The Craig Hall Chronicles :: Riley O’Brien
8/11/2021 5:52:00 PM | Soccer
The story of Riley O'Brien can best be summed up in three sub-stories, ones that tell why she plays soccer, why she's at Montana and why she is the lone member of the freshman class who isn't fully practicing with the team as the season gets deep into Week 2.
When O'Brien was four, her parents, Michael and Christine, knew something needed to be done. They had a precocious one on their hands. The sport didn't seem to matter.
Her older brother, Tanner, would be out playing his game of choice, baseball, and there was his younger sister, showing off skills that were never taught. They just came naturally. She did them instinctually.
"We were like, what are we going to do with this child? We have to get her into something. She could throw a baseball. She was fielding throws from her brother at four," says Christine. "It was just crazy. We thought, okay, let's try soccer."
That they lived in Huntington Beach, in Southern California, made that doable, thanks to the American Youth Soccer Organization, which accepts players as young as four, even those who are four going on nine.
"She got out there and did the little dribbling things they have you do. When she got all done, we said, well, what did you think? She goes, that was fun. I'll never forget that. That was fun. From there on out, that girl was just a force to be reckoned with."
Twelve years later, in 2019, she was in Boise, Idaho, for the US Youth Soccer Far West Regionals. The girl who grew up six minutes from the beach discovered there is more to life in the U.S. than sun and sand and ocean. Turns out she had a little open-space mountain girl in her as well.
A friend of hers in Southern California had grandparents who lived in Idaho, and she would occasionally send O'Brien photos. But they were nothing compared to the real thing, in full, living color.
"It's different from the beach, and I really liked it. I think that's my favorite trip that I've ever been on. My teammates were like, when can we leave this place? I was like, I love all this stuff. I think that's why I liked Montana so much, because I was so into Boise and it's pretty similar," said O'Brien.
On Monday, in Delaney Lou Schorr's edition of the Chronicles, we learned that Griz coach Chris Citowicki was on the fence about attending the June event in Boise, since later in the month he would be attending the ECNL National Playoffs in SoCal.
But he chose to go, and he discovered Schorr. As if that wasn't enough, he saw another forward on another field who caught his eye.
He didn't know it at the time, but O'Brien was playing center forward for the first time in her life and playing the position like she'd picked it up at the age of four.
"I'd never heard of her. Knew nothing about her," says Citowicki. Then he saw her in action. And knew he had scored again. "Yeah, we'll take her. She's a poacher. She just puts the ball in the back of the net, like Sami (Siems). She's scrappy. It was fun to see how dangerous she was.
"It was quite a trip, going down to Boise and seeing D-Lou and all of a sudden Riley's there as well. It completely caught me off-guard to find two forwards out of that trip that we'd be interested in taking on here."
It wasn't a huge stretch of a position change for O'Brien, who was more used to playing the false 9, which had her going from in front of goal all the way to deep into the midfield, a position where she could marry her skills of scoring with her ability to handle the ball in space and distribute like her name was O'Beckham.
"I like to get up and score, but I also like to keep the ball at my feet," she says. "But our center forward hurt her ankle. That was my first time playing that position." She did what she does best: trusted herself to get it done.
"I think I was the leading scorer at Far West Regionals. It was more instinct than anything, like I'm not even thinking about it. I just feel like I know where I am and what I'm going to do with the ball when I get it.
"I think I'm a better center midfielder than I am a forward, but that'll be my secret weapon when I'm cleared to play."
Ah, the final sub-story, the one that reveals why she won't be on the field on Sunday or Monday, when Montana hosts Rocky Mountain and Carroll in exhibition matches. The other 28 Grizzlies likely will play in at least one of the matches.
"I can see them play and I can envision myself on the field right now, but it's like my mind is there but my body isn't," she says. "It seems like I just keep doing the same thing every day, but then I realize I just need to trust the process. This happens to a lot of people."
This in this case is a torn ACL. And not just that but a pair of meniscus tears as well. It was a moment of pure destruction that evening at Orange County Great Park in Irvine, despite it being a non-contact practice for Slammers FC.
Just before Christmas in 2019, during her high school season, O'Brien came down with two stress fractures in her right foot and ended up in a boot until February.
That missed time plus the onset of lockdowns in March 2020 from the coronavirus outbreak had her taking a break from club but not from training. With time and energy on her hands, she went to work on her fitness like she never had before.
"I would literally wake up and run three miles every day. Then the next day I would do sprints," she says. "I was probably the strongest I've ever been."
Finally cleared to resume practicing, Slammers convened in Irvine in August 2020, on an artificial-turf field.
"It was a shooting drill, like crossing and finishing, and my cleat got stuck in the turf. No one was around me," she says, "but my cleat got stuck and my whole body went forward but my foot was caught."
Christine says, "She called us immediately after practice and said, can you make me a doctor's appointment? She said, something doesn't feel right. I heard a pop."
They made an appointment and got an MRI, but it would be a few days before it could be read. "She was just freaking out. It was awful. I can't even sugarcoat it," says Christine.
Whether they said it out loud or not, everyone knew it was an ACL before the MRI confirmed it. The next step was finding out if the meniscuses were intact or had suffered damage as well. That wouldn't be known until surgery, when the surgeon got a chance to go in and see it up close.
The recovery time would be similar, but the protocol would change depending on what they found. If it was just the ACL, that was best-case scenario. They would want her moving it and bending it immediately, within days of surgery.
If it was more extensive, Riley O'Brien would have to do the one thing Riley O'Brien just isn't wired to do. "If it's meniscus as well, you're going to have to chill for about six weeks," the doctor said.
"That threw her into a tizzy. She just wanted to recover right away," says her mom, who was at her daughter's bedside that day on Sept. 4 when she started to wake up after the surgery. Even in a fog, she just needed to know what they found.
"She doesn't remember any of this, but all she could say while slurring her words was, how's my meniscus? She must have asked me 15 times. That's all she cared about."
She had to chill, a punishment made only slightly better by the fact that there was very little soccer being played in Southern California that fall.
"COVID meant everybody else wasn't playing soccer. She would have been tortured even more knowing her team was out playing and she couldn't," says Christine. "She's just that kind of player. The love of soccer for her is next level."
She scripted it out. She'd hit this mile marker, then the next one, then the next one, on schedule, like clockwork, and be back playing at 100 percent the following July -- last month -- when she was set to report to Montana for her freshman season.
Instead, she would take two steps forward, one back, two forward, one back, all the while falling behind on the perfect course she had laid out.
She had edema of her tibia and had to go on crutches for three weeks. Then her kneecap seized up. Another surgery to remove scar tissue.
"I can't explain the heart that this girl has for the sport," says Christine. "That was her biggest fear. I'm not going to be ready, I'm not going to be ready, I'm not going to be ready. She said, I want to be at my best so I can be out there contributing, because I feel like I have a lot to contribute to this team.
"Even Chris said, we'll make you right. You'll be fitter and stronger. Don't worry, we've got your back."
She wasn't ready to go in July. Still isn't. "You never know how much you love soccer until it's completely taken away from you, like you physically can't do it," O'Brien says.
She'd had some injuries here and there but nothing major, which means she had been playing soccer straight through from the age of four. To lose that part of her life, not only the game itself but the teamwork and the fun and the highs and lows, was as painful as the injury rehab.
The only other sport she tried along the way was gymnastics, because the soccer moms needed to find another outlet for their girls and their pent-up energy during the offseason.
She kept at it until she no longer could. The sore ankles she was getting from the backflips and round-offs were impacting her soccer. Plus, for as much as gymnastics is a team sport, it wasn't soccer, where everyone has to contribute for a goal to be scored. "I wouldn't have survived in gymnastics," she says.
Soccer would be her sport of choice for years, the thing she did. Then along came Sean Melendez, a former Sacramento State soccer player turned coach, who upped her passion meter for the sport from simmer to boiling around the seventh grade. The best coaches tend to do that.
"He put me on the direction of the soccer player I became. He set the tone. He really turned it up a notch and pushed me," she says.
At the very first practice, Melendez told O'Brien, after he'd watched her play, that she could be the best player in the county if she put in the work. That's Orange County, population 3.1 million. "From there on out I was like, okay, I'm putting in the work."
It's a big dream, to be the best in Southern Cal, especially in a girls' sport like soccer, which everyone seems to play. "Every team we played was solid or seemed to have a player on the national team. There were girls going to UCLA, USC, Santa Clara. It can be a little intimidating at first.
"I was lucky to grow up in Southern California because it's so competitive. Going against those girls makes you better no matter what the result is."
The trap was now set, and she'd prepared it herself. Now, to walk her right into it with just the right question. When she saw that Skyleigh Thompson of Kalispell, Mont., was in the same signing class last November, she just had to giggle, right?
Orange County vs. Flathead County? It's no comparison. O'Brien knew it, didn't she, that she would be the superior player from Day One because of her history, the superiority of her homeland?
"I've never thought that," she says, emphatically. "I've never thought that I'm going to Montana and I'm from Southern California, so I'm going to be so good.
"I never underestimate anyone, because I've seen Skye and she's good. It's all about your mindset. If you've got enough heart, and if your heart matches your skill, then you're solid."
It's why she had no issue with moving up to center forward when Slammers FC played in Boise in June 2019. It's what competitors do. And it's why Citowicki couldn't wait to reach out after seeing her play multiple games. And why she was taken in instantly.
He was Melendez all over again. Or Melendez was Citowicki before she had gotten a chance to meet the Montana coach. Or something like that.
"That's why when I first talked to him on the phone, I was like, this is where I need to be, because they have the same mindset about team culture and being like a family," she says.
"For both of them, soccer is more than just about winning. It's about who you're with and how you do things, all that stuff."
Christine says, "She holds (Melendez) on a pedestal. We left our first meeting with Chris and we kept saying, 'Sean ... I mean Chris!' He is a very integral part of why she chose Montana, because his style of coaching is just like Sean's."
Michael, a firefighter with the Orange County Fire Authority since his early 20s, and Christine, an office administrator at a law firm, were in Mexico for their anniversary at the time of the Far West Regionals.
They kept getting updates, about the matches but also Boise. "She kept texting us, I could live here! This place is amazing!" Then she traveled to Montana that fall for her official visit. It was no Boise. It was even better.
The three of them, daughter and parents, all experienced it for the first time together. "We all had the same thought," says Riley. "We fell in love," finishes Christine.
She was going to attend Montana's ID camp in the summer of 2020, after her junior year, but the camp was canceled, so the family turned it into a vacation and traveled up anyway.
They drove to Holland Lake to spend one day hiking. On the way back to Missoula, Michael said, "Hey, I was mapping the area and there is a golf course over there. Do you want to drive through?"
That was Canyon River. "We went there and went, wow, it's breathtaking." They may continue to live in Southern California, at least for now, but a piece of them is in Montana. They loved it so much they bought a lot at Canyon River.
O'Brien says she's at 75 percent these days, as she trains and continues her rehab on the margins of the field at South Campus Stadium. The team's athletic trainer, Sam Graff, has to keep one eye on the action on the field, one on O'Brien.
"She's worried I'm going to do something. Obviously I'm dying to get out there," says O'Brien. "It feels good to touch a ball again. I just miss the grind, like being sore after practice."
She has something in mind, something special you won't want to miss, whenever it is that she makes her debut. She's tried three bicycles kicks in her career. The closest she's come to scoring on one was when the goalkeeper pushed the shot wide of goal. The first one that connects is coming.
"It's like improv, where you don't know what you're going to do. When the ball is floating, it's the perfect opportunity. It's just instinct," she says.
This month is the one-year anniversary of her injury. Next month will be one year out from surgery. Things are coming along, just not at the speed of her liking.
The daily practices are hard, seeing the team head out to the field while she walks by herself to her own designated area, all of them following a protocol for improvement.
In that moment, when she's been separated from the team and is taking baby steps to becoming the player she once was, it can be difficult to see the big picture, that she is getting stronger by the day. Her fitness will come back as the season progresses.
When the spring seasons opens, she'll be ready to explode.
"I have doubts and get in my head sometimes because it has been so long. I'm just going to put my head down, get as strong as possible, as healthy as possible, then by spring be able to be extremely good," she says.
A year from now it will be a different story. She'll have had a year in the program, including a spring at full health. She'll be a (redshirt) freshman in eligibility and off the charts in anticipation, her and us, as we wait to see what she can do.
Then we'll get to see what her mom has witnessed all these years, and we'll share her thoughts about Riley O'Brien. "Go for it girl. Fly."
When O'Brien was four, her parents, Michael and Christine, knew something needed to be done. They had a precocious one on their hands. The sport didn't seem to matter.
Her older brother, Tanner, would be out playing his game of choice, baseball, and there was his younger sister, showing off skills that were never taught. They just came naturally. She did them instinctually.
"We were like, what are we going to do with this child? We have to get her into something. She could throw a baseball. She was fielding throws from her brother at four," says Christine. "It was just crazy. We thought, okay, let's try soccer."
That they lived in Huntington Beach, in Southern California, made that doable, thanks to the American Youth Soccer Organization, which accepts players as young as four, even those who are four going on nine.
"She got out there and did the little dribbling things they have you do. When she got all done, we said, well, what did you think? She goes, that was fun. I'll never forget that. That was fun. From there on out, that girl was just a force to be reckoned with."
Twelve years later, in 2019, she was in Boise, Idaho, for the US Youth Soccer Far West Regionals. The girl who grew up six minutes from the beach discovered there is more to life in the U.S. than sun and sand and ocean. Turns out she had a little open-space mountain girl in her as well.
A friend of hers in Southern California had grandparents who lived in Idaho, and she would occasionally send O'Brien photos. But they were nothing compared to the real thing, in full, living color.
"It's different from the beach, and I really liked it. I think that's my favorite trip that I've ever been on. My teammates were like, when can we leave this place? I was like, I love all this stuff. I think that's why I liked Montana so much, because I was so into Boise and it's pretty similar," said O'Brien.
On Monday, in Delaney Lou Schorr's edition of the Chronicles, we learned that Griz coach Chris Citowicki was on the fence about attending the June event in Boise, since later in the month he would be attending the ECNL National Playoffs in SoCal.
But he chose to go, and he discovered Schorr. As if that wasn't enough, he saw another forward on another field who caught his eye.
He didn't know it at the time, but O'Brien was playing center forward for the first time in her life and playing the position like she'd picked it up at the age of four.
"I'd never heard of her. Knew nothing about her," says Citowicki. Then he saw her in action. And knew he had scored again. "Yeah, we'll take her. She's a poacher. She just puts the ball in the back of the net, like Sami (Siems). She's scrappy. It was fun to see how dangerous she was.
"It was quite a trip, going down to Boise and seeing D-Lou and all of a sudden Riley's there as well. It completely caught me off-guard to find two forwards out of that trip that we'd be interested in taking on here."
It wasn't a huge stretch of a position change for O'Brien, who was more used to playing the false 9, which had her going from in front of goal all the way to deep into the midfield, a position where she could marry her skills of scoring with her ability to handle the ball in space and distribute like her name was O'Beckham.
"I like to get up and score, but I also like to keep the ball at my feet," she says. "But our center forward hurt her ankle. That was my first time playing that position." She did what she does best: trusted herself to get it done.
"I think I was the leading scorer at Far West Regionals. It was more instinct than anything, like I'm not even thinking about it. I just feel like I know where I am and what I'm going to do with the ball when I get it.
"I think I'm a better center midfielder than I am a forward, but that'll be my secret weapon when I'm cleared to play."
Ah, the final sub-story, the one that reveals why she won't be on the field on Sunday or Monday, when Montana hosts Rocky Mountain and Carroll in exhibition matches. The other 28 Grizzlies likely will play in at least one of the matches.
"I can see them play and I can envision myself on the field right now, but it's like my mind is there but my body isn't," she says. "It seems like I just keep doing the same thing every day, but then I realize I just need to trust the process. This happens to a lot of people."
This in this case is a torn ACL. And not just that but a pair of meniscus tears as well. It was a moment of pure destruction that evening at Orange County Great Park in Irvine, despite it being a non-contact practice for Slammers FC.
Just before Christmas in 2019, during her high school season, O'Brien came down with two stress fractures in her right foot and ended up in a boot until February.
That missed time plus the onset of lockdowns in March 2020 from the coronavirus outbreak had her taking a break from club but not from training. With time and energy on her hands, she went to work on her fitness like she never had before.
"I would literally wake up and run three miles every day. Then the next day I would do sprints," she says. "I was probably the strongest I've ever been."
Finally cleared to resume practicing, Slammers convened in Irvine in August 2020, on an artificial-turf field.
"It was a shooting drill, like crossing and finishing, and my cleat got stuck in the turf. No one was around me," she says, "but my cleat got stuck and my whole body went forward but my foot was caught."
Christine says, "She called us immediately after practice and said, can you make me a doctor's appointment? She said, something doesn't feel right. I heard a pop."
They made an appointment and got an MRI, but it would be a few days before it could be read. "She was just freaking out. It was awful. I can't even sugarcoat it," says Christine.
Whether they said it out loud or not, everyone knew it was an ACL before the MRI confirmed it. The next step was finding out if the meniscuses were intact or had suffered damage as well. That wouldn't be known until surgery, when the surgeon got a chance to go in and see it up close.
The recovery time would be similar, but the protocol would change depending on what they found. If it was just the ACL, that was best-case scenario. They would want her moving it and bending it immediately, within days of surgery.
If it was more extensive, Riley O'Brien would have to do the one thing Riley O'Brien just isn't wired to do. "If it's meniscus as well, you're going to have to chill for about six weeks," the doctor said.
"That threw her into a tizzy. She just wanted to recover right away," says her mom, who was at her daughter's bedside that day on Sept. 4 when she started to wake up after the surgery. Even in a fog, she just needed to know what they found.
"She doesn't remember any of this, but all she could say while slurring her words was, how's my meniscus? She must have asked me 15 times. That's all she cared about."
She had to chill, a punishment made only slightly better by the fact that there was very little soccer being played in Southern California that fall.
"COVID meant everybody else wasn't playing soccer. She would have been tortured even more knowing her team was out playing and she couldn't," says Christine. "She's just that kind of player. The love of soccer for her is next level."
She scripted it out. She'd hit this mile marker, then the next one, then the next one, on schedule, like clockwork, and be back playing at 100 percent the following July -- last month -- when she was set to report to Montana for her freshman season.
Instead, she would take two steps forward, one back, two forward, one back, all the while falling behind on the perfect course she had laid out.
She had edema of her tibia and had to go on crutches for three weeks. Then her kneecap seized up. Another surgery to remove scar tissue.
"I can't explain the heart that this girl has for the sport," says Christine. "That was her biggest fear. I'm not going to be ready, I'm not going to be ready, I'm not going to be ready. She said, I want to be at my best so I can be out there contributing, because I feel like I have a lot to contribute to this team.
"Even Chris said, we'll make you right. You'll be fitter and stronger. Don't worry, we've got your back."
She wasn't ready to go in July. Still isn't. "You never know how much you love soccer until it's completely taken away from you, like you physically can't do it," O'Brien says.
She'd had some injuries here and there but nothing major, which means she had been playing soccer straight through from the age of four. To lose that part of her life, not only the game itself but the teamwork and the fun and the highs and lows, was as painful as the injury rehab.
The only other sport she tried along the way was gymnastics, because the soccer moms needed to find another outlet for their girls and their pent-up energy during the offseason.
She kept at it until she no longer could. The sore ankles she was getting from the backflips and round-offs were impacting her soccer. Plus, for as much as gymnastics is a team sport, it wasn't soccer, where everyone has to contribute for a goal to be scored. "I wouldn't have survived in gymnastics," she says.
Soccer would be her sport of choice for years, the thing she did. Then along came Sean Melendez, a former Sacramento State soccer player turned coach, who upped her passion meter for the sport from simmer to boiling around the seventh grade. The best coaches tend to do that.
"He put me on the direction of the soccer player I became. He set the tone. He really turned it up a notch and pushed me," she says.
At the very first practice, Melendez told O'Brien, after he'd watched her play, that she could be the best player in the county if she put in the work. That's Orange County, population 3.1 million. "From there on out I was like, okay, I'm putting in the work."
It's a big dream, to be the best in Southern Cal, especially in a girls' sport like soccer, which everyone seems to play. "Every team we played was solid or seemed to have a player on the national team. There were girls going to UCLA, USC, Santa Clara. It can be a little intimidating at first.
"I was lucky to grow up in Southern California because it's so competitive. Going against those girls makes you better no matter what the result is."
The trap was now set, and she'd prepared it herself. Now, to walk her right into it with just the right question. When she saw that Skyleigh Thompson of Kalispell, Mont., was in the same signing class last November, she just had to giggle, right?
Orange County vs. Flathead County? It's no comparison. O'Brien knew it, didn't she, that she would be the superior player from Day One because of her history, the superiority of her homeland?
"I've never thought that," she says, emphatically. "I've never thought that I'm going to Montana and I'm from Southern California, so I'm going to be so good.
"I never underestimate anyone, because I've seen Skye and she's good. It's all about your mindset. If you've got enough heart, and if your heart matches your skill, then you're solid."
It's why she had no issue with moving up to center forward when Slammers FC played in Boise in June 2019. It's what competitors do. And it's why Citowicki couldn't wait to reach out after seeing her play multiple games. And why she was taken in instantly.
He was Melendez all over again. Or Melendez was Citowicki before she had gotten a chance to meet the Montana coach. Or something like that.
"That's why when I first talked to him on the phone, I was like, this is where I need to be, because they have the same mindset about team culture and being like a family," she says.
"For both of them, soccer is more than just about winning. It's about who you're with and how you do things, all that stuff."
Christine says, "She holds (Melendez) on a pedestal. We left our first meeting with Chris and we kept saying, 'Sean ... I mean Chris!' He is a very integral part of why she chose Montana, because his style of coaching is just like Sean's."
Michael, a firefighter with the Orange County Fire Authority since his early 20s, and Christine, an office administrator at a law firm, were in Mexico for their anniversary at the time of the Far West Regionals.
They kept getting updates, about the matches but also Boise. "She kept texting us, I could live here! This place is amazing!" Then she traveled to Montana that fall for her official visit. It was no Boise. It was even better.
The three of them, daughter and parents, all experienced it for the first time together. "We all had the same thought," says Riley. "We fell in love," finishes Christine.
She was going to attend Montana's ID camp in the summer of 2020, after her junior year, but the camp was canceled, so the family turned it into a vacation and traveled up anyway.
They drove to Holland Lake to spend one day hiking. On the way back to Missoula, Michael said, "Hey, I was mapping the area and there is a golf course over there. Do you want to drive through?"
That was Canyon River. "We went there and went, wow, it's breathtaking." They may continue to live in Southern California, at least for now, but a piece of them is in Montana. They loved it so much they bought a lot at Canyon River.
O'Brien says she's at 75 percent these days, as she trains and continues her rehab on the margins of the field at South Campus Stadium. The team's athletic trainer, Sam Graff, has to keep one eye on the action on the field, one on O'Brien.
"She's worried I'm going to do something. Obviously I'm dying to get out there," says O'Brien. "It feels good to touch a ball again. I just miss the grind, like being sore after practice."
She has something in mind, something special you won't want to miss, whenever it is that she makes her debut. She's tried three bicycles kicks in her career. The closest she's come to scoring on one was when the goalkeeper pushed the shot wide of goal. The first one that connects is coming.
"It's like improv, where you don't know what you're going to do. When the ball is floating, it's the perfect opportunity. It's just instinct," she says.
This month is the one-year anniversary of her injury. Next month will be one year out from surgery. Things are coming along, just not at the speed of her liking.
The daily practices are hard, seeing the team head out to the field while she walks by herself to her own designated area, all of them following a protocol for improvement.
In that moment, when she's been separated from the team and is taking baby steps to becoming the player she once was, it can be difficult to see the big picture, that she is getting stronger by the day. Her fitness will come back as the season progresses.
When the spring seasons opens, she'll be ready to explode.
"I have doubts and get in my head sometimes because it has been so long. I'm just going to put my head down, get as strong as possible, as healthy as possible, then by spring be able to be extremely good," she says.
A year from now it will be a different story. She'll have had a year in the program, including a spring at full health. She'll be a (redshirt) freshman in eligibility and off the charts in anticipation, her and us, as we wait to see what she can do.
Then we'll get to see what her mom has witnessed all these years, and we'll share her thoughts about Riley O'Brien. "Go for it girl. Fly."
Players Mentioned
Griz Softball vs. Seattle Highlights - 3/24/26
Monday, March 30
2026 Griz Softball Hype Video
Monday, March 30
2006 Griz Basketball Flashback: NCAA Tournament Win Over Nevada
Monday, March 30
Name The Person: Griz Basketball
Monday, March 30
