Lady Griz Orientation :: Macey Huard

The flame had to be handed down from someone else, someone outside the family, someone outside the Huard household. It had to be. It was the only way.

Brock had his own, used it to become the national high school player of the year back in the day, employed it at the University of Washington, later in the NFL, uses it today in his various jobs as a broadcaster, an astute talker of sports, still obsessed with preparation.

He knew it couldn't come from his hands, a keeper of the flame though he was. Too combustible, the Marinovich dynamic all over again. It had to come organically, through a different means than parent to child. But once it was passed, he knew how to keep it glowing, how to fuel it without being the source.

Molly, who played basketball at Washington, aggressive and defensive-minded on the court, had her own. Together they had kids, the depth chart going three deep, Haley, Macey, Titus. They would model it but let the kids embark on their own journey of discovery, sports or otherwise.

Mark Metzger was also a keeper of the flame, having had it passed down to him through the generations. His grandfather, from Chicago, ended up at Notre Dame as a walk-on, an undersized 5-foot-9, 155-pound lineman with forearms of steel, the result of delivering blocks of ice as a youth.

An unknown, he lined up one practice, delivered a blow to the poor young man across the line, broke his ribs, had him spitting up blood the rest of the day. The next thing he knew, Bert Metzger had the very hand of coach Knute Rockne grabbing his collar and taking him over to practice with the first team.

The former walk-on became an all-American on Notre Dame's 1929 and '30 national championship teams. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1982.

That's the flame that Mark Metzger, Bert's grandson, carried with him to Seattle Pacific, where he won an NCAA Division II men's soccer national championship in 1978 and played in three Final Fours.

He would be the one who would pass it on to Macey Huard, after nearly 20 years managing the Bear Stearns stock index futures trading desk on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange before relocating to Seattle and coaching youth soccer.

She had it all to be her own carrier, even at the age of 9. She was wired as she was thanks to her parents and had the added incentive of being No. 2 in line, Haley being the carrot to be chased, younger sibling trying to catch and outdo the elder. It was the perfect storm.

"He was a driving force. He wanted to drive that mentality. Not only was it somewhat natural in her wiring, not only the birth order of chasing big sis, but to have that impactful of a coach at that age was a real blossoming of that competitive will," Brock says.

"Funny thing about him, he would never coach the No. 1 team. He wanted to coach the 2's. He told them, we're going at the neck of the No. 1 team, all day, every day. He was an absolute bulldog who would not settle for anything but that aggressive Mamba Mentality."

Macey Huard embraced it, the Kobe Bryant-inspired mindset, and nothing has been the same since. "(Metzger) was the driving force in building that hyper-aggressive, Mamba Mentality, the blond Mamba Mentality she carries."

Of course, that's overlooking a lot, oversimplifying things. Metzger doesn't want any of the credit. He was once approached by a college coach eyeing a standout player. He was asked who made her the way she was. Metzger pointed to two people on the sideline.

Who do they coach for? I don't recognize them, the coach said to Metzger. He replied, they aren't her coaches, they're her parents.

"It's pretty simple. Mom and dad and core values," he says of Macey. "It was easy to train her because the core values were there. All I was doing was building off of what was coming out of the home. It was easy to build off the Huard mindset. Was it easy to push? Yes. Was it easy to ask for more? Yes."

Macey tells the story of how Metzger one day challenged his team of 9- and 10-year-olds to a contest. If anyone could complete 100 consecutive juggles of the ball, he would give them $100. With Brock filming, Macey pulled it off and returned to practice the next day with proof and collected her $100.

Okay, new contest. How about 200 juggles for $200. The next day, Huard arrived to collect her winnings. The next day, a new contest, 300 juggles for $300. The next day, Huard arrived to collect her winnings, making it $600 of Metzger's money over three days.

That's as far as she takes the story. Metzger finishes it. "That night I got a text from Brock letting me know they donated it to charity," he recalls. "She earned it, did the work for it, and what did they teach her? You're blessed. Give it to someone that needs it. Gave me chills.

"Take away that mom played basketball and dad played in the NFL and base it on what goes on daily in that home, the groundwork that's getting laid. She could have been adopted and Macey Huard would still be Macey Huard. It's in her."

The flame, with that upbringing in progress, had been ignited now, her eyes set on North Carolina and coach Anson Dorrance's women's soccer powerhouse, someone who knew how to handle two dozen Macey Huards and get those individual fires burning as one for the betterment of the team.

Her birthday wish: Motivational posters for my wall, please. For Christmas: Keep them coming, please. She wanted all of it, plastered floor to ceiling, to take it in every day, to get the flame burning hotter, then even hotter.

"I remember so clearly she was doing six-days-a-week soccer. It was a grind, at least I thought it was a grind just getting her to the soccer field six days a week," says Molly. "There was never one time that she ever complained or didn't want to go.

"For Haley and basketball, there were days when you're tired or have too much homework or you just want to go to the mall with your friends. For Macey, there was never a time she didn't want to go to the soccer field. That was my first realization that she's wired a little differently than other pre-teen girls."

Brock remembers family trips to spring training, one of his favorite weeks every year, doing his radio show for the Seattle Mariners, setting up the broadcast table outside the clubhouse and having players sit down for interviews.

One day Kyle Seager was on. During his seven- or eight-minute interview, there was Macey, juggling a soccer ball on the grass nearby, the ball never hitting the ground, pulling it off like it was nothing at all.

When the interview concluded, Seager looked at Brock and asked, "Am I supposed to think that's normal? What was that?" "That's Macey," he replied. "She sets her mind to something and really doesn't let go of it."

She had the Huard mindset, as Metzger calls it, and then she had the benefit of being No. 2, and don't think that birth order doesn't matter, that each child will be who they were supposed to be no matter what, that environment has no influence.

Brock has seen it in his decades around sports, how birth order impacts the child. Heck, he lived it, his older brother Damon setting the standard, then Brock and then Luke fighting to surpass it, all highly successful athletes in the end because of it.

"I'm a big believer in all my years doing this that birth order is a big deal," he says. "First born vs. middle kids vs. the youngest of five. I watched my older brother and chased after him, then my little brother outperformed both Damon and me at the high school level.

"Those second-borns, they want to catch the oldest and compete with them and be better than them. There is usually a pretty good drive in the younger sibling. Macey has been chasing big sis since Day 1."

But who starts devouring Kobe Bryant videos, not highlights of his best plays or best dunks but of him detailing how he goes about setting up his days to get the most out of them, so that no ounce of potential goes untapped, in middle school?

Who goes out to the family's sport court at their then home near Seattle and begins what should be a 15-minute ball-handling routine, this after she finally traded in the soccer ball for a basketball, and doesn't stop until it's perfect, no matter the weather, no matter if it takes one hour, two, three?

"Why would I not go after something? I don't want to ever look back on my life and be like, I'm not as good as I could have been," Macey says. "I want to reach my full potential. I don't want to look back and think there was something else I could have done."

She says that became her driving force in the sixth grade. Or right about the time this began to shift from a soccer story to a basketball tale, Huard growing out of her beloved center-forward position on the soccer field and, hey, her coach asked, how about trying some time at goalkeeper? Nope.

And her mom, hearing that her second daughter wanted to be a college athlete one day, gently making the case for basketball, where her eventual 6-foot-2 frame would be put to best use.

Soccer's loss was basketball's gain. She changed sports but kept the mentality.

"The desire to be great isn't rare," says Jessika Caldwell, the girls' basketball coach at Valor Christian in Colorado, where the Huards would move in the summer of 2020. "It's the execution that's rare.

"Everybody sets out to want to be good and use their talents to the best of their abilities. Macey puts that into action. She has the desire and she acts upon it. That's what sets her apart and why she continues to grow."

Third-year Montana coach Brian Holsinger, who has coached Haley the last two years, heard from Brock and Molly that Macey, while he was recruiting her, was different. Not different than her sister, different than most anyone the Lady Griz coach has ever recruited.

Didn't they know he's been coaching collegiately for more than two decades? That he spent eight years at Washington State, five more at Oregon State? He took it with a grain of salt, just parents being parents. Then he learned for himself. Oh.

"She has a unique work ethic, one I've only seen maybe in a handful of players I've ever coached," he says. "She knows what she wants. She wants to be great and is going to do whatever it takes to be great."

He heard it, now he's learning it, like the time last month, the Friday before the season's first official practice on Monday, when his phone pinged with a text. It was after 7 p.m., time to be chilling for a typical college freshman. Not this one.

It was raining, the roof of the West Auxiliary Gym was leaking, right onto the floor. So, Huard set out a bucket and let her coach know. Just like the time she let him know that the shooting guns used by Montana's men's and women's players during their individual workouts were on the verge of breaking.

Can't have that!

Those off-hour shooting sessions, long after everyone else has gone home or in the morning, before everyone has arrived, used to belong to Libby Stump, who has never met a basket she didn't want to become intimate friends with, spend extra time with.

"You have to have so much respect for Macey because of how much sweat she is putting in the bucket and how much she cares and how much she wants to be a great basketball player," Stump says.

"I love it. I love playing with teammates who care just as much, who love the extra work, the grind, the before and after practice. All that hard work is coming to fruition already. She is scoring well as a freshman in October at the college level."

The family with the name famous throughout Seattle packed its bags for Colorado in the summer of 2020, after Haley's junior year at Eastlake High, where she won a state title as a sophomore, and after Macey's freshman year at the Bear Creek School, where she had a 48-point game.

They joined Caldwell's program at Valor Christian and helped the program win a state title in 2020-21, going 17-0 in a shortened season, the sisters' only year playing together on the same team.

"The first thing I was struck with Macey was her focus and intensity and tenacity to want to be great," says Caldwell.

Open periods in the classroom would lead to Huard in the gym with her coach, who played at Baylor and later professionally. "She has the ability to hear hard things and say, okay, that's an area of weakness. Not everybody wants to hear the harder stuff. She doesn't take it personally.

"It's more, okay, what do I do about it? Show me and teach me the skills and ways I can get better. Then she does that."

She was on the trip to Missoula when her sister committed to the Lady Griz, when the program had an interim coach, before Holsinger had been hired, just before the family moved to Colorado.

The family was walking across the footbridge spanning the Clark Fork near campus when Macey made her own announcement. "I looked at my mom and said, 'I know it's your dream for us to play together, but it will never happen. I want to go do my own thing.'"

Okay!

That she is here can be broken down into five points.

1. Sibling relationships change over time and with separation. "As the girls have grown up, they've gotten closer," says Molly. "They get along better now than they did when they were pre-teens. There is a mutual love and respect that has grown over time. They've become each other's best friend."

Caldwell adds, "They just complement each other really well. Game-wise there are some similarities. They are complementary in their mentalities. Haley brings a lightness to Macey and Macey brings that fierce competitiveness to Haley.

"Macey not playing with her sister the last two years, I think she missed that. She got a taste of that, of having that person in your corner regardless and bringing out a side of you that not a lot of people can because they know you."

Holsinger says, "There are so many great things about playing with your sister that you'll never get to experience if you go somewhere else. This is a cool moment for them to really enjoy each other."

2. Macey knew what she would be getting with Montana. She had an insider like no other, someone who would tell her everything, the good and everything else. No secrets.

"When you go through the recruiting process, so many coaches say the same thing. It's hard to decipher what's truth and what's not. The longer it went, the more she kept hearing the same thing, Montana appealed to her more and more," says Molly.

"She knew what she had at Montana, so there was a level of trust there. She knew what she heard from Haley and knew what she'd seen with her own eyes. She knew what Montana was."

She made Power 5 visits, had Power 5 offers, especially after excelling with Colorado Premier on the Nike circuit, then Hardwood Elite on the Adidas circuit.

"The biggest thing was seeing other places and how they did it and realizing the grass isn't greener over there and not needing to buy into all the hype or the perception of some of those places," says Brock.

"We're fortunate to have a family that is very close. It's easy to see when it's not a great dynamic on a team, some sour relationships. You're not seeing that in Missoula. You have players who get along, girls who come from really good families, things Brian preaches through the recruiting process.

"Macey realized everything she wanted was right here."

3. Lady Griz fans, take a bow (or: all a bigger gym means is more empty space if it's not a program that's being supported).

"When Molly played at Washington, they were outdrawing the boys, getting, six, seven, eight thousand," says Brock. "There is an incredible amount of time and investment you're going to make and it's really important that you go to a place where people care.

"That was a huge part of Haley's decision-making. She wanted to go someplace where it matters. That realization also hit Macey."

4. The big time is where you make it. Robin Selvig won 865 games at Montana, won 24 conference championships, took his Lady Griz teams to 21 NCAA tournaments, six times advanced with a win. It's a program resume that a majority of Power 5-level programs would love to be able to brag about.

Has the program slipped since he retired in the summer of 2016? No doubt. Has Holsinger embraced that history, accepted the challenge of returning the Lady Griz to greatness? No doubt. It's taken time, as everyone knew it would, but his third team is stocked with talent.

"I had an offer from North Carolina but I still chose here," said Macey. "I just believe in what we're building here. I believe it when I come out and see the talent we have on the floor."

5. Brian Holsinger, big-time recruiter. "Brian went really hard. He recruited as hard as any coach I've ever seen in any sport," says Brock. "He is a relentless, relentless recruiter.

"That's how this type of recruiting class ends up there when they had a lot of other options at a lot of other places. He knows if they are going to take that next step and get to the tournament, you need Power 5 girls to be able to do that, and this class has some."

And so, Macey Huard is here, part of the Lady Griz, both 1/16th of the team, her own person, her own player, and one-half of the Huard tandem. She is embracing both.

"There was a lot of me that wanted to go do my own thing for a while. I'm not going to lie. Now that I'm here, it's just different. You won't get that anywhere else. To be able to accomplish things with Haley is cooler than doing things yourself," she says.

"I've also learned that you can do your own thing even with your sister here. You don't have to be in her shadow. I can have my own success that has nothing to do with her. Brian wants me to have my own experience, which I really appreciate."

You ask to look at her hands, at her fingers, and she shows you the results of her labor. Right there, on the pad, is a long gash, not a cut as much as a break in the skin from too much time with the ball, the skin getting pulled until it tears. The plight of a baller.

She makes no apologies. "I'm good with how I am. I like the way I'm wired for sure. People think I'm crazy for how much I'm in the gym, but this is how it's always been," she says.

Just a keeper of the flame, passed down from a youth soccer coach, the light pointing the way forward, just as it did for her dad.

"I see a lot of myself in him. When you have something, just going after it with everything you have. That's what I see in him. Whatever challenge he has in front of him, he just goes after it as hard as he can," she says.

"That's how I see myself too, especially with basketball. I'm just going to go after it. I want it really bad."

When it's over? Well, there is going to have to be something, some sort of outlet. She mentions college basketball coach. So does her mom. "Maybe doing triathlons, still competing in a physical exertion-type of way. That's just been her since Day 1," Molly says.

"It's all self-motivated. Kind of fun as a parent but also a little concerning when the drive is that intense. That is some of Brock for sure, what allowed him to go as far in athletics as he did."

The blond Mamba Mentality. It just fits. Inherited at birth, gifted by a youth coach, then developed on her own, one shot in the gym, one day at a time.

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