The Craig Hall Chronicles :: Molly Massman

It's little wonder that Nick Massman, father of Montana freshman Molly Massman, and Griz soccer coach Chris Citowicki hit it off like they did. Theirs is a shared coaching DNA.

You see, Citowicki isn't worried about Montana's weather or Missoula's relatively remote location as he continues to add to the rich history of the program he took over less than 15 months ago.

He's not concerned that the Grizzlies are in the Big Sky Conference and not a member of one of the leagues that make up the Power Five.

He isn't losing sleep over the fact that five-star recruits and youth national team players are perhaps out of his recruiting reach (though he'll gladly take their calls if they are interested).

He just believes in the power of a strong culture and that he can make playing soccer at Montana a better experience for a player than she would have in almost any other Division I program.

Heck, let's just put it out there, since Citowick doesn't hide it: He wants to make playing soccer at Montana the best option in America.

That's not to say the Grizzlies will ever compete for national titles. He just wants his players to have a championship-level experience, one that changes them for the better, one that puts them on a path toward doing even bigger and better things after soccer, one they'll remember for the rest of their lives.

It's not a novel approach. In fact, Massman had to do more with less back in the day, when he was coaching the men's rugby team at Cal Poly.

At least Citowicki has the benefit of recruiting. Massman looked for potential players on campus the first week of school, then went about creating a strong team environment with whatever pieces he had.

"We always played with whoever showed up and put their hand up," says Massman, who coached the school's club program for eight years. "Then we did the work required.

"When I had a good group of kids who were playing for each other, we were super successful. That's kind of what I laid on Molly."

What Massman learned from coaching rugby, he found Citowicki installing at Montana last summer. Twenty-five skilled soccer players? That's good. Twenty-five players who share a belief system? That's even better. And more powerful. In other words, culture will beat talent when talent is not unified.

It's why Massman's daughter is a Grizzly, even though Cal Poly, both parents' alma mater, sits just five miles from the family home in San Luis Obispo.

It's why the coach and the former coach experienced an immediate bond when they met last summer, when the Massmans visited campus and family and coaching staff all got together for the first time.

"When they came here last summer, we all instantly fell in love with each other," says Citowicki.

It was rugby, at least indirectly, that brought Nick and Lisa Massman together for the first time.

He was a member of the team at Cal Poly, in his hometown. She was on the women's water polo team, by way of Coronado, Calif.

Both were club programs in name only. The women's water polo team of that era would have two players ultimately go on to make the national team. One played for the U.S. at the Sydney Olympics.

The rugby team had its routine. Train on Thursday, learn the selections for game day on Saturday, then go somewhere and celebrate. Life. Rugby. That is was Thursday. Whatever needed to be celebrated.

An invitation was extended to a water polo player. She began bringing friends. One day Lisa, fresh off studying abroad in France, showed up. Nick was smitten. And put on his best tough-guy rugby posture.

"She rolled in, and in my clever approach, I started talking s*** to her. That's how it started," he says, then adds, "We're pushing 30 years together now."

His rugby experiences, particularly those he learned through coaching, were instructive when the first of the Massmans' two daughters -- Liberty came next -- began showing some promise on the soccer field years later.

San Luis Obispo, with its climate and terrain and access to the Pacific, is hard to beat. Unless a kid is looking to play the highest level of youth soccer.

That means south, at least down the road to Santa Barbara, if not into the bustle of Los Angeles and maybe beyond. And that means hours and hours sitting in a car. And that's per practice.

It's not that the Massmans didn't want the best for their daughter. But Nick thought there might be a better way than stripping Molly of not only her friends and local teammates but of some of her youth.

Time sitting in a car is time you just never get back. So they looked at the Madrid Premier Soccer Club, located in Arroyo Grande, not even 15 miles from the Massmans' home south of San Luis Obispo.

It didn't have an ECNL classification. It wasn't DA. And nobody cared. They just made the best of it.

"It had a strong group of kids and a super strong group of parents," Massman says. "We just said, Hey, we love this environment. Let's do whatever it takes to get this group to the next level.

"Let's put the effort into what we're doing here and build our own environment. It seemed to work. Every year they excelled and kind of made a name for themselves."

Take what you have, where you are, and put in the work and make the most of it? It's a philosophy Citowicki was implementing himself about the same time, at St. Catherine, the Division III school in St. Paul that gave him his first chance back in 2011.

"On the other hand, there were some other local girls who gave ECNL and DA a run, but it was three hours each way to get to training," Massman says. "And they did that twice a week. Their games suffered."

Not to mention their ability to pursue a somewhat normal life outside of school and soccer.

Because how delightful and refreshing is this: Molly Massman was a state champion. Not in soccer but in the distance paddle at the California junior lifeguard championships.

She was then top 10 in both the distance paddle and run-paddle-swim event at nationals three years later, an extension of her work as a lifeguard at the pools in her hometown.

"I started doing those when I was nine. I just liked being outside and athletic. And it was different from soccer. And it was at the beach," she says, without apologizing for any of it. Or needing to.

Soccer had a place in her life, but she wasn't leading a soccer life.

And it wasn't just athletics. Inspired by some friends who raised animals to show at a nearby fair each year, Massman opted to take integrated ag-biology when she was a sophomore at San Luis Obispo High.

Her class project, one she co-authored with a friend, about how wildfires affect topsoil, was a state winner at the FFA Agriscience Fair. It was later judged top 12 at nationals.

How many Division I soccer players have that kind of variety on their resume?

It was the kind of versatility she showed on the field for coach Brittney Viboch at SLO High, who took over as coach the same year Massman was making varsity as a freshman, so many years after getting her start in the sport at the age of five as a Green Lady Bug.

Together, coach and player: Four years, four Pac-8 League titles.

"She played center back, holding mid, we put her at attacking mid. She was a huge factor in controlling the game for us," says Viboch. "She stepped up in big-time situations for us.

"Having her in the middle of the field was crucial. You want to have your strongest players be those who can win balls out of the air and win 50-50 tackles and move the ball forward with confidence."

For as feel-good as this story has been, of the player who succeeds while maintaining a sport-life balance, there is a reason roster spots on the big-time youth soccer teams are coveted.

College coaches can't be everywhere during their recruiting windows. So they pick the tournaments with the top teams, which give the players of those teams the best exposure, which ups the demand to make those teams. It was a cycle Massman never stepped foot inside.

She isn't the first player with Division I talent to be mostly off the radar. Her only offers coming out of her junior year were to Chico State and Point Loma Nazarene, both Division II schools in her home state.

It was about the same time that Citowicki was hired at Montana, and he decided to send assistant coach Katie Benz to California to recruit a tournament, one that included a player by the name of Massman, who had recently reached out.

Massman had pretty much made up her mind by then. She was going to Chico State. But since she was going to play in one final showcase tournament, and since there were going to be coaches from a handful of Division I programs in attendance, she might as well alert them to her existence.

"I said, 'Send them all emails. They are going to like what they see,' " said Nick, who recognized that his daughter was a late-bloomer and had a bigger upside than Division II soccer.

He had set her up with a friend of his who worked at a local gym. He became her trainer, and she's been into it ever since. The evolution has been going on for two years.

"My arms are less like twigs. My friends say they are scared to play against me, physicality-wise, so it's been really, really helpful," Massman says.

And her soccer talent continued to emerge, whether it was in club or with the Tigers of SLO High.

"Every single season and every single game, she got better, especially this past season," says Viboch, who played at Cal Poly. "I didn't think it was possible for her to gain more experience and for her overall soccer IQ to consistently go up.

"She set the bar at practice, set the bar on the field. She was the player coaches always talked about at the end of the game. She was always the one controlling the field."

That was the player Benz saw last summer, the one who had her immediately contacting Citowicki back in Missoula.

"Katie's texting me from the event. This Molly kid? The one who's been emailing us? She's great. She's legit. She's the real deal. We've got to try to get her. Katie was thrilled," Citowicki says.

And so began one of the fastest recruitments in Citowicki's coaching career. It was maybe a week later that Massman and her parents were in Missoula, meeting the coaches and touring campus.

She didn't commit on the spot, but she certainly could have. She was that convinced she had found a home.

"I came here and fell in love. The atmosphere is centered a lot more on sports and athletics than other schools I visited," Massman says. "It was cool to see so many people involved and the community support.

"Within 10 minutes of being on campus and being around Chris and Katie, I knew. My parents were like, 'Okay, this isn't even going to be a hard choice.' I was done with the recruiting process."

The Massmans live on 20 acres a few miles south of San Luis Obispo. Nick, who works in property management, and Lisa, who works for KPMG, are both Cal Poly graduates, a school located five miles away. His parents live on the same property.

Massman's grandma tools over to the house on her golf cart. Her grandpa rumbles up in his quad.

So, in a perfect world, wouldn't their daughter be preparing for her first season as a Mustang? After all, Cal Poly started showing some interest late in the process. Wouldn't that be pretty ideal?

"We're living in a perfect world. Montana is where she is supposed to be," Nick says. Adds Citowicki, "It all worked out extremely well. It's a perfect fit. I wish recruiting was always that easy."

It's another example, the kind Citowicki likes to highlight when talking at camps and clinics, of the different paths that can be taken to becoming a Grizzly.

Friday's edition of the Craig Hall Chronicles will be a two-for-one, two players who left home early to go all in on their soccer careers at Shattuck-St. Mary's School in Minnesota.

Massman? She went in as much as her schedule and other interests allowed. And yet here they are, teammates in the end, different paths leading to the same destination.

Massman joins the team as a holding midfielder, a position of some depth for Montana. Of course she is still only 17, will be until October. She's the program's first player born post-9/11, so she's really only just getting started.

Another way of looking at it: she has fewer miles on her than some other players her age, which is pretty exciting when you consider this is her starting point.

"What stand out are the vision that she has and her comfort with the ball," says Citowicki. "I want players in attack who get their eyes up and make their own decisions. She plays the right ball at the right pace at the right time. She has the sense to play that position extremely well."

Massman says she would have been happy playing at Chico State. Her dad says it was serendipitous how it worked out, how his daughter reached out to Montana just before committing to Chico State and a few weeks later she was a Grizzly.

He says she "has bigger fish to fry to fry" than Division II soccer. "I'm super stoked for her."

Talking to both coaches this week, the one who learned the profession in the sport of rugby, and the one who is now heading the Montana soccer program, both use the word perfect again and again.

A father saw his daughter go off to a school and a program that make his heart happy. A coach welcomes a player who popped up out of nowhere, from a family with values that match his program's.

It's perfect, and everyone wins. Except those schools who may one day regret the one they missed out on, the one that got away.

"She's got it," says Citowicki. "I don't know how other people didn't see it. I don't know how people missed her. But we got her, thank you very much."

University of Montana Athletics

Players Mentioned

Molly Massman

Related Videos