Working your way up the mountain only means starting over again once you have reached the summit.

K2 becomes Everest, JV becomes Varsity, amateur becomes professional. Following that progression, former Penn State women's soccer players Bonnie Young and Emily Oleksiuk, who led the team to a 24-4-1 record in 2001, were drafted into the WUSA professional soccer league Monday.

Oleksiuk, who owns all Penn State goalkeeping records, will be minding the net for the Carolina Courage, and was taken with the first pick of the third round, 17th overall.

Young, the Nittany Lions premier defender, will be reunited with former coach Pat Farmer, who was at the helm for Penn State until the 2000 season and now coaches the New York Power and took Young with the sixth pick in the second round, 14th overall.

Penn State coach Paula Wilkins was proud of her players and the attention they brought to the program.

"It's a great credit to those guys and it helps our program a lot because it shows players that get to that level," Wilkins said.

If Wilkins' was happy about the alumni's accomplishments, the players were down right ecstatic.

"It was really exciting to hear my name called," Oleksiuk said. "It was a little nerve racking having to wait three minutes between each pick."

Oleksiuk compared her situation to being a freshman at Penn State because she will again have an opportunity to compete for the starting job, this time with an old friend, Kristin Luekenbill, whom Oleksiuk has known since they were both playing on the Pennsylvania state team at age 12. Her new coach, Marcia McDermott, is also familiar with her. McDermott said she is glad to have Oleksiuk on her side after having coached against her at Northwestern for three seasons.

Since finishing the Lions season in December in the sweet 16 round of the NCAA tournament, Oleksiuk has been traveling, seeing friends in New York, New Hampshire and her beloved Colorado.

Tuesday night, with her future secured, she returned home for a night with her family, where the reality of being a professional set in.

For Young, the opportunity of playing under again Farmer was worth the anticipation of the draft itself.

"I'm excited about that, Farmer is a great coach and we had a great relationship with him here," Young said. "I missed him last year."

Unlike Oleksiuk, Young has been working hard since the semester break to get in shape for last Sunday's pre-draft combine.

"I was doing some individual things and doing some conditioning to get ready to play 90 minutes," Young said.

As they move on, both stars are looking back at the careers that let them to move onto this level.

"I was trying to tell her all the things that led up to being drafted," Oleksiuk's mother Marcy said. "It was everything, every practice, every game, every decision she ever made."