The Craig Hall Chronicles: Sienna Prince-McPherson

Let's put an end to the rumormongering before it gets out of hand, shall we? Sienna Prince-McPherson is not playing soccer at Montana because her home country disowned her. In these enlightened times, Canada will still claim you as its own, even if you don't like playing the national sport.

"Everybody in my family plays hockey," says Prince-McPherson, who hails from Calgary, a city on the Alberta prairie an eight-hour drive almost due north of Missoula. "I tried it when I was about five, but I didn't like it." Pause as a nation weeps. "I like it now, as long as I don't have to play it."

Hockey's loss became soccer's gain. Prince-McPherson's natural abilities -- she is 5 feet, 8 inches of athleticism, a former city wrestling champion who earned her first start four matches into her collegiate soccer career -- would have translated to hockey just fine, just as it later did to basketball.

But it's always been about soccer. "I've gravitated toward it since I was 6," says the midfielder. "Soccer has always been my main love, my passion."

Playing for Calgary South West United, Prince-McPherson and her age-group teammates won six indoor and outdoor provincial titles. They twice won silver, twice took home bronze at club nationals.

In that way, Prince-McPherson's story mirrors that of Jaryn Sheeler, a freshman on last year's Montana soccer team who played on many of those same age-group squads. Both players were identified by Griz soccer coach Mark Plakorus at a tournament in Las Vegas on the same recruiting trip.

Prince-McPherson later traveled to Missoula with Sheeler and Sheeler's dad. "I tagged along on an unofficial visit, because I was interested in Montana too," she says.

Prince-McPherson signed a National Letter of Intent in February, not long after Sheeler, who redshirted last fall, decided to stay back home in Calgary instead of returning to Montana for the spring semester.

"I can see where she was coming from. Everybody is going to get homesick, and it's even harder if it's a different country," Prince-McPherson says. "Being on the team has made it so much easier."

After missing the season's first road trip to Purdue because of a concussion suffered last month at practice, Prince-McPherson traveled last weekend, getting 56 minutes -- and a good look at the goal on a shot she sent high -- at Wyoming, 34 minutes at Denver in her first start.

The kind of trip that produces the type of connection with your teammates that Sheeler, as a non-traveling redshirt, was never quite able to make. Home beckoned.

It does as well for Prince-McPherson, who was raised as an only child from the age of 7 by her mom and her mom's parents. For the first autumn in a long time, grandma, daughter and granddaughter won't be canning pickles, peaches and beets, or making jam, the time spent together as important as the work.

She can fillet a fish and auger a hole in a frozen lake to catch dinner, which she does when she visits her dad, who lives in Manitoba and is a fishing and hunting guide when he's not working for the local school.

When she was 16 and having to make a decision about her future as a soccer player, she didn't want to leave home. So she had to envision Sienna Prince-McPherson two years down the road and determine what that version of herself might want to do.

"I didn't want to go at the time, but I had a feeling I would want to do something different. I thought by the time I was 18, I would want to explore something new, leave home and get a new experience," she says.

Even though Midnapore Lake, around which her community south of Calgary is centered, sits within walking distance of her home and is a temptation of day-long pursuits of leisure, Prince-McPherson spent her summer sticking to the preseason training packet that arrived from Montana's coaches.

"I was trying to enjoy my summer with friends and family, but I was also trying to focus on coming to play soccer here," she says. "I didn't follow the training program perfectly, but I tried."

It showed. Not only did she pass her preseason fitness testing -- which itself was an indoctrination into the team culture Plakorus has established. "I thought everyone was just going to watch me from the sideline, but they cheer and push you across that line." -- she became a first-year starter.

"The game is way faster than it was in Canada, and the physicality is huge," she says. "I need to get bigger and stronger, but I feel like I can see my spot on the team."

Most people have a natural need to find family. When they leave their original unit, they are wired to seek out a spot in a new one, wherever and however they may find it. Prince-McPherson is no different. "I miss my friends a lot and my family a lot, especially my grandparents," she says.

But she is slowly creating a place for herself in a new one. And wouldn't it be ideal if tonight she could score the game-winner at Washington State and be mobbed by her newfound sisters? Even Canada would have no choice but to welcome her back.

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