These seniors? They’ve seen some things
10/14/2018 6:55:00 AM | Soccer
Perhaps in an alternate universe -- where goals come freely, injuries never happen and off-the-field drama is kept to a minimum -- the Montana soccer team would be rolling toward its fifth consecutive Big Sky Conference championship this fall, adding multiple trophies to the title the Grizzlies won in 2014.
And families would be intact, as would classes of players and staff of coaches. And bodies. All would be strong and healthy and the last thing on a player's mind, with the team's rarely noticed athletic trainer standing off to the side, complaining of boredom.
Instead this year's senior class has experienced some things.
Divorce, injuries from head (concussion) to leg (broken, ACL tear), the dissolution of a class that entered the program eight strong down to the four (+1) who will be recognized on Sunday during Senior Day festivities, a very public and unexpected breakup with the coach who had brought them all to Missoula.
It's a class that's been toughened by their shared experiences and bonded even tighter because of them, all out-of-staters who relied on each other until they became family. And that alternate universe? You can have it. These seniors wouldn't change a thing.
"When I look back and think about what I wanted my college career to be and what it ended up being, it's real life," says McKenzie Warren, of Pleasant Grove, Utah. "It's getting out there every day and grinding and doing your best and giving it everything you have."
In storybooks, that's always enough. Dedication and dreams are always paid off in full. But if that was the case, every team in every sport across the league would take home a trophy at the end of the year and dogpiles would replace the more common tears and hugs that result from coming up short.
"Sometimes that's not enough, and it's been a big lesson for me, as someone who likes to plan and be in control and know how things are going to play out," adds Warren.
"It's been a learning experience to see us put in so much effort and still come up short sometimes. But I think that's helped me grow, realizing that you can want it more than anything and it still doesn't go your way. But I wouldn't change it for the world."
Hallie Widner was the first to arrive, just in time for that magical 2014 season, when Brooke Moody and Tyler Adair and Chloe Torres took a team that had underachieved the year before by the scruff of the neck and led it through an unbeaten 10-match league schedule, with eight wins and two draws.
Even though Montana would lose in the tournament semifinals, it felt like the Grizzlies were maybe, just maybe, beginning to separate themselves from the rest of the league, a program elevating itself one step above everyone else, the one always being hunted instead of part of the chase. The Montana way.
Widner, of Meridian, Idaho, thrived in the environment that year's senior class created. She scored seven goals and led the team with 17 points to earn Big Sky Conference Newcomer of the Year and first-team all-league honors.
She was named third-team NSCAA All-Pacific Region and the nation's 49th-ranked freshman by Top Drawer Soccer.
Everyone was hoping it was the start of something that could be maintained -- Montana on top, everyone looking up at the Grizzlies -- with the lessons in leadership taught by that year's seniors taking root in a willing bunch of freshmen, sophomores and juniors.
Instead it was merely ephemeral, gone in the time it took Idaho State to score two second-half goals and end Montana's season on its home field that November afternoon, those ideals departing the program along with the senior class.
"That year was amazing," says Widner. "We had so much chemistry and the seniors were always positive. Even if they had issues off the field, no one knew about it.
"The way they carried the team and helped us, everyone was so bought in. It was special. There was something about it we could never quite get back."
It was into that program -- before it came to realize how difficult it would be to carry those things on from season to season -- that stepped eight freshmen in the fall of 2015. They came from Montana, Washington, Colorado, Nevada, Utah and Canada.
"I was so scared to come into college. I didn't know anyone here," says Ellie Otteson, of Snohomish, Wash. "But immediately I had my class there. This whole experience would not have been the same without them."
They joined a program that they had watched succeed from a distance as high school seniors. Now in Missoula, they found a team with a lone senior -- Mackenzie Akins -- and a Big Sky Conference that had shifted again. The Grizzlies were near the top but not at the top. They had rejoined the pack.
"I was part of a club program that was very successful -- we won a national championship -- so it was tough coming in as a freshman and not having the results I thought would come," says Janessa Fowler, of Highlands Ranch, Colo.
It wasn't a talent issue. It rarely has been for this program. Instead it pointed a light on how valuable the seniors were in 2014. It's just that nobody recognized it -- or wanted to -- the next season. It was easier to look not at what had been lost but what had been added.
And seasons are defined but such seemingly little things that alter the dynamic within a team.
"The older girls kept saying, 'We had this great team last year and all this leadership. Why don't we have it anymore?' " says Warren.
"It was hard for our class. It felt like everyone was looking at us as the only new thing that had been added to the program. Was it something we were doing? It took a lot of self-reflection on my part."
More than just the results, the freshman class wanted to be part of something new, in leadership and longevity. They saw the 2015 team's lone senior and wanted to multiply that by eight.
"I remember coming in and hearing the seniors talk about how many players they'd lost," says Fowler. "I remember thinking, that will never by our class."
The years flew by. In the moment, each day can feel like a grind, but soon those days add up and turn into weeks and months that recede into the rearview mirror. Before you know it, you're looking right into your senior season.
Montana had its successes along the way. The Grizzlies won nine matches and picked up a tournament victory over Weber State in 2015. They won nine matches again in 2016 but went one-and-done at the tournament, just like last season, despite 10 wins and a No. 2 seed.
When Northern Colorado scored in the 104th minute last November in Cheney, Wash., in the Big Sky semifinals to end Montana's season, that year's juniors became this year's seniors, a designation that begins not at the start of the following season but upon the previous one's end.
As much as they had attempted over the years to put their stamp on the program, older classes kept having more of a say and more of an impact, and not always for the better.
They wanted it to be different when it became their turn. They wanted to be the collective voice that led the program. Finally it was their time.
"(Former coach Mark Plakorus) would meet with the classes and ask, 'What do you want your legacy to be?' Our class would have these long discussions," says Fowler, third-team all-region as a junior and second-team scholar all-region.
"We decided we wanted to be level-headed about everything. Get your stuff done and leave things better than how you found it."
That hadn't yet been the case, because they'd found a Big Sky championship program when they'd arrived. Their goal as seniors would be to leave it better than that, which meant taking it one step further, perhaps winning a regular-season title and the tournament championship this fall.
"Everyone has those expectations for their senior year. You want to believe that it's going to be the peak of everything," says Fowler.
But the best-laid plans? They often go awry, wrote Robert Burns.
Everything changed in late January, when Plakorus was informed his contract would not be renewed. The program's heart and soul, there one day, gone the next, had been removed. So Fowler and her classmates decided they would fill the void.
"It was a tough time, but being a leader, I knew how I responded was going to trickle down to the team," says Fowler.
This senior class has never played in a tournament championship match, and Montana is on the bubble to even make this season's postseason, but maybe its most important accomplishment will be something few saw, how it kept the program together last spring.
"So much of it was out of our control that we needed to bond together as a team," says Fowler. "We needed to go forward.
"The team took it in stride. If there were any problems that came up, we talked about them. It's the biggest outside drama that ever happened in my career here, yet the team handled it so well. There was no internal drama with it, even if there were conflicting opinions or not.
"For a team to adapt to that, it was crazy. It takes a strong group to do that. It helped that the senior class had already faced so much already in their careers."
Adds Otteson, "That period of time was so crucial. It could have gone really bad, but I think we made the best of it. We had to come together, and we did because we all had the same goals."
When new coach Chris Citowicki was hired in May, it left the seniors facing a fork in the road. They had signed up to play for Plakorus. And now they had a new coach who didn't know anything about them. Did they have the energy to essentially reprove themselves so late in their careers?
No one would have blamed the senior class for taking a short-term approach. The end of their careers was months away, and the new staff would arrive with a decidedly long-term approach in mind, of building something, and that would mean from the ground up, investing in the younger players.
But if their career taught the seniors anything, it's this: "Here's the situation. Let's adapt and make the best of it," says Fowler.
And there were so many situations, so many experiences to draw from.
Miller dealt with a hip injury as a sophomore, a concussion as a senior. Fowler suffered her own concussion last spring that had her wondering if she would ever get to play in a Montana uniform again.
Warren, who tore an ACL as a senior in high school, thought she'd repeated it in a game against Gonzaga last spring and entered her final season at less than 100 percent.
Widner dropped down into this year's senior class only after deciding last offseason to give it one more go as a fifth-year player. She lost the 2015 season with a broken leg, the 2016 spring with lasting effects of that injury and made it just five matches into this season before an ACL injury.
Otteson is the only player who hasn't missed a game in her career but has had her own challenges to face away from the field.
They've aged a decade in experiences in less than four years' time, proving once again that college careers are not for the faint of heart and that very few go according to plan. And that in the end, only select teams get viewed by the outside world as champions.
Eight players began, four remained after three left the program in the spring for various reasons. With so much invested, none of them was going to take the short-term approach and put anything less than 100 percent into Citowicki's vision and their senior season. Otherwise, what was it all for?
"It would have been so easy for me to just let this year go by and focus on the next group and start developing the younger leaders and phasing this group out," says Citowicki. "But everybody deserves a great senior year.
"I'd rather invest in them as much as possible and get the most out of them. And I 100 percent feel like I've been getting that back from them. They've been amazing."
It's been a fall of ups and downs in Citowicki's first campaign, but why would this season be any different than previous years for the senior class? Nothing has come easily. Why would it start now?
They've had either a new head coach or assistant every semester they've been on campus. They changed trainers and strength and conditioning coaches, two positions that are extensions of the coaching staff. Despite their grand plans four years ago, they've lost classmates, in person if not in spirit.
Soccer is a sport of attrition, a physical activity played by mortals, so it's rare when something, or someone's body, doesn't give in in some way. For those who persevere, not only are the rewards greater, but the bonds between those who do become ironclad.
It's not militaristic, but it comes with a boot-camp mentality. Only the strong survive. It makes a person willing to do most anything for those who have made it through the same experience.
"It makes you grateful for the people who have been there through it all. The four of us are the only constants in the four years we've been here. These are my people. This is who I've got," says Warren.
"It would not have been the same without them. Those are relationships I'll have forever. They are a big reason I can say I loved every minute of my time here," says Otteson.
"Only we know what we've been through. You come in as separate people and you learn so much about each other that you become this inseparable thing. It's hard to put into words how special those bonds are," says Fowler.
"I don't know the best word. Maybe unified with how much we've gone through. We've always stuck through it all, no matter what's been thrown our way," says Taryn Miller, of Greenacres, Wash., the Big Sky Defensive Player of the Year as a junior.
They don't have a Big Sky championship to their credit, but that's only one measure of success for a college athlete.
There hasn't been a year when any of them hasn't earned Academic All-Big Sky Conference honors, 15 between them. And to make it through four or five years, given all they've faced and could have walked away from, only further predicts big things for them down the road.
While they'll play or watch their final home match as Grizzlies on Sunday and the season will end within a month's time, the honorific of Montana Soccer Player will be something they'll own for life. They'll join a select group now nearly 200 strong, all part of a program after giving it a piece of themselves.
It's why Widner, Fowler, Miller, Otteson and Warren went all in last spring and pestered Citowicki last summer in the buildup to their final fall: What more can we do?
Sure, they did it partly for themselves, wanting the best senior season possible, but they did it for each other, never wanting to let each other down, not after all they've been through. And they did it for the younger players on the team and the program's past players. They owed them that.
"Even though we may not have gotten the results we wanted this year, we still bought into helping build up the program the way Chris wanted. We still want it to be the best it can be in the future," says Widner.
"It's a pride thing with this program. Even as an alum, you want the program to succeed. We want to be able to look back and say we were there his first year, and now look at them. They're a winning program and they're winning conference all the time and doing all these big things."
Maybe that will be their legacy, that when it would have been so easy to check out last spring, they checked in like they'd never done before. And when they could have coasted through their final season with minimal sacrifice, they instead gave it their all.
None of it was easy to do, but nothing has come easily for this year's seniors since they day they suited up for their first practice. So perhaps we're witnessing their greatest contribution: giving of themselves so that others, players they don't even know, can succeed down the road.
And this: there is team, and that is the most important thing of all, but it's your class that will help you make it through. That's what they want the younger classes on this year's team to take away from their time as Grizzlies and what will be celebrated with hugs and tears on Sunday.
"We're all from out of state, so we didn't have family right here. Anything that's happened, it's been crazy to see everyone drop everything and rally around each other," says Fowler.
"If anything happens, you know your support system is there. It makes the everyday part of being a college athlete so much easier. We hope that's something we can leave behind."
And families would be intact, as would classes of players and staff of coaches. And bodies. All would be strong and healthy and the last thing on a player's mind, with the team's rarely noticed athletic trainer standing off to the side, complaining of boredom.
Instead this year's senior class has experienced some things.
Divorce, injuries from head (concussion) to leg (broken, ACL tear), the dissolution of a class that entered the program eight strong down to the four (+1) who will be recognized on Sunday during Senior Day festivities, a very public and unexpected breakup with the coach who had brought them all to Missoula.
It's a class that's been toughened by their shared experiences and bonded even tighter because of them, all out-of-staters who relied on each other until they became family. And that alternate universe? You can have it. These seniors wouldn't change a thing.
"When I look back and think about what I wanted my college career to be and what it ended up being, it's real life," says McKenzie Warren, of Pleasant Grove, Utah. "It's getting out there every day and grinding and doing your best and giving it everything you have."
In storybooks, that's always enough. Dedication and dreams are always paid off in full. But if that was the case, every team in every sport across the league would take home a trophy at the end of the year and dogpiles would replace the more common tears and hugs that result from coming up short.
"Sometimes that's not enough, and it's been a big lesson for me, as someone who likes to plan and be in control and know how things are going to play out," adds Warren.
"It's been a learning experience to see us put in so much effort and still come up short sometimes. But I think that's helped me grow, realizing that you can want it more than anything and it still doesn't go your way. But I wouldn't change it for the world."
Hallie Widner was the first to arrive, just in time for that magical 2014 season, when Brooke Moody and Tyler Adair and Chloe Torres took a team that had underachieved the year before by the scruff of the neck and led it through an unbeaten 10-match league schedule, with eight wins and two draws.
Even though Montana would lose in the tournament semifinals, it felt like the Grizzlies were maybe, just maybe, beginning to separate themselves from the rest of the league, a program elevating itself one step above everyone else, the one always being hunted instead of part of the chase. The Montana way.
Widner, of Meridian, Idaho, thrived in the environment that year's senior class created. She scored seven goals and led the team with 17 points to earn Big Sky Conference Newcomer of the Year and first-team all-league honors.
She was named third-team NSCAA All-Pacific Region and the nation's 49th-ranked freshman by Top Drawer Soccer.
Everyone was hoping it was the start of something that could be maintained -- Montana on top, everyone looking up at the Grizzlies -- with the lessons in leadership taught by that year's seniors taking root in a willing bunch of freshmen, sophomores and juniors.
Instead it was merely ephemeral, gone in the time it took Idaho State to score two second-half goals and end Montana's season on its home field that November afternoon, those ideals departing the program along with the senior class.
"That year was amazing," says Widner. "We had so much chemistry and the seniors were always positive. Even if they had issues off the field, no one knew about it.
"The way they carried the team and helped us, everyone was so bought in. It was special. There was something about it we could never quite get back."
It was into that program -- before it came to realize how difficult it would be to carry those things on from season to season -- that stepped eight freshmen in the fall of 2015. They came from Montana, Washington, Colorado, Nevada, Utah and Canada.
"I was so scared to come into college. I didn't know anyone here," says Ellie Otteson, of Snohomish, Wash. "But immediately I had my class there. This whole experience would not have been the same without them."
They joined a program that they had watched succeed from a distance as high school seniors. Now in Missoula, they found a team with a lone senior -- Mackenzie Akins -- and a Big Sky Conference that had shifted again. The Grizzlies were near the top but not at the top. They had rejoined the pack.
"I was part of a club program that was very successful -- we won a national championship -- so it was tough coming in as a freshman and not having the results I thought would come," says Janessa Fowler, of Highlands Ranch, Colo.
It wasn't a talent issue. It rarely has been for this program. Instead it pointed a light on how valuable the seniors were in 2014. It's just that nobody recognized it -- or wanted to -- the next season. It was easier to look not at what had been lost but what had been added.
And seasons are defined but such seemingly little things that alter the dynamic within a team.
"The older girls kept saying, 'We had this great team last year and all this leadership. Why don't we have it anymore?' " says Warren.
"It was hard for our class. It felt like everyone was looking at us as the only new thing that had been added to the program. Was it something we were doing? It took a lot of self-reflection on my part."
More than just the results, the freshman class wanted to be part of something new, in leadership and longevity. They saw the 2015 team's lone senior and wanted to multiply that by eight.
"I remember coming in and hearing the seniors talk about how many players they'd lost," says Fowler. "I remember thinking, that will never by our class."
The years flew by. In the moment, each day can feel like a grind, but soon those days add up and turn into weeks and months that recede into the rearview mirror. Before you know it, you're looking right into your senior season.
Montana had its successes along the way. The Grizzlies won nine matches and picked up a tournament victory over Weber State in 2015. They won nine matches again in 2016 but went one-and-done at the tournament, just like last season, despite 10 wins and a No. 2 seed.
When Northern Colorado scored in the 104th minute last November in Cheney, Wash., in the Big Sky semifinals to end Montana's season, that year's juniors became this year's seniors, a designation that begins not at the start of the following season but upon the previous one's end.
As much as they had attempted over the years to put their stamp on the program, older classes kept having more of a say and more of an impact, and not always for the better.
They wanted it to be different when it became their turn. They wanted to be the collective voice that led the program. Finally it was their time.
"(Former coach Mark Plakorus) would meet with the classes and ask, 'What do you want your legacy to be?' Our class would have these long discussions," says Fowler, third-team all-region as a junior and second-team scholar all-region.
"We decided we wanted to be level-headed about everything. Get your stuff done and leave things better than how you found it."
That hadn't yet been the case, because they'd found a Big Sky championship program when they'd arrived. Their goal as seniors would be to leave it better than that, which meant taking it one step further, perhaps winning a regular-season title and the tournament championship this fall.
"Everyone has those expectations for their senior year. You want to believe that it's going to be the peak of everything," says Fowler.
But the best-laid plans? They often go awry, wrote Robert Burns.
Everything changed in late January, when Plakorus was informed his contract would not be renewed. The program's heart and soul, there one day, gone the next, had been removed. So Fowler and her classmates decided they would fill the void.
"It was a tough time, but being a leader, I knew how I responded was going to trickle down to the team," says Fowler.
This senior class has never played in a tournament championship match, and Montana is on the bubble to even make this season's postseason, but maybe its most important accomplishment will be something few saw, how it kept the program together last spring.
"So much of it was out of our control that we needed to bond together as a team," says Fowler. "We needed to go forward.
"The team took it in stride. If there were any problems that came up, we talked about them. It's the biggest outside drama that ever happened in my career here, yet the team handled it so well. There was no internal drama with it, even if there were conflicting opinions or not.
"For a team to adapt to that, it was crazy. It takes a strong group to do that. It helped that the senior class had already faced so much already in their careers."
Adds Otteson, "That period of time was so crucial. It could have gone really bad, but I think we made the best of it. We had to come together, and we did because we all had the same goals."
When new coach Chris Citowicki was hired in May, it left the seniors facing a fork in the road. They had signed up to play for Plakorus. And now they had a new coach who didn't know anything about them. Did they have the energy to essentially reprove themselves so late in their careers?
No one would have blamed the senior class for taking a short-term approach. The end of their careers was months away, and the new staff would arrive with a decidedly long-term approach in mind, of building something, and that would mean from the ground up, investing in the younger players.
But if their career taught the seniors anything, it's this: "Here's the situation. Let's adapt and make the best of it," says Fowler.
And there were so many situations, so many experiences to draw from.
Miller dealt with a hip injury as a sophomore, a concussion as a senior. Fowler suffered her own concussion last spring that had her wondering if she would ever get to play in a Montana uniform again.
Warren, who tore an ACL as a senior in high school, thought she'd repeated it in a game against Gonzaga last spring and entered her final season at less than 100 percent.
Widner dropped down into this year's senior class only after deciding last offseason to give it one more go as a fifth-year player. She lost the 2015 season with a broken leg, the 2016 spring with lasting effects of that injury and made it just five matches into this season before an ACL injury.
Otteson is the only player who hasn't missed a game in her career but has had her own challenges to face away from the field.
They've aged a decade in experiences in less than four years' time, proving once again that college careers are not for the faint of heart and that very few go according to plan. And that in the end, only select teams get viewed by the outside world as champions.
Eight players began, four remained after three left the program in the spring for various reasons. With so much invested, none of them was going to take the short-term approach and put anything less than 100 percent into Citowicki's vision and their senior season. Otherwise, what was it all for?
"It would have been so easy for me to just let this year go by and focus on the next group and start developing the younger leaders and phasing this group out," says Citowicki. "But everybody deserves a great senior year.
"I'd rather invest in them as much as possible and get the most out of them. And I 100 percent feel like I've been getting that back from them. They've been amazing."
It's been a fall of ups and downs in Citowicki's first campaign, but why would this season be any different than previous years for the senior class? Nothing has come easily. Why would it start now?
They've had either a new head coach or assistant every semester they've been on campus. They changed trainers and strength and conditioning coaches, two positions that are extensions of the coaching staff. Despite their grand plans four years ago, they've lost classmates, in person if not in spirit.
Soccer is a sport of attrition, a physical activity played by mortals, so it's rare when something, or someone's body, doesn't give in in some way. For those who persevere, not only are the rewards greater, but the bonds between those who do become ironclad.
It's not militaristic, but it comes with a boot-camp mentality. Only the strong survive. It makes a person willing to do most anything for those who have made it through the same experience.
"It makes you grateful for the people who have been there through it all. The four of us are the only constants in the four years we've been here. These are my people. This is who I've got," says Warren.
"It would not have been the same without them. Those are relationships I'll have forever. They are a big reason I can say I loved every minute of my time here," says Otteson.
"Only we know what we've been through. You come in as separate people and you learn so much about each other that you become this inseparable thing. It's hard to put into words how special those bonds are," says Fowler.
"I don't know the best word. Maybe unified with how much we've gone through. We've always stuck through it all, no matter what's been thrown our way," says Taryn Miller, of Greenacres, Wash., the Big Sky Defensive Player of the Year as a junior.
They don't have a Big Sky championship to their credit, but that's only one measure of success for a college athlete.
There hasn't been a year when any of them hasn't earned Academic All-Big Sky Conference honors, 15 between them. And to make it through four or five years, given all they've faced and could have walked away from, only further predicts big things for them down the road.
While they'll play or watch their final home match as Grizzlies on Sunday and the season will end within a month's time, the honorific of Montana Soccer Player will be something they'll own for life. They'll join a select group now nearly 200 strong, all part of a program after giving it a piece of themselves.
It's why Widner, Fowler, Miller, Otteson and Warren went all in last spring and pestered Citowicki last summer in the buildup to their final fall: What more can we do?
Sure, they did it partly for themselves, wanting the best senior season possible, but they did it for each other, never wanting to let each other down, not after all they've been through. And they did it for the younger players on the team and the program's past players. They owed them that.
"Even though we may not have gotten the results we wanted this year, we still bought into helping build up the program the way Chris wanted. We still want it to be the best it can be in the future," says Widner.
"It's a pride thing with this program. Even as an alum, you want the program to succeed. We want to be able to look back and say we were there his first year, and now look at them. They're a winning program and they're winning conference all the time and doing all these big things."
Maybe that will be their legacy, that when it would have been so easy to check out last spring, they checked in like they'd never done before. And when they could have coasted through their final season with minimal sacrifice, they instead gave it their all.
None of it was easy to do, but nothing has come easily for this year's seniors since they day they suited up for their first practice. So perhaps we're witnessing their greatest contribution: giving of themselves so that others, players they don't even know, can succeed down the road.
And this: there is team, and that is the most important thing of all, but it's your class that will help you make it through. That's what they want the younger classes on this year's team to take away from their time as Grizzlies and what will be celebrated with hugs and tears on Sunday.
"We're all from out of state, so we didn't have family right here. Anything that's happened, it's been crazy to see everyone drop everything and rally around each other," says Fowler.
"If anything happens, you know your support system is there. It makes the everyday part of being a college athlete so much easier. We hope that's something we can leave behind."
Players Mentioned
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/ Soccer
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/ Soccer
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/ Soccer
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/ Soccer
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/ Soccer
M
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