Lindsey Huie does not procrastinate, and so she already is planning the next phase of her life.

The one without soccer.

Even as the University of Portland women's soccer team is poised for one of the most anticipated seasons in the program's history, Huie is preparing to leave behind the sport that has shaped her life since childhood.

Huie will take her accustomed place at midfield when the No. 4 Pilots open their season against No. 14 Stanford at 7 tonight at Merlo Field. She will do the spectacular, as she so often has done in a Portland uniform. She will shout and boss and demand, as she has through an All-American career.

She will, if all goes right, help lead the Pilots into the NCAA playoffs and toward a national championship.

Then she will replace soccer with another passion -- understanding the complexities of human emotion and helping those hurt by family upheaval.

People like her.

The family was Orange County middle class. Parents, four kids. Lindsey Luz Huie was the youngest, born the day after Christmas in 1982 and named after her mother, who had moved to the United States from Puerto Rico.

Huie grew up all energy, playing whatever sport was being played. She loved basketball and soccer.

Home life could be tense. There were fights and reconciliations. But normal. Until Huie was about 12. Then her father abruptly left, and her parents divorced.

The shock reverberated for years. Huie was miserable. She was confused, then mad at the world.

"It's a miserable time to go through, being so used to something and then one day it's foreignly different," she said. "At 11 or 12, I thought, 'Oh, what did I do wrong? What did I do to create this?' "

The older kids were out of the house. Huie's mother worked three jobs in home health care to make ends meet. Her mom made sure Lindsey could play elite soccer, and bought her a car better than her own.

The confused kid grew into an angry teenager, but one who found escape and release on the soccer field. And one who knew enough to find a coach who cared and a college where she wouldn't be tempted into partying.

The coach was Clive Charles, who saw Huie play in a tournament and responded to her e-mail wondering if he would recruit her. The university was Portland -- small, Catholic and soccer-mad. Huie didn't have the help of parents who knew the recruiting ropes. She committed to Portland, sight unseen.

"She committed to Clive," said Garrett Smith, Portland's assistant director of soccer and its women's head coach. "She was just a survivor growing up. She learned to survive in every situation. That's what she did here."

In the classroom, Huie pursued answers to her own life.

"Since I was 12, I've always wondered why people go through these certain emotions," she said. "Why do people leave? Why do people stay? Why are people so angry? Those things nagged me to the point where I needed to know the answer, so much so that I majored in psychology, so much so that I want to make that my career."

She will graduate in December and plans to move back to Southern California, to be close to her family. She hopes to attend graduate school at Pepperdine, where she will pursue a master's degree in family and marriage counseling.

"I know she's very focused on her career," said senior teammate Christine Sinclair, often the recipient of Huie's 31 career assists. "She's always been determined to do that in her life."

Charles gave Huie the nickname "Queeny" when she was a freshman, a 5-foot-3 slip of a player who was recruited to the defensive line.

"Clive used to say I was VHM, Very High Maintenance," Huie said. "And, actually, I wasn't -- at least not in my eyes."

Then she laughed.

"You know, I'm bossy. I like to have things my way," she said. "I like to have my things. Queeny suited me perfectly, in his eyes. He'd say, 'Look at this girl. She thinks she's the queen.' And I do, by the way. I'm not going to lie about that."

A knee injury three games into her freshman year ended Huie's season. Healthy again the next fall, her days as a defender ended with one play.

"I was playing outside left and a ball popped up and I just went with it and, to me, it was like the Red Sea parting and I was up at the 18, combining with Sinc and taking a shot," she said. " . . . Clive decided it was best for me to play where I had freedom."

The Pilots won the 2002 NCAA title in Huie's redshirt freshman season. Before the next season, Charles, whose health was failing, had considered making Huie a team captain. She already seemed to direct the team on the field. But he told her she wasn't ready.

"Sometimes I think you make people worse," Charles told her, explaining that her manner -- barking out orders, shouting when a teammate missed a play -- bruised the confidence of some players.

Huie learned tact. She was a co-captain last season and again this season with Sinclair.

"I am really intense," she acknowledged. "I'm not going to bust my butt running 60 yards for us to lose the ball. Likewise, I get down on myself when someone else busts their tail and I don't make a good pass."

She still lets teammates know when they mess up. She also lets them know when they do well.

"She is all business when she's out there," midfield partner Lisa Sari said. "She demands that you play the ball well, and if you don't, she'll tell you."

Huie's forthright personality is a necessary ingredient to the Pilots' run for a championship, said sophomore defender Emily Michaelson.

"She's up front and, in most cases, that helps," Michaelson said. "With the expectations of this season, if we go astray, she'll step up and set us straight."

Huie's play didn't need adjustment. She is fast and has the freedom to roam. She also is one of the most skilled with the ball at her feet. She is tough and unfazed by rough play.

"I do not let things keep me off the field," she said. "I'd carry my leg around if I had to."

Michaelson recalled a favorite Huie play during the 2004 NCAA playoffs, when the Pilots reached the quarterfinals before falling to eventual champion Notre Dame.

The Pilots were playing Colorado and Huie had the ball at a dead run, with defenders on either side of her. In a flash, Huie popped the ball in the air and stopped it while her defenders raced on. Unencumbered, Huie fed the ball to a teammate.

"There are some great players who do great things in some games," Smith said. "Lindsey will do good things in every game."

The U.S. Soccer National team noticed. Huie helped lead the U.S. Under-21 team to the 2003 and 2004 Nordic Cup championships. Last winter, she made her first appearance with the senior U.S. team in the Algarve Cup.

About three years ago, Huie's father came back into her life. Her parents reconciled and have remarried.

"I think that whole situation has definitely made me who I am and, in a lot of ways, I think I'm so much better off because of it," she said. "If it hadn't happened, I'd probably be some spoiled Orange County kid who doesn't know how to work hard.

"As it is, I've had to work. I know how to deal with adversity really well. I think more than anything, I learned how to survive."

During a recent rough patch, Huie started writing, just to vent her feelings.

But a story grew out of the writing. The story of a kid whose life was turned upside-down by divorce.

At 22, Huie is writing her autobiography. She hopes it will help children struggling in the wake of divorce, and adults to see how their actions affect children.

It is the same subject she plans to study in graduate school. Then, her elite soccer career will be over, although Huie said she might coach as a part-time job. She is thankful for what the sport gave her.

She is ready to move on.

"I used to think who I was as a soccer player and who I was as a person were very different things," Huie said. "But then I realized that a lot of what I went through in my life and what I went through on the field were interchangeable, in a good way.

"I've done really well on the field, and I think I've done really well in life, as well."