soccer that gave her the opportunity to learn such highbrow words in the first place. Having applied to all the University of California schools and to USC, Baylor was her only out-of-state application. And it was the one she chose.

"I really wanted the chance to play Division I soccer," she said. "When Nick recruited me, he told me they needed forwards, so I thought I might get a chance to play here quicker."

An excellent student in high school, Fukuchi compiled a 3.7 GPA. While she hasn't decided her major just yet, she says balancing her academic life with soccer is another rough part of the transition from high school to college.

But just as on the field, she's hanging with it and is sure to achieve similar success.

Editor's Note: Articles such as this one by Carroll Fadal appear in each edition of the Baylor Bear Insider Report, available upon membership in the Baylor Bear Foundation. For information on joining the Bear Foundation, click here.