The GOAT that wears these gloves

Okay, pop quiz, hotshot.

By now you've not only heard of Claire Howard, aka The GOAT, aka The Legend, but you've likely seen her in action as well, as so many have as the runaway train that is Griz Soccer picks up speed and passengers who want to hop along for the ride as it heads to North Carolina next week for the NCAA tournament.

What's not to get behind? Ten matches played. Nine wins, one loss, that coming in overtime. Twenty-one goals scored, just six allowed, with six shutouts. A date next Wednesday with mighty South Carolina of the even mightier Southeastern Conference. The mountain versus the little engine that could.

And we all know how that turned out, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

You've seen Howard in goal. You've seen how a single player in a scrum of a dozen can still be in charge, how she'll go around, under, over, even through people to keep the ball out of the net. Those 192 square feet of open goal? She owns them like Zeus did the sky.

But even that is minimizing her reach, her impact on her teammates and the match itself. Watch as the ball moves up the field, away from the goal she's protecting. Watch the back line and how it works and operates like an in-sync unit that's been playing together for years. Players covering for others, threats extinguished before they even approach anything that could be called dangerous.

You close your eyes. It's not until you do that you truly understand how it's all happening. It's being coordinated by one voice. It reaches the back line in front of her, the midfield, beyond. It's not just talk because she learned long ago the importance of communication from the goalkeeper position. It's more nuanced than you could possibly imagine.

There is a message not only for the left outside back, but it's tailored for the person playing that position at that particular time, given in a way she knows will get through. It's encouraging, it's demanding. It can be harsh, and you think bonds between teammates might be strained, but she'll circle back with that player afterwards, mend and make the relationship even stronger, leadership in action.

The ball changes possession and heads toward her. It's a rush, a moment when everything might fall apart in front of her. She assesses things in fractions of seconds, keeps everything organized, and then: the opponent gets off a rare shot on goal, something that's only happened an absurd 32 times this season in 10 matches.

It's heading toward the corner, the upper corner, a spot of vulnerability for any goalkeeper, even the best in the world. In that moment, the opposing team thinks it's done the improbable. They've scored a goal on Claire Howard. Somehow she gets there. She's flying, almost levitating, twisting in the air to get maximum extension. She gets a finger on the ball, sends it wide. No goal for you!

The other team is broken. They've learned, as so many of Montana's opponents have, that there is nothing they can do. Everything was done to perfection and they still couldn't do what they had hoped to do. Her teammates shrug and play on. They know: it's just Claire being Claire.

Now that pop quiz: What do you see when you watch Howard play, that blend of both physicality and gracefulness? And how has Montana been so lucky to have her all these years? And shame on us for probably taking it for granted and not appreciating it as fully as we should.

Can you see her dad, Tim, the former college football player, first at Mesa Junior College in San Diego, then at the University of San Diego? And her mom, the former gymnast? If you can, then it all starts to make sense, the Big Sky Conference-record 32 shutouts, the titles, both bestowed upon her and those won over the years, the characteristics of two sports commingling to create an athlete so special.

Truth be told, she's probably more Ingrid than Tim. "She's always been point-on, get it done. She got that more from her mother. Dad's like, okay, we'll get to it. Mom's like, let's get it done. She wants to get it done and she wants to be right. She's a perfectionist," says her dad. "When she finishes her thesis two weeks early for her master's, I'm like, okay, you got that from your mom."

She earned her undergraduate degree, in communications, in three and a half years. She finished off the final steps of her masters' degree in public administration this week. That means she'll travel to North Carolina free of stress and with a fearlessness that comes with being a fifth-year senior. South Carolina doesn't frighten her. No one does at this point. That's what makes her, and Montana, so dangerous.

She's not just happy to be here this time, neither are the Grizzlies. They done that before and paid for it. This one feels different.

You might think being a perfectionist and being a goalkeeper are not the best pairing. Perfection, or not allowing a goal, can be hard to achieve in any endeavor. Add 21 other players on the field, 90 minutes of unpredictability, a ball that may or may not bounce your way, and more and more is taken out of just one person's control.

But she gravitated toward it from the start. She loved the diving, the flying around. But more than that she loved the pressure, the challenge that no other player on the team faced. "I loved knowing that they had to beat me to score. I embraced that pressure. I just loved it," she says. "It just stuck right away, and I never looked back."

It's a position, of those who play it best, that requires an extra helping of confidence. She has it but masks it so well it rarely reveals itself. But it's there.

In the last month, she and her sister were both voted players of the year in their conference. She was named Big Sky Conference Goalkeeper of the Year for the first time, when she probably deserved it the previous two years as well. Brynn, a midfielder at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, Calif., was named the Golden State Athletic Conference Freshman of the Year.

Here it comes: "She's a stud too," she says. The "too" gives it all away. She knows exactly what she is. It's what a former Montana coach saw back in 2015 on that field in Seattle, Santa Rosa United there for an ECNL nationals qualifier.

The coach had been tipped off weeks earlier, at another tournament in Portland, when someone, an AD at a high school in Northern California who was serving as a director of a club team that was competing, saw the coach's Montana gear and told him the coach at his high school had played at Montana, Shannon Forslund.

And what was the coach here looking for? A goalkeeper. Well, do I have the goalkeeper for you, he said. A kid by the name of Claire Howard. Plays at a rival school and she's uncommitted.

The coach watched her warm up in Seattle a few weeks later. He was hooked. He watched the first 10 minutes of her match. He was sold. Actually it was more than that. He was enthralled, gaga. In the time span of a sitcom, he knew he had to have her. "I thought if we got this goalkeeper into our training system, Montana would have one of the best goalkeepers this program has ever seen."

Howard's dad didn't know what he had in his first-born until that day very early in her goalkeeping career. She got scored on in a club game. Then scored on again. And again. And again. He asked the coach afterwards, "Hey, did you ever think about taking her out to build up her confidence? He goes, 'Nah, you've got to learn.'" Life lessons, coming high and hard.

At that age, that kind of experience presents a fork in the road for a young soccer player, particularly a goalkeeper. You either give it up and say you're done with the sport or the position or you say, that's not going to ever happen again. Let's get to work.

If her story had a soundtrack, it would be that of crashing garbage cans. She had chosen the latter option. It was time to get to work. At her next training session with her goalkeeper coach, as her dad and Brynn walked laps around the field, watching (and listening) but not interfering, the cans banged as Howard dove over them time and time again, honing her technique.

"I was like, she's got determination. She wants this," her dad says. "As she progressed, the love and excitement that she would show when she would play just said, this is the best thing. It's the best position that she could ever have played.

"It's the right position, because she wants to be there for everyone. She wants to be the final stop. She's that confident of herself that they might get through you guys, but I'm here. I'll take care of it." And she's never stopped doing it.

She could have played college basketball. Had offers even. The pressures of playing for Santa Rosa United and Maria Carrillo High's nationally recognized soccer program could be offset by playing for the school's basketball team. There were the cross-sport benefits but also something else: fun. She could just play like she was a kid again.

"She loved that it was no stress on her," says Tim. Seeing her only in a soccer uniform doing goalkeeper things all these years, you might wonder what she did so well on the court. "She had a mid-range jumper, but she could really drive. She would go baseline and go up and it was something to see. It was enjoyable to be her parents in the stands because it was fun for us."

The soccer field, when your daughter is in goal? That's something else entirely. "The worst position is the goalie's dad. You get nervous, and you can't do anything about it."

Howard's seasons at Montana can be measured by the drawstring in the hooded sweatshirts he wears. One season: one string. There he sits, pulling on one end, then the other, and repeat for 90 minutes, the rate of repetition only increasing as the tenseness of the game ratchets up.

"I just stroke those things constantly. I've been doing that since she was in high school. That's just my way of coping," Tim says.

It was in high school when she was connected with Montana by that AD from another school, whose coach was Shannon Forslund, who learned the Grizzlies were looking for a goalkeeper and, boy, did he have someone in mind. (Can we find out who that was and send him something as a token of our collective appreciation?)

Her eyes were looking toward the Rockies, toward Salt Lake City and the Utah soccer program, but her heart wasn't exactly leading her there. But it was a Division I offer, maybe a bit of money to help with expenses, even if she would be one of two goalkeepers in her class, one of four or five in the program.

Then she went to Seattle, where a Montana coach saw her. That changed everything.

"You know what qualities and characteristics you want every position to have, and that's what you go looking for," the coach says. "I wanted a goalkeeper who, No. 1, had a presence about her and a leadership quality about her that was unique.

"You have to have confidence and the desire to be in those pressure situations all the time. You can't take a moment off. If you do and you make a mistake, your mistake is bigger than anyone else's on the field. You're going to get scored on. The key is to make them earn it. You can't let anything bother you, so there is a mindset that goes along with it."

His first time seeing Howard was watching her warm up. He could sense it even then. "Right then I knew she was different, the intensity she had, the focus she had. Everything she did had an intent to it."

Then he watched her play. Again, 10 minutes and he thought, this is my goalkeeper. This is who I want. "A lot of it had to do with the way she carried herself. But she was also so explosive, so athletic. Great with her hands, aggressive, courageous, good with her feet."

He looked around. He was the only one watching. "I thought, she should be at a Power 5 school. I think she wasn't because instead of being 5-9, 5-10, 5-11, she's 5-7. If she's an inch or two taller, we don't have a chance at her. But she's so explosive, acrobatic and quick, she might as well be 5-10, 5-11."

He knew about Utah. All he asked for was one thing. Before committing, at least pay Montana a visit. She would be a four-year starter. He could offer her more money than the Utes. Please, just come and visit, he said, knowing Missoula would do the rest.

Her team won in Seattle, advanced to Virginia and the ECLN national quarterfinals. On the way home, father and daughter stopped in Missoula for an unofficial visit. They arrived on a Friday afternoon and headed right to practice. The next morning they returned to South Campus Stadium for another training session.

Daughter was focused on the field. Dad couldn't take his eyes off the sunrise coming over Mount Sentinel. "I sat up in the stands and called her mom and said, dude, this is freaking it," he recalls. She says, "They always say that you have an ah-ha moment on a recruiting trip, when you know it's home, and I truly felt that when I got here. I was like, absolutely I'm coming here, no question."

On the field that day, practicing for the Grizzlies, would have been Kailey Norman, then going into her junior year. She had been a key part of Montana's team that went 8-0-2 in league in 2014 and would hand Iowa a 1-0 loss in the fall of 2015, Purdue an overtime loss on the Boilermakers' home field in 2016, the season she was voted the Big Sky Conference Goalkeeper of the Year.

"The summer leading up to when (Claire) came in, (a former Montana coach) would constantly talk about her," says Norman. "'Just wait Kailey, Claire is really good. Wait until you see what I'm bringing in.'"

She assumed she was being razzed. As if one of the top goalkeepers in program history had anything to worry about going into her senior season, especially from a freshman. She herself would finish with 24 career shutouts, a total that would have approached 30 or exceeded it had her eligibility clock not started sooner than anyone was expecting 12 matches into the 2013 season.

Then Howard arrived. And the team had its first practice. "From the beginning, she was so good. Her skill level was there, her ability to communicate on the field was there. Every single thing was at the level you needed to be at to play, to start as a collegiate goalkeeper. (The coach) was like, 'I told you so.'"

Was it competitive? Yes. Was it an issue? No. Each just embraced her role, Norman as the starter and mentor, Howard soaking it all up. She values the extra year even more now, in her fifth season.

"I would like to think I was ready, but, no, and I say that because I look at myself now playing compared to my freshman year and I'm so much better," Howard says. "Goalkeeping is hard. It's tough, because you only learn through experience. And at 18, you're just not as good as you are at 22, naturally."

The final three years of Norman and the first three of Howard led to a stat line unmatched in Big Sky history: 9, 6, 8, 7, 10, 9. Those are the number of shutouts for Montana each season, plus six more this year in 10 matches. In seven seasons of Norman and Howard: 134 matches played, 131 goals allowed. It wasn't a passing of the torch. It was a passing of Thor's hammer.

"We were extremely close," says Norman. "We used to call her my mini-me. She was as crazy as me as a goalie, and that's saying something. I'm still protective of her. Overall she has absolutely raised the caliber of Grizzly Soccer. What the team has accomplished this year is, honestly, unbelievable. I'm such a proud alumna. That has a ton to do with Claire."

Before she could raise a program to new heights, she had to go through her own experiences that can only come with being in goal. And learn to live with them.

She began her career with a shutout. Montana 1, Boise State 0 in the 2017 season opener on the road. Then the first major challenge arrived. Playing at Utah State two days later, the Aggies opened the scoring in the 64th minute with a goal. Less than four minutes later they scored again. Final: 2-0.

"It stung, but it's something you know is going to happen. It was just a matter of time," she says. "Sometimes it's just good to get that (first goal) out of the way to get that pressure off your back. Then two stung even more, because I never want to give up multiple goals to a team. That trip kind of showed what college soccer is. It's going to be a grind every game and nothing's guaranteed."

Montana would finish second in the Big Sky that fall, and late in the season she would be faced with a major distraction. Fires were raging near her hometown of Santa Rosa. Friends she had grown up with were not just being forced to evacuate but losing their homes. The Howards never had to evacuate, but they had the car packed, their bags at the front door, ready to bolt as soon as required.

The fires made it to within a mile and a half of the family home.

"It does weigh on you for sure, especially being so far from home," Howard says. "My family is so, so close and I didn't know if I was going to be able to go home to a house over Thanksgiving break." Tim adds, "Her mom said, look dude, all you're going to be is another person here that we have to worry about. You're safe up there. Stay there, keep doing what you're doing."

In Cheney, Wash., the first week of November, Northern Colorado tied its Big Sky tournament semifinal match with Montana 1-1 in the 72nd minute, then won it in the second overtime on a one-timer off a cross, the kind of play even the top goalkeepers are powerless to stop if it's executed correctly. There is just no time to react. Montana's season was over.

The next hurdle for Howard: adapting to a new coach, when Chris Citowicki arrived prior to the 2018 season. He knew what he was getting. After all, he was on the visiting bench when North Dakota lost to Montana and Howard in Missoula in October 2017.

The regular season was a grind, with fewer goals scored than matches played, which put tremendous pressure on Howard to keep the opponent off the scoreboard. Getting a late-season sweep on the road at Portland State and Sacramento State got the Grizzlies into the tournament, where they shocked everyone as the No. 5 seed, winning three matches in five days, all by shutout.

The capper: Montana would enact revenge on Northern Colorado in the title match, winning 1-0. Howard would finish with 10 shutouts on the season and make her first trip to the NCAA tournament.

In 2019, more grinding, with the offense scoring just three goals through the season's first nine matches. But then league arrived, and the Grizzlies would go 6-0-3, allowing just two goals in nine matches. They won their first Big Sky regular-season title since 2014.

Montana took the top seed to the tournament in Greeley, Colo., and once again fell to Northern Colorado, 2-1 in overtime. Because you just can't spell heartbreakers without Bears. The Grizzlies were learning that lesson well.

Her position coach in 2019 had been on the Northern Colorado bench in 2017, when the Bears defeated Montana in Cheney. Now J. Landham was in Missoula.

"In the two years from when I coached against her to when I started coaching her as a junior, it was clear her leadership and life experiences and love for the game had matured her to being an actual captain that understands the game and organizes her players, recognizes when to speak into them and when not to speak into them," he says.

"It's a skill that a lot of goalkeepers don't have, but Claire has it. She knows what to say, when to say it and how to say it for each player while also protecting the important space with her position and with her shot-stopping ability. The goalkeeper position is incredibly detailed and fun because of that."

Despite Montana winning the regular-season title, despite Howard allowing two goals in nine league games, she took her two honorable-mention All-Big Sky Conference awards won as a freshman and sophomore and added a second-team honor. It's like she was being penalized for being so good.

"In my opinion, she is not as decorated in awards and honors as she should be," says Norman. "You go unnoticed as a goalkeeper when you're not having to make those critical saves game after game. She doesn't need to make as many saves as other goalies in the conference because of how good her communication is with her back line."

In Landham's view, Howard is making hundreds of saves every match, just never getting credit for them. It goes back to the communication, of moving the players on the back line around the field like chess pieces, proactively controlling the action, goalkeeping at an advanced level.

"If an opponent is coming at us and you reposition an outside back in a certain spot, and your outside back wins the ball, I encourage our goalkeepers to put a checkmark on save. It's not going to be on the stat sheet, but that organization and that 90-minute focus results in hundreds of saves per game," said Landham.

"It's pretty clear which teams don't do that well. Their stat sheet says 15, 20 shots against per game. That's one of the reasons the Big Sky has not recognized Claire as much as they should. They just see a strong defense, but that's a strong defense organized by a captain who is a coach on the field."

This spring has been Howard's magnum opus. The player who was college-ready from her first day on campus, who was already great, has never been better. Every element of her game has reached new heights.

Even an opposing coach who has faced Montana during Howard's career admits you have to do everything perfectly. And even then you might need some luck.

"The biggest thing is you have to be able to execute when you have your opportunities. You can't waste shots from distance because she is too good for those. When you have set pieces, you have to drive balls in because she is so good with balls in the air," the coach said.

"Then when you get the ball in (the box), you have to find the corners because she is not going to give you anything else. She commands her box really well and is very confident. She may not make a ton of saves, but in that crucial moment, she'll get a ball that another kid won't get.

"That's the most valuable player they have and the player who gives them the best chance against a South Carolina. If your goalkeeper is top-shelf, it gives you a chance."

If Howard was always confident, it came with some rough edges of her own making early in her career. She just couldn't let goals she allowed go, whether it was a win, loss or draw. It's the problem with being a perfectionist when you play a position in a sport where you are judged on only a few metrics by the average fan: saves and goals allowed.

She would get caught up in the same thing, even if she had done perfectly 99.9 percent of those things unseen to most.

"Heavy is the head that wears the crown," she says, of how she used to be overly critical of herself and then allow it to weigh her down. "I used to absorb all that so much and put it on me, that I lost the game, that it was my fault.

"I think I have more grace with myself now. I just want to be hard to beat. Goals are going to happen. That doesn't mean that my performance was bad. It was just sometimes the other forward did better. Managing that emotion has been a learning curve for me."

Missing Caitlin Rogers this spring, who has been out with an injury, may have messed with a younger Howard. And one might only imagine what starting a true freshman in her place may have done. Not the fifth-year-senior version. She's not just rolled with it, she's allowed Molly Quarry to play like a superstar, like the program's next great center back.

Keep this in mind as you continue reading: Quarry arrived in Missoula having most recently represented Canada at the 2020 CONCACAF Women's U-20 Championship in the Dominican Republic. So she's played with some pretty good goalkeepers.

"She's a legend here and I've never really experienced that, someone who is such a leader. It's really helped me coming in as a freshman and filling a role as important as center back," Quarry says. "The way to increase the confidence of those around you is to play with that confidence, and that's how she does it.

"I know she's always right behind me, and that's reassuring at center back. You're the last person, and that can be kind of intimidating. If you mess up, they are shooting on goal. You don't get that feeling with Claire, because she is such a presence. She's not just one person, she's like a whole other line of people. They usually call center backs a brick wall. Honestly, this team has two brick walls."

What that does for her teammates, all the way to the forwards, is liberate them to take chances, to play without fear. As she's been telling her teammates for years and years, don't worry, I'm here, I've got your back. You can count on me. I'll get it done. Trust me. Now go do your thing.

"Those girls know if they make a mistake, Claire will make up for it," says one coach who has watched Montana's matches this season. "When you have that kind of belief and confidence in your goalkeeper, it lifts your team to another level. You're basically up 1-0 just stepping out onto the field. The impact she makes is immeasurable."

Montana played just one nonconference match this season, a 3-0 home win over MSU Billings. Shutouts followed in five of the next six matches as the Grizzlies got into Big Sky play. Along the way, a midseason pressure-release. When Montana defeated Portland State on March 28, Howard became the Big Sky leader in career shutouts.

"She was relieved for the team, because she didn't want to put that pressure on everyone. The girls were getting a little too anxious," says her dad, who was in town and at Missoula County Stadium two weeks later, when Montana took its perfect record into a two-game home series against Eastern Washington.

The Eagles scored twice on Howard in the first half of the opener, more goals than she had allowed through the season's first seven matches. They added the game-winner in overtime. Afterwards the Howards went out for dinner. It was there they discovered who they had with them: a goalkeeper-in-full.

"When she was a freshman, she would have been stewing on it," says her dad, "but she's learned to process. She does what needs to be done, but she realizes it's not the end of the world. It's a different Claire, older, smarter, wiser."

Montana allowed a goal two days later to Eastern Washington but won 3-1. Last week, for the fourth consecutive postseason, Montana faced Northern Colorado, this time in the Big Sky tournament semifinals.

With less than 15 minutes left in regulation, Northern Colorado took a shot at a wall of Montana defenders. Howard played the true line but gave up the tying goal when the ball hit a Griz defender and got redirected into the goal. She didn't think about it once while she was celebrating Taylor Stoeger's overtime game-winner, the shot that would send Montana back to the NCAA tournament.

Claire Howard is just having too much fun to get too stressed about the minor details.

"When you know something's your last, there's a certain freedom. I don't need to stress about these little things, because ultimately they don't matter," she says. "That sense of freedom has been huge for me. I just want to have fun and have that joy because you don't get these times back. We're having a great season. That's what matters."

She could have decided to play next fall, add another 10 shutouts to a Big Sky record that would become untouchable, maybe win another Big Sky championship or two. But it's time. Time for her to move on, time to let someone else take over.

"Only one goalkeeper gets to play for 90 minutes, and I was blessed to do that for four years. I'm ready to pass that torch," she says. "My biggest thing was coming into this program and leaving it in a better place than I found it, and I feel I've done that, so I'm at peace, especially with the way the season's gone. I'm comfortable walking away, as hard as that will be."

Could she play professionally somewhere in the world? No doubt. Does she want to? She's undecided. When she returns from North Carolina, whenever that is, she'll be ready to decompress. She just wants to spend a summer as a 22-year-old. She's earned it.

"I look back and I'm grateful because 50 percent of my playing career has ended at the NCAA tournament, which a lot of schools in the Pac-12 don't get to say," she says.

"I wanted to go somewhere to compete, and I have two Big Sky championships, two regular-season championships and two trips to the (NCAA) tournament. I wanted to win championships and do all the things that I did, so it ended up just being perfect."

And sometimes when you chase perfection, you catch it.

University of Montana Athletics

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Claire Howard

Kailey Norman

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Caitlin Rogers

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