The Craig Hall Chronicles :: Ali Monroe
4/12/2018 4:06:00 PM | Soccer
The Monroe Doctrine, the 21st century version, penned by Eric and Lorraine of Edmonds, Wash., nearly 200 years after the original, has a simple, straightforward opening clause.
"My standing rule is, if you're going to lie down and whine, get off the field," says Lorraine, who ingrained the edict in both of her daughters, the younger of whom is a member of the Montana soccer team.
Both not only listened, they embraced it. Fully.
So when Ali Monroe, then a junior at Edmonds-Woodway High School, went to the ground in a match against Jackson High in early September 2016 and didn't immediately bounce back up, everyone knew it was serious.
Lorraine had torn her ACL a decade before while playing indoor soccer with the girls. Mikayla, now a student at Western Washington, had as well while playing years later, coming to a stop, or at least attempting to. Her knee kept going forward.
The entire family was at Edmonds-Woodway's field that day, Lorraine and Mikayla in the stands, Eric, a Battalion Chief for the Shoreline Fire Department, standing behind them, recording the action as usual.
A replay of the match would show Monroe, a midfielder, scoring a goal in the opening minutes and later defending Jadyn Edwards, who will be playing next season at New Mexico.
With the ball at her feet, Edwards changed direction. Monroe did as well to match the move, then heard a sound no body should ever make but is so unmistakable and uniquely linked to a particular injury: she heard a pop.
"As soon as she went down and stayed down and put her arm across her face, we all looked at each other and said, That's her ACL," recalls Lorraine.
"What really sucked was that she was on track. It was her junior year. She had her goals lined out. She looked awesome, then snap."
The injury occurred two days after Monroe had called then Montana coach Mark Plakorus and excitedly told him she would accept his scholarship offer and invitation to join the Grizzlies.
She was being put to the test, but the Monroe Doctrine also taught the girls that bad things are going to happen in their lives. Know this: you'll make it through and come back stronger than ever. It wasn't taught as something to be hoped for but as fact, something to believe, to trust.
How else to explain Ali playing through a stabbing pain in her side early in her freshman year, only to find out she had been playing with an appendix that had ruptured?
Coaches and parents -- other parents, not the Monroes -- were worried. The Warriors had the look of a championship contender that year, and now the only freshman to make varsity was sidelined, perhaps for the season.
"I told them she'd be out for 11 days. And after 11 days she was back on the field. She only missed two games," says Lorraine.
And the team would go on to win the Washington Class 3A state title.
Her first memories of playing the sport are faint, coming to her like age-old film, kept alive by her father's earliest videos. A local park with temporary small goals set up, kids running here and there with t-shirts hanging down to their knees.
She grew up in Edmonds, in the same house her mom had been raised in. So perfect was its location -- five minutes from the water, 30 north of Seattle, nightly sunsets that bring a perfect, peaceful end to each day -- that Eric and Lorraine bought it from Lorraine's parents when they decided to move out.
Ali Monroe tried other sports growing up, including softball and volleyball of her mom's past, but none had the staying power of soccer. "I loved it because you're constantly moving and constantly doing something."
In those early days, with FC Edmonds, she always played up an age-group. She was good enough to do it, and it allowed her to play for years alongside her sister. And improve at a faster rate than if she'd been allowed to dominate her own age-group.
By the age of 12, she had outgrown the local club. Crossfire Premier, located in Redmond, beckoned, but only for those truly committed. Instead of two practices per week, there would be three or four. And the level of competition allowed her to play back in her own age-group.
Her parents would take her to Washington's home soccer matches, but she wasn't thinking about playing college soccer then, but soon she would be. How could she not? Crossfire played tournaments in California, in Arizona, in Colorado, and lining the field at each stop were college recruiters.
But where to start, since college coaches couldn't contact her at that age? The Monroe Doctrine had it covered. "We always told her she needed to promote herself," says Lorraine. Her club coaches agreed and told her she needed to put any nerves she felt aside and call the coaches directly.
So she did, starting with Arizona State. There she sat, nervous, a script in front of her, her mom seated across the table for support and Kevin Boyd's office phone number ready to be dialed. All she had to do was leave a message, right? It's not like he was going to be there or pick up if he was.
"We tried to have her be ready for rejection or prepared to leave a message, because nobody was going to answer a 206 phone number," says Lorraine. "And we failed, because her first phone call was answered by a real person who was from (Edmonds), and they talked for a long time."
"I wasn't expecting him to pick up," says Ali, "so I said, 'Hi, I'm Ali Monroe from Edmonds, Wash.' He cuts me off and asks, 'What part of Edmonds? The Bowl area? What street?'
"I'm thinking, Is this how it normally goes? He was actually from Edmonds, a couple of streets above mine. That was kind of a cool way to start it off."
That she ended up at Montana might appear to be happenstance, but it was far from it. Plakorus was a dogged recruiter, never missing a chance to attend the must-see tournaments, and Monroe was good enough that she was standing out, even at ECNL events.
The connection between the two sides began at Surf Cup in San Diego the summer before Monroe's junior year. Plakorus was visiting with a former Crossfire coach when he asked about Monroe. The coach later let Monroe's dad know of Plakorus's interest, and things moved quickly.
A visit was set up, and Monroe and her mom were soon headed east, bound for a campus visit that Monroe had never anticipated making. She had never been to Montana, but her mom knew plenty.
"One of my good friends, her dad was a forest ranger there, so she grew up in Missoula and would tell me stories," says Lorraine. "And I had vacationed in Missoula and Glacier and had always loved it.
"I told her Missoula is a great place. It has great people, it's a great environment. They are thinking people who do their own thing. We should check it out."
Crossfire tries to steer its players to schools in California, where the club has the most connections, and Monroe made some visits, but nothing clicked.
Until she arrived in Montana and made her way to Missoula.
"It was a wholesome area. Outdoorsy, with a lot to do, a lot like home," Monroe says. "And there was the team. It's a successful program. That was important too.
"This is going to seem out there, but Lake Chelan (Wash.) is one of our favorite vacation spots. We've been going there my whole life. The hills here remind me of that. I thought it was going to be the beaches of California, but it was the hills that got me. Ultimately I felt like I'd be happy living here."
An offer was made. An offer was mulled over. An offer was accepted. And two days later Monroe was on the ground, her ACL in tatters, wondering if it was all going to be taken away before it ever had a chance to begin.
She knew she had to reach out to Plakorus and fill him in on what had happened, but she also wanted to wait until the MRI had been read and confirmed with certainty what the injury was.
"We were nervous, because we were new commits," says Lorraine, retired from her job at a CBS radio station. "We hadn't signed anything, but Mark was really good. He said, 'Don't worry about it. You're still a Griz.' He really put Ali's mind at ease."
The fall of 2016 was also when Monroe entered the Running Start program, a partnership between her high school and Edmonds Community College that allowed her to take classes that would apply to both her high school graduation requirements and give her a jump on earning college credits.
Last summer, after one year of taking college courses, she had an idea and wanted to find out if it was feasible. When she attended Montana's camp in July, she brought up to Plakorus the idea of arriving in Missoula early.
He thought she meant arriving early in the summer before her freshman year. She had an even bolder idea in mind. She would be done with her academic requirements after the fall quarter. Could she enroll at Montana in January? Could she take classes this semester and train with the team?
The more the Monroes discussed it, the more those talks tipped in favor of the benefits, of a spring training with her new teammates, of taking Running Start and turning it up a notch, of getting a taste of college soccer well before she otherwise would have.
And she'll still get to attend her senior prom and go through graduation ceremonies at her high school. She'll just do it having accomplished a little bit more than probably any of the other seniors in her class.
"It seemed like it would be a beneficial thing to do," says Monroe, who arrived at Montana with 38 credits toward her degree already completed. "I was a little nervous when I got here. I knew there would be an adjustment.
"But I have a team I can rely on, which is important. When I came on my official visit, all the girls were so welcoming. It was one of the reasons I was drawn to the school, because of the feeling of community."
She missed most of her junior season at Edmonds-Woodway, but was still voted her team's most inspirational player. She was cleared to resume playing in June.
Knowing she was on her way to Montana a semester early, she opted last fall to not play with her high school team but instead put all of her energies toward training with Crossfire.
"Practices were a little more intense than they are in high school," she says. "Playing high school can help with your confidence, but I wanted to make sure I was playing the highest level possible since I'd be transitioning to college early."
She made her way to Missoula in January and survived, along with all her teammates, the upheaval in the coaching staff. She had to learn how to survive in the dorm and how to play futsal, the game of choice for the Grizzlies when they are forced to train indoors in the winter months.
"It was fast and I was nervous, so I was sloppy the first couple of times, but I got into my rhythm," says Monroe, who will make her spring season debut this weekend when the Grizzlies play Gonzaga in Spokane on Saturday and North Idaho College in Coeur d'Alene on Sunday.
"I just had to keep in mind that I've been doing this my whole life. The big thing is just giving your all for the team. Nobody's going to be mad if you're trying your hardest."
And if that thought isn't in the Monroe Doctrine, it might be time for an update.
"My standing rule is, if you're going to lie down and whine, get off the field," says Lorraine, who ingrained the edict in both of her daughters, the younger of whom is a member of the Montana soccer team.
Both not only listened, they embraced it. Fully.
So when Ali Monroe, then a junior at Edmonds-Woodway High School, went to the ground in a match against Jackson High in early September 2016 and didn't immediately bounce back up, everyone knew it was serious.
Lorraine had torn her ACL a decade before while playing indoor soccer with the girls. Mikayla, now a student at Western Washington, had as well while playing years later, coming to a stop, or at least attempting to. Her knee kept going forward.
The entire family was at Edmonds-Woodway's field that day, Lorraine and Mikayla in the stands, Eric, a Battalion Chief for the Shoreline Fire Department, standing behind them, recording the action as usual.
A replay of the match would show Monroe, a midfielder, scoring a goal in the opening minutes and later defending Jadyn Edwards, who will be playing next season at New Mexico.
With the ball at her feet, Edwards changed direction. Monroe did as well to match the move, then heard a sound no body should ever make but is so unmistakable and uniquely linked to a particular injury: she heard a pop.
"As soon as she went down and stayed down and put her arm across her face, we all looked at each other and said, That's her ACL," recalls Lorraine.
"What really sucked was that she was on track. It was her junior year. She had her goals lined out. She looked awesome, then snap."
The injury occurred two days after Monroe had called then Montana coach Mark Plakorus and excitedly told him she would accept his scholarship offer and invitation to join the Grizzlies.
She was being put to the test, but the Monroe Doctrine also taught the girls that bad things are going to happen in their lives. Know this: you'll make it through and come back stronger than ever. It wasn't taught as something to be hoped for but as fact, something to believe, to trust.
How else to explain Ali playing through a stabbing pain in her side early in her freshman year, only to find out she had been playing with an appendix that had ruptured?
Coaches and parents -- other parents, not the Monroes -- were worried. The Warriors had the look of a championship contender that year, and now the only freshman to make varsity was sidelined, perhaps for the season.
"I told them she'd be out for 11 days. And after 11 days she was back on the field. She only missed two games," says Lorraine.
And the team would go on to win the Washington Class 3A state title.
Her first memories of playing the sport are faint, coming to her like age-old film, kept alive by her father's earliest videos. A local park with temporary small goals set up, kids running here and there with t-shirts hanging down to their knees.
She grew up in Edmonds, in the same house her mom had been raised in. So perfect was its location -- five minutes from the water, 30 north of Seattle, nightly sunsets that bring a perfect, peaceful end to each day -- that Eric and Lorraine bought it from Lorraine's parents when they decided to move out.
Ali Monroe tried other sports growing up, including softball and volleyball of her mom's past, but none had the staying power of soccer. "I loved it because you're constantly moving and constantly doing something."
In those early days, with FC Edmonds, she always played up an age-group. She was good enough to do it, and it allowed her to play for years alongside her sister. And improve at a faster rate than if she'd been allowed to dominate her own age-group.
By the age of 12, she had outgrown the local club. Crossfire Premier, located in Redmond, beckoned, but only for those truly committed. Instead of two practices per week, there would be three or four. And the level of competition allowed her to play back in her own age-group.
Her parents would take her to Washington's home soccer matches, but she wasn't thinking about playing college soccer then, but soon she would be. How could she not? Crossfire played tournaments in California, in Arizona, in Colorado, and lining the field at each stop were college recruiters.
But where to start, since college coaches couldn't contact her at that age? The Monroe Doctrine had it covered. "We always told her she needed to promote herself," says Lorraine. Her club coaches agreed and told her she needed to put any nerves she felt aside and call the coaches directly.
So she did, starting with Arizona State. There she sat, nervous, a script in front of her, her mom seated across the table for support and Kevin Boyd's office phone number ready to be dialed. All she had to do was leave a message, right? It's not like he was going to be there or pick up if he was.
"We tried to have her be ready for rejection or prepared to leave a message, because nobody was going to answer a 206 phone number," says Lorraine. "And we failed, because her first phone call was answered by a real person who was from (Edmonds), and they talked for a long time."
"I wasn't expecting him to pick up," says Ali, "so I said, 'Hi, I'm Ali Monroe from Edmonds, Wash.' He cuts me off and asks, 'What part of Edmonds? The Bowl area? What street?'
"I'm thinking, Is this how it normally goes? He was actually from Edmonds, a couple of streets above mine. That was kind of a cool way to start it off."
That she ended up at Montana might appear to be happenstance, but it was far from it. Plakorus was a dogged recruiter, never missing a chance to attend the must-see tournaments, and Monroe was good enough that she was standing out, even at ECNL events.
The connection between the two sides began at Surf Cup in San Diego the summer before Monroe's junior year. Plakorus was visiting with a former Crossfire coach when he asked about Monroe. The coach later let Monroe's dad know of Plakorus's interest, and things moved quickly.
A visit was set up, and Monroe and her mom were soon headed east, bound for a campus visit that Monroe had never anticipated making. She had never been to Montana, but her mom knew plenty.
"One of my good friends, her dad was a forest ranger there, so she grew up in Missoula and would tell me stories," says Lorraine. "And I had vacationed in Missoula and Glacier and had always loved it.
"I told her Missoula is a great place. It has great people, it's a great environment. They are thinking people who do their own thing. We should check it out."
Crossfire tries to steer its players to schools in California, where the club has the most connections, and Monroe made some visits, but nothing clicked.
Until she arrived in Montana and made her way to Missoula.
"It was a wholesome area. Outdoorsy, with a lot to do, a lot like home," Monroe says. "And there was the team. It's a successful program. That was important too.
"This is going to seem out there, but Lake Chelan (Wash.) is one of our favorite vacation spots. We've been going there my whole life. The hills here remind me of that. I thought it was going to be the beaches of California, but it was the hills that got me. Ultimately I felt like I'd be happy living here."
An offer was made. An offer was mulled over. An offer was accepted. And two days later Monroe was on the ground, her ACL in tatters, wondering if it was all going to be taken away before it ever had a chance to begin.
She knew she had to reach out to Plakorus and fill him in on what had happened, but she also wanted to wait until the MRI had been read and confirmed with certainty what the injury was.
"We were nervous, because we were new commits," says Lorraine, retired from her job at a CBS radio station. "We hadn't signed anything, but Mark was really good. He said, 'Don't worry about it. You're still a Griz.' He really put Ali's mind at ease."
The fall of 2016 was also when Monroe entered the Running Start program, a partnership between her high school and Edmonds Community College that allowed her to take classes that would apply to both her high school graduation requirements and give her a jump on earning college credits.
Last summer, after one year of taking college courses, she had an idea and wanted to find out if it was feasible. When she attended Montana's camp in July, she brought up to Plakorus the idea of arriving in Missoula early.
He thought she meant arriving early in the summer before her freshman year. She had an even bolder idea in mind. She would be done with her academic requirements after the fall quarter. Could she enroll at Montana in January? Could she take classes this semester and train with the team?
The more the Monroes discussed it, the more those talks tipped in favor of the benefits, of a spring training with her new teammates, of taking Running Start and turning it up a notch, of getting a taste of college soccer well before she otherwise would have.
And she'll still get to attend her senior prom and go through graduation ceremonies at her high school. She'll just do it having accomplished a little bit more than probably any of the other seniors in her class.
"It seemed like it would be a beneficial thing to do," says Monroe, who arrived at Montana with 38 credits toward her degree already completed. "I was a little nervous when I got here. I knew there would be an adjustment.
"But I have a team I can rely on, which is important. When I came on my official visit, all the girls were so welcoming. It was one of the reasons I was drawn to the school, because of the feeling of community."
She missed most of her junior season at Edmonds-Woodway, but was still voted her team's most inspirational player. She was cleared to resume playing in June.
Knowing she was on her way to Montana a semester early, she opted last fall to not play with her high school team but instead put all of her energies toward training with Crossfire.
"Practices were a little more intense than they are in high school," she says. "Playing high school can help with your confidence, but I wanted to make sure I was playing the highest level possible since I'd be transitioning to college early."
She made her way to Missoula in January and survived, along with all her teammates, the upheaval in the coaching staff. She had to learn how to survive in the dorm and how to play futsal, the game of choice for the Grizzlies when they are forced to train indoors in the winter months.
"It was fast and I was nervous, so I was sloppy the first couple of times, but I got into my rhythm," says Monroe, who will make her spring season debut this weekend when the Grizzlies play Gonzaga in Spokane on Saturday and North Idaho College in Coeur d'Alene on Sunday.
"I just had to keep in mind that I've been doing this my whole life. The big thing is just giving your all for the team. Nobody's going to be mad if you're trying your hardest."
And if that thought isn't in the Monroe Doctrine, it might be time for an update.
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