The Craig Hall Chronicles :: Delaney Lou Schorr

Imagine the dots that had to connect just so, the number of decisions that had to be made -- go this way or that -- when forks in the road were encountered, for Delaney Lou Schorr to be sitting outside of Craig Hall late last week talking about how she got here.

What if, back in the summer of 2019, Montana soccer coach Chris Citowicki, who was going to ECNL Nationals the next week in Southern California, had taken the easy way out and skipped the US Youth Soccer Far West Regional Championships in Boise?

Or if Arsenal, Schorr's club team in Fort Collins, Colo., which isn't ECNL, hadn't been gifted a wild-card spot to regionals after falling to Grand Junction's Fire FC in the Colorado State Cup U17 championship match? Imagine.

But Citowicki went. "I was really hesitating on taking that trip. Do I go or do I not go? I thought, why not, let's see if there are any hidden gems out there." And he saw Schorr for the first time. "D-Lou, with her size, instantly stuck out with her physicality and her ability to finish in the box. She just had everything."

Or, going back further, what if Robert Schorr, her dad, hadn't settled on the University of Georgia to earn his master's in wildlife biology after graduating with a degree in biological sciences from UC Davis, just up the interstate from his hometown of San Francisco?

Or what if his future wife, Lesli, hadn't opted to go to Georgia as well, 100 miles from her home in Macon, and pursue an undergraduate degree in the male-dominated field of wildlife biology? Or what if he hadn't been the one to win her over against the odds he faced?

"There are very few women (in wildlife biology) to begin with, and then someone as stunning as (Lesli) walks through," Robert says. "I was not the only head that turned."

But in between Boise in 2019 and Georgia in the 90s, another crossroads was faced, this one by Delaney Lou, her name a nod to her mom's Southern past, just as taste buds were passed down as well, with a love of shrimp and grits somehow surviving the daughter's Colorado upbringing.

She hadn't even reached middle school, and now she was being told she just wasn't as good as her friends at soccer. In her first year playing in the Arsenal system, she was assigned to a lower-level team for her age group. Her friends, who had made the cut, went this way. She had to go that way.

She'd never liked trying new things to begin with. She was most comfortable with them staying as they were, within her comfort zone. Now, at her dad's prodding, she had given higher-level soccer, or what it can be at that age, a shot. And it had issued its findings in the coldest way possible: Not good enough.

She's here, a freshman for the Grizzlies, so you know she didn't give in, but no one knew at the time that that's how she would respond. She could have quit on soccer, chosen something else, because that's a tough moment, the first time you find out sports eventually becomes a caste system based on talent, no longer based simply on interest or willingness to pay an entry fee.

"That was probably the most trying time she had. She felt she should have been at a higher level, and she wasn't," says her dad. "She was distressed to see all her friends play on that higher team. It really changed how she approached the game.

"She realized she had to apply herself more. It changed what she wanted to do and how she was going to do it. It changed how aggressively she went about doing what she wanted to do in the sport. It made her a little more introspective about what she wanted."

What she wanted was to 1) play on the same team as her friends and 2) never again be told she wasn't good enough

"I cried a little bit, because I was young," she says. "And then I was like, okay, I have to prove these coaches wrong. They put me on the wrong team. Every year I went up, I made the top team and I stayed there."

That's why she was outside Craig Hall late last week, sitting down for an interview that lasted 51 minutes, despite at one point saying, "Sorry, I'm a one-page kind of girl," suggesting she's just not that interesting or just doesn't have that much to say.

But her interviewer had been forewarned. "The size she has physically" -- she's 5-foot-10, an Alexa Coyle clone -- "is the size of her personality as well," says Citowicki. "It's very loud, it's very enthusiastic, it's very welcoming. Her giant arms just bring people together. She's just a fun kid to be around."

Early in the interview, she stops abruptly and gets a look on her face, like something inside her just melted, in a good way. She's spotted a dog on a leash getting walked nearby. The interview and what she was saying at the time the dog got her attention would have to wait. "Sorry, I love dogs."

They make her think of home, where Bella, her 13-year-old bulldog, keeps on keeping on, well past the nine-year life expectancy for her breed. She misses Bella, especially the bulldog snores that always put her to sleep, comforted that all was right in the world.

It's a loyalty that weaves through Schorr's life. She didn't come to Montana for the winning, even though she'll do everything she can to keep the Grizzlies' streak of three straight seasons with either a Big Sky Conference regular-season or tournament title (or both!) going.

"What drew me in was the team chemistry," she says. "I get really passionate about it, because I don't want a team that's just here to win.

"We're here to win, but we're also here to make personal connections with our teammates, we're here to push each other to be the best possible versions of ourselves. We're going to celebrate each other, but we're also going to hold each other accountable, that kind of stuff."

It was like Citowicki was talking, but this time it flowed through a player, and a freshman at that. It's no wonder he calls that official-visit weekend back in early October 2019, when Schorr was in town, along with Ava Samuelson and Riley O'Brien, so memorable.

"That was quite possibly the best official visit I've ever hosted in my entire life," says Citowicki, who can dabble in hyperbole but this time gives off the vibe that he's telling it like it is. "It's because of the personality of the kids that were there."

She could have played at the ECNL level. The Furrows, family friends in Fort Collins through their kids and soccer, did it that way, looking to Denver and its two ECNL clubs, the Colorado Rapids and Real Colorado.

There was the economics of it, commitments of both time and money, but more than that, it was a loyalty thing.

"She has wonderful loyalty," says her dad. "She tends to gravitate toward those who have spent the time to share their experiences and knowledge with her.

"She could have gotten more exposure if she had played on a Denver team, but she was adamant that Arsenal was her home and that she wasn't going to go anywhere else."

They were the ones who told her she wasn't quite good enough, in her first year with the club. But they were also the ones who made her into the player who will be a goal-scoring Grizzly the next four years.

"I've always had a really close connection with the coaches and the staff. I wanted to keep getting trained by them. I couldn't imagine leaving some of them," she says.

It's a family thing. Her dad is going on more than two decades as a senior research associate at Colorado State. Her mom, in a 180 from her schooling in wildlife, now focuses on the indoors as an interior-decorating specialist at Homefest, a luxury home décor store in Greenwood Village.

It's 77 miles from point to point and the kind of commuting, through the heart of Denver to get south of the city, that can have someone wondering if it's worth it. Then something happens that reminds you that it is, it totally is.

"She loves the people she works with. They're her best friends," Delaney Lou says. "She gets to the point with the drive that she wants to quit, then she thinks about those moments, when somebody says thank you or goes above and beyond and is super generous, and she's like, I love it."

She started coaching for Arsenal a few years ago, just a camp here and there. She tried kindergarten, loved returning to the basics, of simply passing correctly. Then she tried eighth graders, and she remembered how life changed for her at that age.

"I was in middle school when I realized I really loved soccer. I committed to it and really became passionate about it," she says. "My coaches were really inspirational and I wanted to be that for those girls. I didn't really know where I fit in in middle school, and soccer was my outlet."

She started looking not just for the best players, but those who needed just that little extra helping of encouragement, that feeling that comes when you learn that someone, who has no reason to, believes in you and wants the best for you.

"If you get super excited for that one girl, the next play she does 10 times better, just because she feels that passion and that excitement and how I celebrated her, and it radiates off her in the next play," she adds.

She was a center back to start. You know how some kids are just wired -- hello, Lena Beaufait! -- to play on the back line? This isn't one of those stories.

"I was scared to be center back, because that meant I was the last person the other team had to get past," she says, and that's a lot of pressure. "It's all on my shoulders."

She moved up to midfield, then one day a coach said, let's put you at forward. She scored a goal. He said, I think we'll keep you there.

It wasn't a process of learning a new position. She just had to flip the field, take those things she dreaded from an opposing forward when she was playing center back and incorporate them into her own game. Makes perfect sense, right?

"What would I be so scared of if a forward was coming at me? Then that was what I tried to do," she says. "If I didn't like this as a center back, maybe I should do this as a forward."

Such as? "I was scared if it was a 1-v-1 situation. Okay, that will get them on their heels. If I come at them, maybe I can open up a through ball for a teammate or I can get past this person. That's how I thought of it."

The end result, at least to that point in her career since she's only going to keep getting better once she starts learning the college game, was on display at that tournament in Boise, the one Citowicki was on the fence about attending.

He was going to see Pac Northwest, Crossfire United and the Colorado Rapids in the Champions League at ECNL Nationals a week later, Crossfire Premier in the North American Cup and Washington Premier, Seattle United and the Boise Thorns in the Showcase Cup, all at the same location.

But something was drawing him to Boise and Far West Regionals. He couldn't pass it up.

"To go down there and see somebody like that, I was just over the moon and excited to get back here and try to recruit her," said Citowicki, who saw a player who could finish in every way, from head to toe.

"Often you'll find that they'll be good at finishing with their feet in the box but heading seems to be lacking. D-Lou's not afraid to put her head on the ball and score, so it's great."

Arsenal went 3-0 in pool play and advanced to the championship match, where it fell to Las Vegas Sports Academy, but it was enough to advance to US Youth Soccer Nationals in Kansas. "I just hoped I was the only one who was interested, because I thought she was amazing," said Citowicki.

When Schorr was a freshman at Rocky Mountain High, Kendall Furrow, now a redshirt junior for the Grizzlies, was a senior. When Citowicki contacted Schorr the first time, Furrow became her insider. And Schorr wanted all of it, everything she was told.

"She loves it here. She said being a college athlete isn't easy, but I never wanted it easy. You'll make the best memories and you'll bond in a whole different way and become a family, and that's something I've always wanted," Schorr says.

Colorado State was right there, perfect for a player who can't get enough of her family, but she also has some of her dad in her. It was only 75 miles from the Bay Area to Davis, but it was a different world. He spent his undergraduate years chasing spotted owls.

"That was a real focus for the Forest Service and National Park Service in the Pacific Northwest and what forests they could harvest and couldn't harvest," he says. "It was a lot of night work," which he says got old, so he started studying what they eat, which was mice. Then he got into bats.

"I call him Batman," says Delaney Lou, who is fine if you call her by her formal name or just Delaney or D-Lou.

When he arrived at Colorado State, he dove into his work, which was the population ecology of the Front Range and how that was affecting the region's subspecies "and how they are doing over time so we can get an assessment of how they're changing and how we can form conservation for them."

A student at CSU in his first years in Fort Collins was a guy by the name of Paul Lukacs, who got his master's and Ph.D. from the school and is now a professor at Montana in the wildlife biology department.

They began collaborating five or six years ago, which had Schorr making trips to Missoula before his daughter had ever heard the name Chris Citowicki. And it all started with his willingness to take a chance, to leave the Bay Area and move to Davis, then to Georgia.

"When I was growing up at (Delaney's) age, I didn't want to be in the same place I grew up," Robert says. "I wanted to see something new.

"If she wanted to play at Colorado State, more power to her. If she decided she wanted to go someplace else, we were fully behind that too. It was more about what she wanted and what she thought the school she was going to could provide for her. She wanted a place that could feel like home."

Homecoming in 2019, the first weekend of October, was one of those early warning shots from Mother Nature that had the locals saying, really, already? It would have felt totally normal had it been December. It was bitter cold and Schorr was on her official visit, judging all the while.

She had made the trip to Georgia a few times in her life to visit her grandparents and vacation at St Simons Island. Her parents told her tales of Bulldog football games, a religion in those parts, with congregants gathering on fall Saturdays at the cathedral, Sanford Stadium, capacity north of 92,000.

That's what she wanted from her school, football with a rabid following. After her future soccer team defeated Weber State on Friday, she was inside Washington-Grizzly Stadium on Saturday when 25,000 fans were shocked into silence when Idaho State took a 17-0 lead early in the second quarter.

Over the next 44 minutes, Montana outscored the Bengals 59-3 and won 59-20. A downer turned into a party. The soccer team defeated Idaho State on Sunday to conclude the perfect weekend, except for the weather.

"That was the weekend part of the Clark Fork froze. What I remember most about her first response to (her visit) was, 'It was flippin' cold. I've never experienced cold like that,' " recalls Robert, who stayed home while Lesli traveled to Missoula with her daughter for the official visit.

"I was glad she got to be tested by that kind of weather. I knew she liked Missoula, she liked Montana and she liked Chris. The weather was going to be the next test for her, and it didn't alter her interest."

She signed a National Letter of Intent last November. "I love my family, but I wanted to do something that would challenge me. Okay, I can't go back to my house, so I'm going to find a family here."

Now in his fourth season, Citowicki has what he wants with his roster. Freshmen are coming in who would be good enough to play right away for most teams in the Big Sky, but not always at Montana. Thus the championship trophies that keep coming home to Missoula.

Even though she's got Coyle's size and her ability to turn and shoot, plus a knack for scoring with her head, Schorr enters the season behind Taylor Stoeger, Jaden Griggs, Emme Fernandez and Josie Windauer on the depth chart.

Of course any depth chart is fluid, but you can't overcome experience when you don't have any. It takes time.

"It used to be that if you were a freshmen, you could come in and play right away, but if you've got the proper developmental process in the program, it becomes harder and harder for a freshman to come in and step in," Citowicki says.

But at the same time he wants freshmen who are good enough and possessing enough confidence that they have no trouble pushing for a role from Day One. And he wants his returners to feel the pressure. A rising tide lifts all the boats, right?

"I want the cake, and I want to eat it too," says Citowicki, while laughing a bit deviously. He's got things right where he wants them, with talent everywhere he looks.

The player who wasn't good enough then, so many years ago, is now here, playing Division I soccer. She's good enough, and she sometimes can scarcely believe it.

"I want to just do what I can and prove that I was meant to be here, if that makes any sense," she says, and it does. She's done it before. She can do it again. "I just want to look back when it's over and be like, wow, I did that."

University of Montana Athletics

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Players Mentioned

Lena Beaufait

Alexa Coyle

Emme Fernandez

Kendall Furrow

Jaden Griggs

Riley O'Brien

Ava Samuelson

Delaney Lou Schorr

Taylor Stoeger

Josie Windauer

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