Griz add Missoula goalkeeper

It began -- call the moment this story's Butterfly Effect -- the day Brooke Johnston strode into Montana soccer coach Chris Citowicki's office and said she was set to graduate this spring and would be moving on.

The end result was Missoula's Sophia Pierce recently signing a National Letter of Intent to become a Grizzly. The goalkeeper, a senior at Hellgate High, will join Montana as a freshman in the fall.

Montana had four goalkeepers last season, the record-setting Claire Howard, Johnston, Elizabeth Todd and Camellia Xu. With Johnston's departure after graduating in three years, that left Citowicki looking ahead to next season with just two goalkeepers on his roster, which is one too few for his liking.

"We needed to find another one," said Citowicki, who reached out to his network of contacts made up of high school and club coaches. Little did he know he had what he was looking for right in Missoula.

He had actually been an assistant on Pierce's local club team when he first moved to Missoula in 2018. Thought she had college potential, something probably lower level. Good skills, size and athleticism if possessing a quiet personality.

So he was a little surprised the day Natalie Hiller-Claridge, the former Montana goalkeeper who is now the head coach at Hellgate, told Citowicki that Pierce would be perfect for the Grizzlies.

When you're the only goalkeeper in Big Sky Conference history to win an NCAA tournament game? And you've been working with someone since she was an eighth grader? That carries some weight.

So Citowicki looked at some more recent film of Pierce. What he saw wasn't the player he remembered.

"I thought, this kid is so much better than anybody thought she'd be," he said. "She wants to be a Griz and here she is.

"She's big and strong, almost six-foot. And to be mentored by one of the best we've ever had, by the only goalkeeper who's won an NCAA tournament game? Pretty cool."

To understand Pierce is to know this: She had opportunities to play at a lower level, where she would have been a star from practice No. 1. Instead she chose to commit to Montana, where she understands nothing will come easily, if game-time minutes come at all.

"I was really frank with her about the road ahead," said Hiller-Claridge. "She's going to have to work extremely hard if she's going to get a playing role.

"At a different level, she would have been a stud. At Montana she is going to be in the middle of the pack. She's going to have to work for whatever she gets."

That wasn't a turn-off for Pierce. Rather, it made the opportunity that much more appealing.

"I'll have to challenge myself and work harder to get better to earn playing time," she said. "If I went to a lower-level school, I would be guaranteed playing time and wouldn't have to work as hard for it, and I didn't feel like I would get better, which is my main goal."

Hiller-Claridge played during the golden age of Montana soccer, from 1997 to 2000. Four regular-season championships, two trips to the NCAA tournament.

The 5-foot-5 Big Sky High grad made eight saves in the game of her life, when the Grizzlies traveled to Pullman, Wash., when she was a senior and knocked off Washington State 1-0 in the first round.

It's still the only win for a Big Sky team in the NCAA tournament.

She was a volunteer assistant coach for Betsy Duerksen in 2001, a full-time assistant in Duerksen's final two seasons at Montana, in 2002 and '03.

In 2003 she took over as director of intramural sports at her alma mater. Her job and her family became her life.

It would be 14 years before she coached soccer again. That's when a coach in Missoula reached out and asked if she would be interested in training an eighth grader, Sophia Pierce.

She's been coaching her ever since, including last fall in Hiller-Claridge's first year at Hellgate, when the Knights advanced to the state semifinals.

"She is the kid who got me back into coaching," says Hiller-Claridge. "Her mom says they owe me everything. I think I owe her. She brought me back into the game."

She still remembers the first time she coached Pierce as an eighth grader.

"I remember going home and saying to my wife, 'This kid has the athletic ability.' What I wasn't sure about was if she had the personality for it," said Hiller-Claridge. "She was soft-spoken and quiet.

"Within a year she was eating it all up. Her confidence started to grow, which came with maturing as an athlete and also as an individual. It's been fun watching her mature over the years.

"By her sophomore year she started being more of a leader on the field. She hit the next level her senior year. She became a leader on the team. She is still a quiet leader, but on the field she is a dominant presence with her voice and her demeanor."

With Montana now a possibility, once the need arose following Johnston's decision, Pierce and Hiller-Claridge spent one spring afternoon taking in a Griz practice inside Washington-Grizzly Stadium.

"I liked how they had fun at practice but were still super focused and working hard to get better as a team," said Pierce. "It's exciting to be able to play for the team you grew up watching and admiring."

Hiller-Claridge can't put a ceiling on her protégé, not when she'll be surrounded by talented players and getting full-time training for the first time in her life.

"She is just going to get better and better exponentially because of the day-in and day-out training she'll get at the college level and because of her incredible work rate," she said.

"She's never had somebody on her team that she's competed against. I'm excited to see her thrive in that environment. She is a competitor. I couldn't be more thrilled and proud of her."

Pierce is Montana's ninth incoming freshman. Citowicki signed eight prep players to NLIs in November.

University of Montana Athletics

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Players Mentioned

Claire Howard

Brooke Johnston

Elizabeth Todd

Camellia Xu

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