Freshman orientation with Kylie Frohlich

Take a seat on the Lady Griz bench inside Dahlberg Arena. It's as good a spot as any to begin this story. It's where we'll end it as well a while from now, to bring full circle the tale of Kylie Frohlich.

Look directly across the floor, to the courtside seating section farthest to the right. Walk your eyes up the steps, the ones closest to the baseline. Keep going to the top row and take a left.

There you'll find two seats, the location of the season tickets for years held by Jim and Beverly Frohlich, Griz fans from way, way back, the type whose allegiance never swayed, no matter the sport, Montana to the core.

One of those seats will never be filled again. Not literally, of course, but figuratively, after Jim's death last January. Things just haven't been the same since, not even 12 months later.

The Frohlichs' daughter, Jill, played for the Lady Griz in the early 90s. It made for a heightened experience those long-ago winter nights, when fervor paired with family, a sweet spot where passions intersected.

That's why it was such a big deal when Jim's granddaughter committed to play for her hometown team two summers ago.

He wasn't the same Jim Frohlich, at least in an outwardly physical way, not after suffering a stroke years before that had robbed him of most of his speech. But some emotions require no words.

"It was an ear-to-ear permanent grin, an all right! kind of thing," says Colleen Frohlich, Kylie's mom, Jim's daughter-in-law. "You couldn't make that up or recreate it, the emotion, the excitement, the love, the pride. It was super magical."

He didn't live long enough to see his granddaughter make her Dahlberg Arena debut on Dec. 1, when she played five minutes in a victory over Northern Illinois at the Lady Griz Classic.

"(Their relationship) was special," says Colleen, whose family spent the last years of Jim's life living in the house next door, in Jim and Beverly's former home. "He would love to see what she's doing now.

"It was hard for him to get out, but he didn't miss anything. He did anything he could to support Kylie and all his grandchildren. He lost the ability to speak at times, but you always knew what he felt."

Life, depending on what you believe and how you view it, can be a random series of events, the ties that bind a haphazard collection of connections. Which then become fused by emotion.

What if the daughter of Cliff and Joyce Jantz hadn't grown to 6-foot-2 and into a Division I volleyball player in Coeur d'Alene? What if she'd never been high school teammates with Anne Schwenke, herself a Division I setter?

And what if they had never decided to make former Montana volleyball coach Dick Scott's day back in the late 80s and commit to the Grizzlies?

And what if Shannon Cate hadn't committed to Robin Selvig around the same time? And what if Colleen Jantz hadn't met Mark Frohlich, in which case there would be no Kylie Frohlich, at least this version of her?

But all those things did play out, and here we are. Or, in this story, there everyone was, in one of the halcyon periods of women's athletics at Montana.

There was no soccer program at the time, no softball team. It was a smaller group of female student-athletes. They were close. And they were good.

"We were a tight-knit group back in those days," says Cate, now Shannon Schweyen, head coach of the Lady Griz, whose own daughters grew up playing sports with Kylie Frohlich in Missoula. "Our team was tight with the volleyball girls. We were all good friends."

Both programs had been successful, but both took it up a notch in the early 90s, capped by the 1991-92 school year, the senior seasons for both Jantz and Cate.

The volleyball team that fall won its first Big Sky Conference regular-season title behind Jantz, first-team all-league, and Schwenke, the Big Sky MVP. The pair had won an Idaho state championship together at Coeur d'Alene High. Now they'd done the same thing at the next level.

The Grizzlies hosted the conference tournament and dropped just a single set on their way to the NCAA tournament.

That winter Cate and her teammates did the same thing, winning the league tournament at Boise State, then going to Wisconsin and knocking off the Badgers in the opening round of the NCAAs.

In a different version of their life stories, perhaps that's where they would go their different ways. Instead, both jumped on the same career path. Cate joined Selvig's coaching staff, Jantz, by then Frohlich, got on with Scott's program for the 1996 season.

"We had started a family, but I still had close ties to Dick, and he was looking for somebody, so I made the decision to start coaching," Frohlich says. "What a great opportunity to jump in at the Division I level."

Montana had returned to the NCAA tournament in 1994, but the success wouldn't last. Scott made it through a dozen matches in 1999. He was let go following a road trip to Idaho State and Weber State, and Frohlich took over as interim head coach.

Montana won seven of its first eight matches under Frohlich, nine of 15 overall. Then it was time for Director of Athletics Wayne Hogan to find a permanent coach.

"Wayne offered it to me, but I didn't pursue it," Frohlich says. "The timing wasn't right."

Her family was growing. What had been just Brayden would soon become Kylie and later Quincy. They became her full-time job.

And in that role it didn't take long to notice something about her first daughter. "I remember when it came time to feed her," Frohlich recalls. "She would not let me feed her with a spoon. She was going to do it herself.

"And she was going to tie her own shoes. It's just in her."

Those traits presented themselves in entry-level athletics as well, with Jordyn Schweyen, her family's oldest, joining Frohlich in every sport their parents could find.

"Our kids played YMCA soccer together when they were little, and Kylie was always one of those who you just noticed was going hard all the time," says Schweyen.

"It stood out even back then. She'd be diving after balls and going after things she might not get, but she was still going to try. She never had any quit in her. You just knew what you were going to get out of her."

For both families, things moved forward in Missoula. Until 2010, when Frohlich's Coeur d'Alene roots pulled at her enough to apply for the open volleyball job at North Idaho College.

Her resume showed her four seasons on staff at Montana, her time after that coaching club volleyball. And a whole lot of mothering.

"I had some contacts at North Idaho, but I never thought I'd get the job. We had success, but it was a very stressful time," says Frohlich. She lost her dad at that time and her father-in-law had his stroke.

The Cardinals went 29-7 and finished fifth at the NJCAA national tournament, and Frohlich was voted the Region 18 Coach of the Year.

But she was one-and-done. Hired in May, she stepped down in January.

"I wasn't ready to jump back into it at that time. When I coach -- and all coaches can say this -- it's kind of the top priority, and I wasn't good at that quite yet," she says.

For all the heartache -- or maybe partly because of it -- that year spent in Coeur d'Alene still provides Kylie Frohlich's best basketball memory, of playing shooting games with her dad and brother on the front driveway.

To Missoula they eventually returned, moving into the home of Mark's parents for a year until land could be cleared next door and a single-floor unit built that was easier for Jim Frohlich to navigate.

Soccer had been her sport of choice while living in Coeur d'Alene and playing alongside her cousins. It shifted to volleyball and basketball once the family moved back to Montana.

She reunited with Jordyn Schweyen at Sentinel High and joined a decorated class that led the Spartans to back-to-back volleyball state titles when they were juniors and seniors.

They had runner-up finishes both winters on the basketball court, then added more hardware with consecutive state titles in track and field in the spring.

"I'd like to say, yes, we had a hand in it, but honestly I have to give her so much of that credit," says Colleen. "It's built in her. She plays with the heart of a lion. She was going to succeed at whatever sport she wanted.

"Mark and I are good and loving parents, but we didn't do that. She taught me that I have to work harder, and that's pretty special."

But lessons -- as learned in Jordyn Schweyen's Freshman Orientation article -- come in small ways and opportunities that over time build up into beliefs and learned behavior by the one being taught.

The Frohlichs may deflect any credit. Their daughter has her own theory.

"I'd probably say my parents, especially my dad," says Kylie, when asked about the genesis of her work ethic. "When they talked to me after games, they wouldn't really care how I played as long as I worked the hardest I could. So that became important to me."

Having an older brother who would play basketball at Wenatchee Valley College in Washington had an influential role as well.

"I was lucky. I got to watch a lot of basketball," she says. "And he never took it easy on me. He made me earn everything."

She was good enough that multiple schools from the Big Sky Conference wanted her commitment. She was sure she wanted something new, something different than how she viewed Montana.

What could her mom say? She'd left Coeur d'Alene for Missoula three decades ago and never looked back. But it was Montana!

"You have to be careful. I know the benefits of being in this community and going to the university," she says. "It's quite special and special to me, but at the same time I wanted her to have her own opportunity to go where she felt like she could have that experience.

"So I was careful, but I was secretly hoping."

What Frohlich really wanted her oldest daughter to experience, whether it was at Montana or not, was what she'd taken away from her time as a Grizzly, both as an athlete and a coach, though mostly the former.

"My group, and we all say this, was so special. They are my tribe," she says. "They are my best friends and family. We may not speak but once a year, but it's hard to describe what that bond is like. It's amazing, irreplaceable."

Frohlich thought she knew Montana, from her time going to camps, from going to games, from having the connection of Schweyen's two-plus decades as Selvig's assistant coach.

But then she started seeing it not as what she thought it was but how it could be with her inside it. And that changed everything.

"I took my visit and realized it would be a whole new experience. I pictured it as something familiar, but when I started seeing myself here, it changed for me," she says.

Frohlich and Schweyen would both commit the same day, less than a year after Shannon Schweyen had moved up from long-time assistant to head coach.

Neither player knew that summer day what the other had in mind. "It was pretty special, because we grew up playing together," Frohlich says.

It was her senior year at Sentinel, last Jan. 19, when her grandfather passed away. Four days later the Spartans hosted Helena High.

"She didn't miss a game. It never came to question. We knew he'd want her out there," says Colleen.

But it wasn't that easy. Just as he did at Dahlberg Arena, Jim Frohlich had his usual seat inside the Sentinel gym. Out of habit, his granddaughter kept looking that way all night, expecting to see his face.

The game provided an escape from reality. Then the final horn sounded.

"We were kind of wondering how it would feel," Colleen says. "After the game she kind of emotionally lost it. She said, 'I just kept looking up there.' "

Frohlich and the Lady Griz play home games this week against Eastern Washington and Northern Colorado, again next week against Idaho.

When you see her on the bench, you might notice Frohlich stealing glances at the seats across the court. They'll be filled by family members, but it won't be the same. It won't ever be the same.

"We were really, really close. He loved the Griz. He was a big reason why I wanted to go here," she says.

Look down and you'll notice something else: JF, written in marker on Jim Frohlich's granddaughter's shoes before every game, a reminder to focus not so much on what was lost but on what was so special when he was here.

"It was hard for me (last year) at Sentinel. I wanted to play for him. It's kind of the same now," says Frohlich.

And that seat? The one that will never be filled again in quite the same way? That's in the eye of the beholder.

"I very much believe he's watching when I play," she says. "I want to try to make him proud and play my hardest for him."

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