The Craig Hall Chronicles :: Ashlyn Dvorak

The goal is in sight. It has been since we wrote about Emma Pascoe back on Aug. 26. Seven Craig Hall Chronicles down, one to go.

It was a big ask by coach Chris Citowicki to bring in eight freshmen and expect an in-depth feature on each of them. We were up for the challenge. At least through seven.

Maddie Ditta. Kayla Rendon Bushmaker. Eliza Bentler. Georgia Boone. Reeve Borseth. Shelby Stordahl. Emma Pascoe. More than 22,000 words written, devoted to them, in an effort to best tell their tales.

Then things got busy. And Ashlyn Dvorak, the last one, story No. 8, got pushed back one week, then another, then another. Now it's late September and she's still sitting there, a story untold.

She's known it all this time, the feeling of being singled out, of being left out. She's been waiting for us to come calling and not necessarily with open arms. She's competitive like that.

Finally, a small window of opportunity, a break in the schedule. A breakaway. We're rushing toward that goal, hoping for an easy tap-in finish, something that we can do without much time, effort or stress.

Will she allow it? No way. We're going to have to work for it. She's going to make us earn it, reaching that goal, to wrap up this year's series of Craig Hall Chronicles in a big way.

Nothing gets past her easily. And it had better be as good as the other ones, or else.

"My favorite memory of Ashlyn, and I wasn't even there, but it's them playing in the state championship, really big crowd, ball gets played in, she makes a huge save, the camera zooms in on her and she's just screaming, jacked and confident," says Citowicki.

It was the fourth postseason win for Billings West in 11 days. The championship was theirs. Goals allowed by Dvorak in those four matches: one.

"That's my favorite memory, that intensity and her face, that competitiveness," adds Citowicki. "As a junior and senior, she is going to petrify any freshmen and sophomores in this program. Her teammates are already starting to get a feel for it now.

"She has leadership potential through the roof, goalkeeper potential through the roof. This kid has winner written all over her."

And away we go, a little petrified ourselves of not putting in our best effort. And then you sit down with Dvorak to learn more about her and … excuse me? The goalkeeper you see on the field is nowhere to be seen.

"I'm a pretty laidback person off the field, but once my cleats are on, I'm the most competitive person I know. I don't like to lose. I just have a fire inside of me to be the player that I know I can be," she says.

"There is a lot of intensity to me on the field. I care about everyone on my team so much, but on the field, I mean business."

If you're looking for some sort of genesis story, where this all started, you can probably go back to her birth. It's just innate. And it took sports to bring it out.

"She played a lot of sports through the years, any sport that she brought home on a flier," says her mom, Crystal. "She was always very serious about athletics."

Keep in mind we're talking about an elementary-age kid here. "She was never one of the kids who was playing in the dirt or picking flowers. She was the kid who was saying, Mom, why aren't they trying? Come on!"

Neither mom nor daughter can really answer the question: Why goalkeeper? It just always was. It didn't need an answer because it wasn't a question. She was a goalkeeper.

She had a coach early on who made a deal with her. Score two or three goals, then you can go back and play goalkeeper. So, she did and had those gloves on before they had had a chance to post her latest goal on the scoreboard.

That experience of playing in the field over the years helped her develop footwork that will be the envy of college goalkeepers everywhere once she gets a chance to show it off.

She's a great shot-stopper. She's got a vertical jump that might be the best on the team, a hand-me-down from her mom, who was a high jumper at Black Hills State, where she met her future husband, James.

She's 5-foot-8 but has the speed and agility to cover all 192 square feet of the goal she protects. And it's lucky for Montana that she stopped growing at 68 inches. "You put her in a bigger body and she's a Power 5 goalkeeper. She's incredible," says Citowicki.

Her hands? Like flypaper. So, she's not only going to get to your shot, she's not going to leave any rebound, the bane of any goalkeeper coach.

"She is quick with her footwork and her hands are very consistent," says her position coach, Damian Macias. "By that I mean when she gets to a ball, she is not spilling it, offering a second opportunity.

"She'll fly through the air, hands are on the ball and it sticks."

But it's what she does with the ball once she has it in her hands and everyone starts retreating the other way that separates her from most goalkeepers, even at the college level.

"I think the saving part of goalkeeping is kind of a given," Dvorak says. "You have to be able to shot-stop. The question for a goalkeeper is, can you do the other things that are needed?

"A lot of people focus on the saves. I can be really good 1-v-1, but once I get the ball in my hands, do I just play it up the field for a 50-50 ball? The question is, can you distribute it to people?"

Can she ever. She caused quite a stir the day her club coach, Stephen Cavallo, who doubles as the coach at MSU Billings, filmed her side-volleying balls into laundry baskets he had situated around the field.

He posted it online and sent it to some professional goalkeepers he knew. Their consensus reply: Okay, that's different. Dvorak was 11.

"(Cavallo) has referred to her as an offensive goalkeeper. She makes offensive opportunities happen. There have been plenty of times over the years she's gotten purposeful assists," says her mom.

"I can't remember the last time I've seen her punt a ball. That isn't something she does."

You know the play. A keeper collects the ball and, limited by her skill, just kicks it as far as she can down the field. Sure, it's been played out of harm's way, but all she's done is given both teams a mostly equal chance at possession. There is no skill involved, other than the big leg.

And that type of play is anathema to Dvorak.

"If I'm able to distribute and make a play out of it that leads to a shot on goal or a strong chance of scoring, it's a good feeling to be part of that buildup," she says. "It gets overlooked a lot."

Of course, James and Crystal knew nothing about this in their oldest of two daughter's younger days. He played hockey growing up in South Dakota, got into power-lifting at Black Hills State, has completed an Ironman. She grew up in California before moving to South Dakota at the age of 16.

The world of youth soccer was all new to them, so when their daughter told them Alex Balog, then the men's coach at MSU Billings, was holding a special training session for wanna-be goalkeepers and that she wanted to attend, they dropped her off and hoped she would have a good time.

That ah-ha moment, when something clicks for a parent, when it goes from a curiosity to, okay, there might be something special here? It came with Crystal sitting in her car, waiting to pick up Ashlyn from the training session.

Balog signaled for her. He wanted to tell her something. Ashlyn really has something, he told her. She is a natural. I want to keep working with her. How nice, Crystal thought, expecting the coach to move on to the next parent and give them the same flattering report.

"He didn't go talk to anybody else," she remembers. "I was like, huh. Okay, that's cool."

As a 10-year-old, she began training with middle schoolers. When she was in seventh grade, she joined the high schoolers. It was advanced development. "It really brought my skillset up quite a bit and improved my speed and reactions," she says.

As new as soccer was to her parents, the position of goalkeeper was even more esoteric. And that's probably for the best, because it can be an eye-opener for a mom the first time her daughter goes face-first for a ball, right when an opponent swings her foot at the same object.

Keep in mind that mom is an audiologist, so she knows something about the noggin and how delicate are its inner parts. Dad is a registered nurse, so he knows something about the frailty of the human body.

"Looking back on it, I'm glad I didn't know much about it," Crystal says. "I would have been terrified. She's put her face down right as a foot was going at her face. That can be scary as far as injuries go. I've had to learn how to handle it."

That's why, once the position at Montana becomes Dvorak's, the two girls playing in front of her will have no bigger fans than Crystal Dvorak.

"Center backs are my favorite kids," she says. "If anybody heard me cheering at a game, they think I'm one of the center backs' moms. Any kid who keeps my kid from having to do something like dive and potentially get hurt is awesome."

But there is more to being a goalkeeper than being quick and agile, than having sticky fingers, than being able to distribute. There is that final piece to the puzzle, that sine qua non, that draws some players to the position and keeps others away.

"I'm wired a little differently. I think all goalkeepers are," says Dvorak. "It's a special position for special people. There is something up there in your head that's a little different."

Somebody saw it in Dvorak when she was a freshman and on the Montana ODP team, when she was at the ODP sub-regional camp in Boise, when she was at the regional camp in Fort Collins.

She was playing in a futsal tournament at MSU Billings when her mom received the email. Her daughter had been selected to attend an ODP national camp in Tampa in January 2019.

Dvorak would be one of only eight goalkeepers from the entire country in attendance, where she'd receive some of the best coaching a 14-year-old could ever hope to get.

Crystal had tears in her eyes when she asked Ashlyn, "Hey, what are you going to be doing in a couple weeks? She's a ninth grader at the time, so I'm sure she's annoyed with my riddle.

"How about we send you to Tampa to go to this camp? She was so excited. We knew it was important and monumental."

There is an earlier story that needs to be told first, to set the stage. Cavallo had brought a team to Missoula for an indoor tournament and arranged for those players to get a campus and facilities tour.

And doesn't that just get a girl's head spinning and her dreams focused? "That was the first time I was ever on campus and I remember falling in love with it," Dvorak says. "Even as a 12-year-old, this was a place I could dream big to come to and play."

Now she was 14 and in Tampa, among a select group of goalkeepers, and being watched by a coach from most of the top-level programs in the country.

"After that camp, I got a lot of emails from schools that had never reached out to me prior to that. East Coast, Midwest, schools that I'd never thought of," she says. "They told us our name was now going to be on The List." It was, and coaches from all over the country now knew her name.

She was always courteous, first via email, then, when it was allowed, over the phone. But she had one true love, a uniform of maroon and silver, and nothing was changing it.

Not even some common-sense talk from her mom, who knew the Grizzlies had undergone a coaching change in 2018 and couldn't Ashlyn at least have a Plan B, a Plan C?

As much as she got goosebumps at the thought of her daughter staying as close to home as she could and still achieve her goals of playing Division I soccer, nobody knew anything about this Citowicki fellow.

"We had an inkling Chris liked her, so it was eyes on the prize, the Grizzlies. I told her, you know, the Cinderella story doesn't always work out. Don't put your eggs in one basket. There were some huge names, but she never felt it. Once she stepped foot on campus, it was all Grizzlies," says Crystal.

The Dvoraks – her dad traveled to Tampa but wasn't able to watch unless it was from distance and through a fence – tried to get film of the camp but struck out. Citowicki somehow got his hands on it. He watched it, how Dvorak handled herself and was sold. And it's been a two-way love affair ever since.

"No one has been close to matching Montana, as a program, as a school, as a city," she says. "Never was I compelled to look elsewhere, because it was here already."

Once June 15 after her sophomore year arrived, she was able to have phone conversations with Citowicki. That led to the most boring recruiting story ever told. And she has no problem with that.

"I knew they wanted me to come here and they knew I wanted to come here from the very start. I committed October my junior year. I think I had one of the easiest recruitment stories, which I'm so thankful for because it's a very stressful time for a lot of players," she says.

"I love the coaches so much and their style of coaching and how they treat the players, how they treat people, because that's what matters more, people over player."

She returned home from Tampa a different person, a different player. The camp wasn't the top eight goalkeepers in the nation in her age group. Others maybe couldn't attend. Others maybe weren't involved in their state's ODP, but she still had a new tag: elite.

"I'd say we were among the top 50 in the country, at least," she says. "It gave me a lot of confidence boost going there, that my hard work has paid off. That was the first time I'd been rewarded for my skillset. Committing to Montana was the second time that I thought I must be doing something right."

She came home, began her sophomore year at Billings West, the hotshot goalkeeper, and found herself on the bench, playing behind Kendell Ellis, who was one year ahead of her and is now in her second year at St. Thomas in Minnesota.

Dvorak sat as a junior as well, outside of a few appearances as a field player when her team was shorthanded. For three years the player who attended an ODP national camp was a reserve. On a high school team. In Montana.

She could have gone another way, gone all in on Billings United, where she was her age-group's GK1, said that was all she needed to reach her goals. And it would have been. But she didn't. She stuck it out on her high school team. Out of loyalty, out of commitment.

"Had she tried out for a field player, she would have started as a freshman, but she wanted to stay true to herself and her position," says Crystal. "She is a very resilient kid."

Could it be any other way? She was born while her dad was on deployment in the early stages of the Iraq War, through the South Dakota Army National Guard. He got two weeks off to return home for his first child's birth. He boarded a plane to return to Iraq when his daughter was 12 days old.

When she was in sixth grade and in full daddy's-girl mode, James was deployed again. When she was in eighth grade, her mom direct commissioned as a captain in the Army Reserve.

"I think being a child of the military makes for some resiliency," says Crystal. "I think it gives her some emotional toughness that I think translates into the physical. It helped her develop a different type of mental toughness for soccer."

She's never been injured. Truly injured. Though that word is relative. There was that time last summer when she went up to punch a crossing attempt out of the air and was coming down when another girl was going up for the header.

The other girl ended up in the hospital to get stitches in the back of her head. Dvorak's TMJ was displaced for a few months. What is that, you ask? Only the joint that connects a person's jawbone to their skull.

But it wasn't dislocated, so … play on? Is it any wonder that her one sibling, her younger sister Alexis, gravitated toward the pole vault? She placed seventh at the state meet as a freshman, tied for seventh last spring when she cleared 10 feet.

Is it any wonder that she joined the Grizzlies in early August and made the position her own when given the chance in practice? Even if it meant directing players like veteran center backs Allie Larsen and Charley Boone in front of her?

Is it any wonder she's got even bigger dreams and goals? Of being another Griz to go on to play professionally somewhere? To become an orthodontist, which will require four years of dental school, three years of specialty school, then two more years of residency?

Have you been paying attention? Have you been reading closely?

"For me, a bit of a surprise," says Macias, who was hired in July. "Montana is not known for producing a pipeline of soccer players, so I had no idea. She stepped in and is definitely at the level.

"You start to project a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, when she grows into the experience. She is super impactful right now and super dangerous. She doesn't play like she's hedging her bets or is a freshman. Should I, shouldn't I? She just shows up and she does it."

So, she talks. She tells people, even the menacing Larsen, what she sees, where she thinks they need to go.

"It's my job to communicate what I see on the field because maybe she can't see the same angle I can," says Dvorak. "So, I'm always going to give her information. I'm not going to tell her what to do, but I'm going to help her be the best player she can be."

There is a certain pressure that comes with being chosen to be a goalkeeper at Montana, an expectation. The last three – Kailey Norman, Claire Howard and Camellia Xu – have all been voted the Big Sky Conference Goalkeeper of the Year.

The same level of greatness is expected of Dvorak, of anyone guarding the goal for the Grizzlies.

"We expect you not only to be good but all-conference good. You better be one of the top goalkeepers in the conference, which makes you one of the top 30 or 50 in the nation," says Citowicki.

"She can handle it. She has a competitive intensity you don't find very often. I love having her here. Love the pressure she's putting on Cam, in a heathy way."

Ah, the Cam factor. The reigning Big Sky Goalkeeper of the Year factor. The seven-time Big Sky Defensive Player of the Week factor. Is that going to be an issue?

Doesn't sound like it. "She loves Cam so much," says Crystal. "Cam is such a phenomenal player but also as a young woman.

"Ashlyn didn't have these grand ideas. She's there to learn, to grow, to prepare so she can be the keeper helping the program in games, not just at practice."

She came close. Xu had to take a knee in last week's match at Boise State and be attended to. Before the trainer could even reach Xu, Dvorak had her gloves on and was getting prepared.

"Everyone on the team has to know their role. My role right now is to compete for that No. 1 spot. It's also to be the next in line," she says. "I'll be ready if Cam gets hurt. I'll be ready to play if Chris needs me to play."

Xu brushed it off and soldiered on, as goalkeepers tend to do, but Dvorak would have been in her element. Tight match. High stakes.

"I love the pressure part of goalkeeper. There is so much on the line and everything comes down to you. I'd say my confidence level is really high. I play with a presence a goalkeeper needs to have, a presence the team can build from."

So, here we are, on a breakaway. The goal is right there in front of us, the end of the Craig Hall Chronicles. It's Dvorak's favorite moment on the field, 1-v-1. She's there, protecting the goal we want to reach.

"It's just me and the forward. I do a really good job of breaking down angles and making sure they don't have a place to shoot on frame. If they do, they're hitting me," she says.

Maybe the end of the Craig Hall Chronicles isn't the goal after all. Maybe it's to have this hit her in just the right spot.

We'll let her judge if we scored.

University of Montana Athletics

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Players Mentioned

Eliza Bentler

Charley Boone

Georgia Boone

Reeve Borseth

Maddie Ditta

Ashlyn Dvorak

Claire Howard

Allie Larsen

Emma Pascoe

Kayla Rendon Bushmaker

Shelby Stordahl

Camellia Xu

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