The Craig Hall Chronicles :: Eliza Bentler

Fair warning: It's going to be a little while before we get to Eliza Bentler, the subject of this article. As the third of five Bentler kids, she should be used to waiting by now.

But Clara has to come first, like she did for Jim and Ceci, products of the Midwest who traded in the humidity and tornado warnings and sweating corn of Iowa and Nebraska for a life made in Billings, where they have raised their family.

Clara's story is much too delightful to bury or gloss over, to place as an afterthought a couple thousand words in. She's a headliner in her own right.

She'll be a fourth-year Advocate at the University of Montana this coming year, after she returns from summering in Washington D.C., where she's working for Senator Jon Tester and interning on the Senate Committee on Veteran Affairs.

How did she get here, someone who is focused on "changing the world for the better," as Eliza claims? You need to go back to her seventh-grade year, when the Billings City Council was having hearings on a nondiscrimination ordinance.

On one side: Hate groups and bigots who wanted to make it official, to put it on the books, in writing, that any business owner could deny service, without fear of repercussion, to anyone they wanted, which everyone knew meant the LGBTQ community.

On the other side: Ceci Bentler, among others.

Clara asked her mom where she was going. To testify, she told her. It's important that we use our voice to advocate for this. Clara insisted on attending as well. She was curious: What was this discrimination thing her mom was talking about? Wasn't every family like theirs, open to anyone and everyone?

People were able to have their say, from both sides. "She was horrified," says Ceci of Clara's reaction. "It was shocking for her. She thought people accepted other people for who they were. She couldn't believe what adults were saying about people in our community."

The seventh grader didn't just sit back and listen. She felt compelled to stand up and speak on behalf of others, to give voice and support to the marginalized, by bringing whatever verbal ammunition she could think of, including Dr. Seuss's "Sneetches on Beaches" and its theme of tolerance.

For Clara Bentler, it was her coming-of-age moment.

"From then on she's become very passionate about righting the wrongs of the world," says Ceci. "She looks back and for her that was her I-had-my-head-in-the-sand moment."

We open with that story not only because it absolutely rules but because Eliza Bentler is not just a girl who plays soccer. Not just someone from Billings. She's not just Jim and Ceci's daughter. She's not just Clara and Finn's younger sister, Beatrice and George's older sister.

She's all of it, and you can't truly know her without seeing how all the parts of her life have come together to mold her.

How her mom, who grew up in Minnesota, was fast enough on the track to have Division I offers before her freshman year of high school was completed, which a 5:07 mile and 2:16 half will do. And how that pursuit ended up with her accepting an offer to run at Iowa.

How her dad, raised in Iowa before moving to Nebraska, where he became an all-state football player, returned to his roots and also attended Iowa. How he found a home on the school's rugby team, how he just stayed there through medical school, how he met his future wife through common friends.

They didn't have to end up in Billings, the Bentlers didn't. The future ER doctor did his residency at NYU Bellevue in Manhattan, was asked to stay on, but the couple, one of whom was pregnant with Clara, wanted to get back to the Midwest, maybe Minneapolis and nearer to her hometown of Chaska.

Of course, there had been that bicycle trip that Jim had taken with his brother to Montana when he'd been in college, when he thought, how great would it be to actually live here one day? A guy can dream, right?

Some calls to Billings were made, some contacts reached out to. Why yes, St. Vincent is looking for ER doctors, why do you ask?

"We thought we'd be there at least while the kids were little," says Ceci. "Start a family there, then if we hate it, we'll move. We just fell in love with it and decided to stay."

Clara arrived, then Finn a year later. He got the runner's gene as well, ran a 4:26.30 for the 1,600 meters at the Simplot Games in Idaho his final year at Billings Senior, in the winter of 2020, then had his desire to compete collegiately drain out of him when the pandemic cost him his final prep season.

Dude's doing just fine today. He's a wildlife biology major at Montana, working this summer in East Glacier and hiking and biking every spare minute of daylight he can, then grabbing his fiddle and playing in a makeshift band when the sun goes down.

"He's such a Montana kid," says Eliza, whose younger sister, Beatrice has a love of soccer that is only exceeded by her desire to find an elite academic school that will accept her into its engineering program. If soccer is part of the deal, all the better.

George? The end of the line, about to start his freshman year at Billings Senior.

That's the foundation of Eliza Bentler's story, what you need to know before you can even begin to start seeing her for who she is. And what is she but a dichotomy?

She could have named her sport, given her size and build that had other parents wondering if the Bentlers had a Cross Fit gym in their basement. How else do you explain the type of musculature that took Taylor Hansen five years of hard work at Montana to create?

"She is freakishly athletic," says her mom. "People asked me when she was younger if we lifted weights at home. What are you talking about? Her arms have always looked like that. Very cut. She's always looked extremely athletic."

She was a ski racer growing up, one of the best in the state, going down to Red Lodge in the winter to train. Before the snow fell, she couldn't be touched in the autumn when she put her shoes on and attacked a cross country course.

And what do you see when you start putting person to those stories other than a middle child who develops into a killer competitor, someone who not only wants to beat you but take a piece of your soul as a trophy for the mantle?

"Of our five kids, the word for her is relentless. She'll work, work, work. She just wants to be the best version of herself," says Ceci.

You think you have her pegged, and then you start hearing the rest of the stories and you realize you're not even close to being right or accurate.

Those cross country races she won, three years in a row that allowed her, had she wanted, to call herself the fastest middle schooler in Billings? They had other kids eyeing her, telling her about other racers who said this was the year they were going to take her down.

Her? They were looking at her, talking about her, figuring out ways to knock her off from her spot as the supposed queen of the mountain? What had she done to deserve that kind of focus and attention?

"She just hated having a target on her back. Eliza doesn't operate like that. She doesn't like people talking about her. She likes to work hard, do well and blend into the trees," says Ceci.

"It shocked her that people knew her name and were coming for her. It stressed her out. She just thought she was doing her thing and who cares? Her outlook on competition is, I'm just doing this because I love it. She's so kind and sweet."

All of which makes her a nearly perfect fit for Montana soccer coach Chris Citowicki's program. With five Big Sky championships over the last four seasons, the Grizzlies know a thing or two about being burdened with a target, as the team everyone circles on the schedule.

He wants his team to embrace the pressure, the expectations, but also rise above it all, to play free, to play loose, to not be burdened by it, to not let it impact performance.

Let's work harder than anybody else today and take one step closer to being the best possible version of ourselves we can. All while loving what we're doing and those around us.

"The playing-with-joy philosophy that Chris has matches Eliza's personality perfectly," says Ceci. "I have this picture of her running this cross country race with a huge smile on her face. She's always been that way. Play with joy, play happy, run happy. That's how she plays best.

"Her match with Chris's program is perfection."

If only it was that simple, to travel from Point A to Point B, without hardship or detour. But it's never like that, not in youth sports when recruiting comes into play. It becomes Point A to Point T and the steps in between can be stress-filled and treacherous.

But first there were the carefree days of the Yellowstone Soccer Association, when all of this was first getting started, when she was coached by her mom and dad, who did the best they could at this new sport.

Let's just say Ceci had no intention of applying for Citowicki's open assistant-coach position last month. "If Chris needs someone to give fist bumps and high fives and handshakes or hugs, I'm his girl. That's the only skillset I have to offer."

They'd been given a primer on what was to come by a friend who had gone on to play at Vanderbilt. ODP, she said. Stick with ODP. "That was how she got the exposure to play where she did," says Ceci.

Seemed doable, since that is a state-based thing. But this new world of competitive soccer reached a new level that day when Eliza's U12 team for Billings United traveled to Denver to play in the Real Cup.

Maysa Walters had grown up in Billings, had trained under Stephen Cavallo, Bentler's club coach, and now she was living with a host family in Colorado, expressly for the opportunity to play a higher level of soccer more consistently and to improve her chances of playing Division I soccer.

And now she was joining the team for dinner.

"I had no idea about any of those things," says Ceci. "To me that sounded crazy, to go live someplace else to play soccer. I didn't know the extent of things you needed to do to get noticed and get recruited."

She had come up in the world of track and field, where times were times, distances were distances, and it wasn't about exposure or showcase events or ECNL or DA or any other spoonful of alphabet soup. If you were Division I, you were Division I. Your performances said so, no matter the competition.

This would be something entirely different.

"Eliza had a very specific goal of wanting to play at that level. We were fortunate we could give her some of those opportunities, but the work had to be on her to make it come true. We weren't going to do it if she wasn't going to match our efforts. And she did. She was relentless," says Ceci.

She first had to sacrifice something, then she had to be handed both the match and the fuel that sent her on her way, to where she is today, this afternoon, training with her teammates at South Campus Stadium.

The former was easy enough. She was on the Far West Regional ski team that was competing in Tahoe. When she got up to the starting gate, she looked down, pretty much straight down, and saw the course.

Daughter made mom's day when she saw the risk involved on her own. "If I want to play ODP and take soccer seriously, I have to give this up," Eliza told her.

The bigger moment arrived at the end of her eighth-grade year, when Billings United was set to travel nine hours to Kalispell for the state championships.

All Bentler had done all season was play on the A team, as one would expect. All she had done all season was play with the same teammates. All she wanted to do was finish off the year on the same team and surrounded by the same teammates.

As the tournament approached, she was told she would be on the B team.

This was no Michael Jordan moment, of not making the varsity. The coach recognized that the B team was going have limited numbers and almost no subs. Bentler was chosen because she was one player who had the endurance to go the distance, to not step off the field all weekend.

In one sense, it was a compliment. You're one of the few players who could pull this off, and we need you. In another, it brought the walls crashing down. "She cried and cried and cried," says her mom.

She could have thrown a fit, told coach and parents that she wasn't going to go, not if it meant playing on the B team. Before those thoughts could enter her mind, Jim and Ceci gave it to her straight.

"We're going to go. That's what we do. You committed to something, and we're going," says Ceci. The big question was, how was she going to respond to that kind of directly approach?

"The worst part of parenting is, how are they going to deal with adversity? That's the piece we all feel anxious about as parents."

Mom didn't know the answer, but she kept thinking about an Abby Wambach quote, about how she didn't start for her team one match and then used that as jet fuel to accomplish bigger, better and greater things. Call it a hunch she had.

"We told her, if you never want to feel like this again, either double down and work harder or decide you're okay with where you're playing," says Ceci. "Once they make that decision for themselves, one way or the other, it's such an amazing feeling as a parent."

Clara had played some soccer, then got involved in other things and pulled in other directions. She cut herself before any coach could do it.

Eliza took a different approach. "She said, 'I never want to feel this way again.' I think that moment was her jet fuel. She took all of that on herself. I thought it showed great growth."

It was on. She ran track at Billings Senior but more so to benefit her soccer career than to follow in her mom's footsteps.

She is a lifelong forward but played defender one match at US Youth Soccer's Far West Regionals when Cavallo needed someone who could keep up with and slow down a Stanford-bound player who was on Billings United's next opponent.

"It was amazing," says her mom. "I was taken aback by how well she did in that position against a star player. All she said was, 'I'll play wherever they tell me to play.'"

In Missoula, Citowicki was watching, but he needed to see more. "She's always been on the list," he says. "She's been part of a group that's been extremely well coached by Stephen, a very high level for Montana soccer."

There was always that qualifier at the end: for Montana soccer. "When we saw her play, the level of competition wasn't always the best. There had to be more to it."

So she got herself on Northwest Elite out of Portland as a discovery player, traveled twice to Surf Cup, scored her first match out at the ECNL level against Legends FC and fellow Griz freshman Maddie Ditta. How do you like me now?

"It was a confidence boost to play with them and play against high-level ECNL teams and know I can play with these girls," she says. "Even if I'm from Montana I can compete and do well."

She traveled to Missoula for Montana's ID camp in June 2021, just over a year ago. It was getting late in the process. Really late. This was her dream school, her dream program, but she was getting other interest. And would Citowicki just give it to her straight?

"I was pretty forward. I just need to know if there is a spot for me on this team or do I have to move on?" she said. "Is what I bring what you're looking for? I didn't want to keep pushing for something if they had already filled that spot."

She answered for Citowicki all her own questions.

"She really won me over when she came to camp. She's another ID camp success story. She showed up and played extremely well," says Citowicki.

"I thought she was just going to be an athlete, but watching her more and more, she gets the game at a very high level. Then you get to meet her as a person. Talk about a solid human being."

He offered, she accepted, and there she was on Monday, tying for second on the team in its preseason fitness test as an incoming freshman. How Citowicki intends to employ her will be something you'll have to wait and see. But this could be really good, really fun.

"I'm interested to see how good she is going to be. She has everything going for her," says Citowicki. "She has the freakish athleticism of a Skye Thompson where you're like, all right, that's kind of scary.

"This is not someone you hope develops over time. This is someone who could hit the ground running pretty quickly."

And running quickly has never been a challenge for the Bentlers. Like mother, like daughter.

University of Montana Athletics

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Players Mentioned

Eliza Bentler

Maddie Ditta

Taylor Hansen

Maysa Walters

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