The Craig Hall Chronicles: Claire Howard

For now, just a few days into her career as a goalkeeper for the Montana soccer team, Claire Howard is fine with the following distinction: She is almost certainly the first player in program history to have earned a high school letter in the sport of badminton.

"I didn't want to be done with high school sports yet," says Howard, who played badminton last spring as a senior at Maria Carrillo High in Santa Rosa, Calif. "It took me a couple of weeks just to learn how to serve and learn the rules. I wasn't very good at it, but it was really fun, super low-key."

Years from now, when her career as a Grizzly is wrapping up, she hopes you recognize her for something else: That she was the best to ever play the position at Montana. "I don't want badminton to be the only thing people remember me for."

It certainly isn't at Maria Carrillo, where Howard and the Pumas went 82-2-2 in her four years as the soccer team's starting goalkeeper. The school was awarded RPI-based national championships in 2012 and '13 by MaxPreps.

And those titles weren't the result of playing overmatched competition. When Howard was a sophomore, Maria Carrillo traveled to Baltimore for a pair of high-level matches. Last fall the Pumas flew to New Jersey for the Coast-to-Coast Girls' Soccer Challenge.

The Pumas, ranked No. 3 in the nation by the NSCAA at the time, knocked off No. 1 Immaculate Heart 3-1 in their opener. In their second match they fell to four-time defending New Jersey state champion Northern Highlands 3-1, a loss that snapped Maria Carrillo's 75-match unbeaten streak.

And that wasn't even the highest level of soccer Howard played prior to arriving at Montana. Her club team, Santa Rosa United, is a member of the Elite Clubs National League and made the ECNL final tournament of eight in the summer of 2015.

One month later -- a year ago this week -- she was in Missoula on an unofficial visit. She had also traveled to the campuses of UC Davis, San Diego and Utah. When she decided she wanted to go to school out of state, her choice came down to Utah and Montana.

"When I stepped foot on Montana's campus, I knew this could be my home for the next four years," she says. "It's beautiful and seemed like such a great place to live.

"The team was amazing, so nice and welcoming, and I really liked the way (coach Mark Plakorus) ran his program. I felt this was a place I could thrive in for the next four years."

Howard grew up in Santa Rosa, an hour north of San Francisco and in the heart of wine country. Revealing her California side, she describes her hometown, which has more than 170,000 residents, as "a small, little town, where everyone knows everybody."

She began playing soccer when she was 7, maybe 8, when a family friend convinced her to join his team on Santa Rosa Central. She loved it, but it wasn't until she grew too old for Santa Rosa Central and joined Atletico that her general love of soccer turned into a passion for a position.

"Our goalkeeper would always leave for the summer. The coach thought I read the game really well, so one random practice he gave me a pair of gloves, and I loved it," she says. In a game of constant flow, of back and forth, here was a position with a binary outcome. Goal or no goal, no in-between.

"I loved knowing I was the last person the other team had to beat, that I was the one who either comes up big or gets beat. That pressure is something I love. It's a very rewarding position."

She was a natural, and because she was playing on high-profile high school and club teams, colleges started to identify her. Early.

"The very first school I heard from was Rutgers. They sent me an email saying they liked me and were interested. It was super exciting, but I was only 14 or 15," she says. "A lot of people commit super early, but I knew that wasn't going to be me."

Plakorus didn't discover Howard until her junior year, when a coach for one of Santa Rosa United's teams saw Montana's coach out recruiting at a tournament. He asked what Plakorus was looking for. A goalkeeper. Hmm, did he have just the player Montana was looking for.

Of course there were some complications. Turns out Howard's team was, at times, just too good. When Plakorus sent former assistant coach Eric Lona on the road to evaluate the goalkeeper, he returned without a report. He didn't get an opportunity to see Howard get tested.

"Our defense was amazing. They are all playing college somewhere. It was hard to get by them, so there were matches I would hardly touch the ball. It made it hard with recruiting," says Howard.

Plakorus was recruiting two goalkeepers at the time. He knew plenty about one, still almost nothing about Howard, not even after traveling all the way to Texas for an ECNL event that would be snowed out.

He didn't get his first chance to see her in action until another ECNL tournament in Seattle. Santa Rosa United would come out on top, which sent the team to nationals.

That helped Plakorus make his decision. And there was this: When deciding between two keepers, always go with the daughter of Tim Howard, the U.S.'s starting goalkeeper at the 2010 and '14 World Cups.

Okay, fine, not that Tim Howard. "Since I'm a goalkeeper, when I tell people my dad's name is Tim, they don't believe me. No, I promise, my dad is Tim Howard! I'm not lying!" she says.

Still, she stands out. For her play, of course, but there is also the look. And that's evolved. What started as trainer's pre-wrap to keep her hair out of her face became a black headband from lululemon. It's distinctive. It's menacing.

You know how Tiger Woods used to wear only red shirts on Sundays, when golf tournaments reached their climax, his signal that he was going to win and that you were playing for second place?

"My black headband kind of became a superstitious thing," Howard says. "It's something I always have to have on now if I'm playing. When I put it on, it reminds me that it's time to go to work."

She and her headbands -- black is for game day, the rest of the rainbow is available for practice -- are now in Missoula, and for maybe the first time since she put on the gloves, she isn't her team's A1.

That would be senior Kailey Norman, who earned second-team All-Big Sky Conference honors the last two years as the Grizzlies' starter in goal.

Here is the simplistic view: Howard redshirts as Norman concludes her stellar career this fall, then steps in as the program's next four-year starter. And that idea -- with the implication that she sit back and not push the established starter -- is anathema to her.

"Mark obviously thinks I deserve to be here, so I'm going to think the same thing and compete every day," Howard says, mildly rankled by the question. "Kailey is amazing and I have so much respect for her, but I'm not going to degrade myself by saying, Oh, it's not possible.

"I know it will be a challenge to beat her out, but I'm up for it, and I'm going to work hard."

So there is the badminton, the Tim Howard angle, the black headband. All help tell her story. For now. Soon enough she's going to make you forget all of it with her play on the field.

"That's the goal," she says.

University of Montana Athletics

Players Mentioned

Claire Howard

Kailey Norman

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