2024 GoGriz.com Person of the Year

This guy comes into your life. This coach. This force of nature. Maybe you see him for the first time at a home game, the way he doesn't so much cross the field, from locker room to far sideline, as much as he nearly skips atop the grass, his mortal body doing its best to contain the energy stored within, a wellspring of vitality that allows him to Harbaugh his way through the day, attacking his waking hours with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind. It's not his approach to game day. It's his approach to life.

Maybe you see a clip of one of his press conferences, where he takes a question about an upcoming opponent, basic, routine stuff, about some random early-season match, and finds a way to turn it into a passionate take on his team, his players, his program, the quest for greatness, the chase for championships, the type of answer that has the on-site TV guys doing chest bumps and you, sitting in your chair somewhere, ready to run through a wall for the guy, this coach, this force of nature.

And you wonder: who is this? And if you had no other option than to get sucked into his gravitational pull, this proton in a profession of so many electrons, this coach who preaches joy over winning, knowing the former will lead to the latter, family over self, what chance or choice do the best soccer players have when he makes that first recruiting phone call, has them matching his energy five minutes in and believing they can change the world together before they hang up?

What chance, then, did she have, this girl, this student at Bemidji State, once he zeroed in on her nearly two decades ago? She was an exercise science major. He was a graduate assistant coach for the school's women's soccer team. It's as good a place as any for this story to begin, this campus sitting aside Lake Bemidji, a school in northern Minnesota that both dreads the approaching winter but longs for it as well, the lake finally freezing over, a brand-new parking lot emerging once the ice is plowed.

He remembers the day he had to deliver some records to the student health center. She was manning one of the windows. He was in line, fingers crossed that hers would open at the time he reached the front. It did. He broke the ice, in a manner of speaking. Later, at a bar, one night when they both were out, he had one of his players, who was doing a senior research project with the girl, break it even further. So, Aryn, there's this guy.

As these things tend to go, she remembers it differently, how he set up at the bar directly behind her, intentionally positioning himself in such a way that a physical bump-in was inevitable, unavoidable, once she turned to go somewhere else. Showing his early acumen for X's and O's, it worked to perfection, just as he drew it up in his mind. So sorry. Please forgive me. Sure, I'll talk. Where are you from? "He launched into his story, which is a lot when you meet somebody for the first time," she says.

Here's what he told her: Born in Poland, escaped a few years later in a bit of cloak-and-dagger, mother and son getting out first, father later, a year at a refugee camp in Italy, then on to South Africa, then to Australia, how he left home late in his teenage years with nothing more than a suitcase in his hand, a dream in his mind and the belief that America was going to be his personal land of opportunity.

How he was planning on becoming a soccer coach.

"And … what else?" she asked, as if her future husband and today one of the best in the country at what he does had just told her he was going to learn how to ride a unicycle or how to play the piano or become proficient at the yo-yo. Like, what are you going to do for your real job, during the day, before you coach soccer in your spare time? We can forgive her, this girl of northern Minnesota, who grew up where hockey is king and everything else is secondary. And after that, at the very bottom of the list, came soccer, a sport not played at any school anywhere near her hometown of Ely. Population (people): maybe 3,000. Population (mosquitoes): 4,274,792,293 (approximate). Population (soccer players): what, you never learned how to skate?

"You can do that as your full-time job? I was completely naïve to it. He assured me you can and make a living at it," she says. She was drawn in first by his accent, a multinational mishmash packaged in a verbal bundle of excitement in a land of reserved Scandinavians, where any talk beyond the bare minimum is viewed as ostentatious. "Anyone in Bemidji with an accent is going to stand out. I found him so fascinating and so interesting compared to anyone else I had ever met in northern Minnesota."

She was on her own career path, the senior exercise-science major who had been chosen from her cohorts for a sought-after internship at the local hospital, doing things she loved more than she thought possible for something that held the title of "job," which led to an offer of employment. Her path was set. His? Not so much. He had a two-year GA on his resume and not much else. But by then she had learned what we all have over the last seven years, as he's led the Montana soccer program to seven Big Sky Conference championships, that Chris Citowicki is hard to resist. Get close enough, feel that pull, and you want to get on board and go for the ride of your life.

Where would he and his profession, his climbing of the collegiate soccer ladder, take her? She didn't care. She just wanted to be a part of it.

"The more I got to know him and his passion and his hard work for being a coach, I was like, he's going to be great and do great things," says Aryn. "I had no doubt he was going to go off and be this wonderful coach. Yeah, I'll hop on that boat with you." That was nearly 20 years ago. "I wouldn't change anything. Life with Chris and being a part of these programs, it truly feels like one big adventure. It's made it so easy to support him and be on this journey with him because this profession brings him so much joy and it brings so much joy to those around him. At the end of the day, I feel honored to be in the realm of what he's doing. I really think it's amazing. It's all worth it."

The 2024 GoGriz.com Person of the Year hardly needs any justification. Or introduction. He's led his program to seven championships over seven seasons, the Grizzlies winning either a regular-season or tournament title in six of the seven autumns he's been on campus, dare we say a Selvig-like start to his career. His teams have lost only eight regular-season league matches in seven seasons, something almost impossible to pull off in a sport as fickle as soccer, where a team dominating and losing happens with frustrating regularity. Over the last two seasons? His teams went 13-0-3 in league, becoming the first program in Big Sky history to pull that feat off, back-to-back unbeaten seasons.

"Winning is hard. Winning consistently is harder. Winning consistently at a championship level is hardest. There is hard, harder and hardest, and he's accomplished all of those things," says Montana women's basketball coach Brian Holsinger. "The consistency of how he wins over and over is really impressive. It takes a lot of hard work, it takes great recruiting, it takes a great staff. It talks all of the things he's developed here to do what he's done. It's honestly amazing."

Equally amazing? That he saw this progression, from contender to domination, coming from the day he accepted the job back in the spring of 2018. "I know that if I am in the right athletic department with the right people, and if they believe in what we're doing, then I can be successful no matter where I am," he said at the time. "If you sit down with me and talk about the approach I'm going to take and my philosophy and my vision and how I'm going to operate my program, you can feel the energy and the passion. I'll show you what it's going to be like and have you buying into the dream."

She saw it before he had ever coached a game at Montana, Betsy Duerksen, the program's founder, who led the Grizzlies to a record of 117-69-7 over its first decade, then landing in Southern Cal, where she was when she bumped into Citowicki not long after he'd been hired by Montana, in her neck of the woods for one of his first recruiting events as the Grizzlies' new coach. After she led the program from nothing to NCAA tournaments in 1999 and 2000, she watched from a distance as Montana went to just one more, in 2011, when she ran into Citowicki that day.

If there has ever been a second-coming of the Duerksen Era, we're in it, Citowicki having taken the program to three more NCAA tournaments, half of the program's six in its history. "He depicts the image of what it was like at the start of the program. He has that positive energy that is so essential for success in athletics. He has a really good balance of wanting to win and being competitive and working hard to be successful but also he has the bigger picture of the entire student-athlete in mind, who cares about the girls and wants them to be successful in all aspects of their lives and wants to teach them values that will stick with them the rest of their lives."

But did anyone see this, the jump the program has taken the last two seasons? Victories over Oklahoma and Oregon State, a home draw with Ohio State, a match that drew nearly 2,000 fans, nearly double the previous record, a program that would twice be an NCAA statistical leader, one that was ranked in the West Region all 11 weeks this past fall? That they've done it with a suffocating defense – 19 goals allowed in 38 matches the last two seasons – only makes it more frustrating for their opponents. Most have been overwhelmed as much as they've been defeated, shaking their heads afterwards, asking themselves, how are they so good?

He's done it long enough now at Montana, with enough class and professionalism, that he thinks the program has made the leap from one to the other, from opponents hating you for winning so much to respecting you for winning so much, at least moving that direction grudgingly.

He knew he could do it here because he did it there, at St. Catherine, a Division III school in Minnesota, inheriting a half-in, half-out kind of team, owners of a part-time investment in the program, going 1-17-0 with what he had to work with that first season, in 2011, then slowly turning things around, leading the program to its first-ever Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference playoff appearance in 2015, a postseason win in 2016. Who said it couldn't be done? Not him, not ever.

"His ideas were massive, his dreams and goals were massive," says Nina Bukowski, who played on Citowicki's first four teams at St. Kate's. "Players were lacking motivation prior to him coming. They were really comfortable with their spots on the team and how the coach was coaching them." Then this guy comes into your life, this coach, this force of nature. "Chris had a lot more energy, a lot more passion about wanting the program to do well, wanting the players to love being there. He was really good at seeing the potential in somebody, then building them."

If you think Citowicki was born to coach, you'd be mistaken. It took a lot of fortunate turn of events, of finding the right coaches at the right time on his own journey through the profession. Oh, he was going to be successful at something, whatever line of work he chose, of that there is no doubt. Luckily for us and the growing list of players he's impacted, he chose to pursue coaching, then did that thing he likes to do, which is not let anything get in his way on his path toward being the best at it.

"He just had ambition, desire and drive," says Greg Holker, the men's soccer coach at Augsburg, another Twin Cities school in the MIAC and another person Citowicki used as an important handhold as he pulled himself up the coaching ladder. "He really took ownership of his own development. I reference Chris with my young grad assistants and staff members all the time. Look, you can set aside as much time as you want to meet with me and pick my brain. None of them do it anywhere near the level Chris did.

"He would set aside an hour a week and we'd end up taking two hours, where he just had questions, and they weren't surface-level questions. They were layered, which means he had to spend a lot of time thinking about the possibilities of what might be. It was program-level, not just about running a training session. We talked tactics but it had more to do with program structure and leadership, development, those spaces."

He's had his coaching hiccups, something everyone in the profession has dealt with, his being early on when he thought he might be too much for his players, all this energy and enthusiasm and this win-the-day mentality. He consciously stepped back, let others take over that role and be the primary voice, hid his lamp that shines so brightly under a bushel lest he burn the whole thing down and take the players who didn't share his passion right alone with it.

What he learned: He didn't need to change. He just needed to find players wired like him, who hold the same values he does. Only then would this whole thing be set free. He needed time at Montana, to find those players, get them here, make them feel invested, as much as he is. The last two years? You've been warned. This is only the start. Protons, by their nature, resist other protons. Not in this case. He's got a bunch of himself running around out there, winning matches with regularity.

"I say to our senior players, I don't want you corralling the team as leaders. I want you to be such a gravitational pull that everybody gets sucked in toward you," he says. Uh-oh, now he's on a roll, like at his press conferences. Hold on. We can't be sure where this train of his thoughts is heading, but it's going to be entertaining and likely end with some goosebumps.

"We pulled it off (at St. Kate's). It's the same thing we're pulling off here. Don't tell us we can't do something. The next belief in the program is 'no limitations.' Zero. That's the piece that hooks the right person for me every single time. I'll win (the conference) all the time if you'll let me. Come and take it from me. You can't have an NWSL player coming out of Montana? Why? Don't tell me I can't do things. Ever. It's just so motivating to me to do it anyway."

That NWSL player? That would be Taylor Hansen. She's never met Bukowski, but they are part of the same sisterhood, players who were one thing when they arrived in his program, something different after following the Gospel of Chris for a number of years.

"With Chris, there are no limits," says Hansen, who played in three NCAA tournaments as a Grizzly under Citowicki before getting picked up by the NWSL. "That's what makes him such an amazing coach. When he looks at you, he doesn't see any limits. He has a way of making you believe in yourself and what's possible.

"The players (on my teams) came together as a unit and we had that unstoppable mindset. It showed in what we accomplished. It comes from the standards that he sets in place. His big saying was, be the woman you're supposed to be. That's the mindset that he slowly put into all of us. That's the stuff that carries over in times when you need it, the grit, the determination, looking at a teammate and saying, I'm going to play so hard for you. It's stuff you can't train on the field."

But that's where this all manifests, on the field, with three NCAA tournament appearances in four seasons, teams that have lost only five games the last two years, everybody with two feet in. It's 2024, the age of the transfer portal, and not a single Montana Grizzly can be found on the list of hundreds and hundreds looking for something different, not one believing it might be better somewhere else. That's what he's created.

"As an athletic director, the goal is to stand back, support and let the coaches run their programs. Chris is a model for that. He's become the model of consistency," says Montana AD Kent Haslam, who hired Citowicki in 2018. "It's been fun to watch him succeed, watch the way he builds a program, then motivates the team to succeed. It's fun to watch how he coaches them, how competitive he is.

"Naturally we're drawn toward successful people, people we want to emulate, people we want to be around. Chris is that type of person. The energy, the optimism, it's infectious."

To see a Montana soccer team out on the field, the way it plays for each other, the way it can adapt to what its opponent is doing, the way it wins, the way it wins with so much joy, so much camaraderie, so much one-ness, is to see back in time, to Citowicki's year at North Dakota working for the mad scientist, Chris Logan, to his time at St. Catherine, where he was given the opportunity to learn this head coaching thing on the fly by Eric Stacey, the athletic director who hired Citowicki and has been cheering for his success ever since the coach left in 2017, to Augsburg and those hours spent in Holker's office, to Bemidji State, where he stepped into college coaching for the first time as a graduate assistant, being led, providentially, to a coach, Jim Stone, who gave this whole upwards trajectory its first big push, who took Citowicki's natural fuel and applied the first spark.

Citowicki, then, is a sum of these parts, each with their own stamp on what he's doing today and will be doing for years to come. But before he landed at Bemidji State, before he landed at Lock Haven, the school situated right in the center of Pennsylvania, where he believed he'd be playing college soccer, before he was in Australia or South Africa, before he picked up this sport that didn't care about his history or nationality, only that he loved its potential to bring people together, Citowicki was a child whose parents just wanted to get out of communist Poland.

They did, in shifts, Chris, then two-years-old, and his mom, Gosia, decamping first, taking a "trip" to Italy from which they knew they would never return, the boy's aunts and uncles and cousins, so many of them, being left behind. Konrad, the father, later joining them, a family of three surviving on its own, those ties to home and loved ones fully severed in the search of a better life, first at a refugee camp in Italy for a year, then to South Africa, then to Australia, a second son, Philip, being born along the way.

Everywhere the boy looked, at classmates at school, at soccer teammates, on television – or maybe that was just where his eye was drawn, given its void in his own life – were families, big, happy ones, extended ones, everyone getting together for birthdays, for holidays, at Christmas, the gatherings always fun, festive, the best. For the most part, he had his parents, his brother, this small band surviving together. He figures it was at the age of 11 when he first started to have the longing, this need to be surrounded by a huge family of his own one day.

"It's clearly hard-wired into me," he says. "For so long, I was alone, alone in a small group. When it was Christmas, it was just the three of us. It wasn't like the Christmas you'd see on TV." To see his teams today is to see that need being filled on a daily basis, on a smaller scale at the home he shares with Aryn and their two children, Vivia and Sebastian, on a larger scale when he gets to go to practice, to be around his people, on the field, in the locker room, on road trips. Gets to. Never has to.

"I want that family culture because I never had one growing up, that big family feel. We never had it because we left home. That's why I love going to training every day, when we're all together. Everybody yearns for something. Clearly it's that piece for me. I want to be surrounded by a large group of people. That's why I love walking into the locker room. These are my people. It's so great. It means a ton to me."

He had no idea he would find that happiness in coaching the day he left Australia, literally him and a suitcase, bound for this new place, Lock Haven University, where he'd be able to begin his American journey by playing soccer and getting a college education. The soccer part lasted all of preseason his freshman year, his semi-professional experience in Australia catching up to him courtesy of the school's compliance office. Yeah, you're not eligible.

His coach had a question: Since he couldn't play it, did Citowicki think he might want to coach it, at least give it a try with the local club? No. He was asked again. No. He was asked again. No, not at all interested. Finally: okay, I'll give it a shot but I'm telling you I'm not going to like it. I love to play it, not coach it.

Those nine- and 10-year-old boys, wherever they are now, have no idea what they unlocked that day, unleashed on the soccer world. "I knew I had found what I was meant to do when I stepped on the field. I had zero anxiety. For some reason that was the only setting I had ever been in where everybody stopped talking and listened to me and did exactly what they were supposed to do," he says. "I was able to help them get better, which made me feel good, then they started feeling better. I thought, this is exactly what I want to do."

He left the field in his soft-topped Jeep, his heart pounding, his mind racing, the future he thought he had mapped out crumpled up and tossed out the window. This was it. Coaching. He knew he had found his life's calling. "This is exactly what I want to do. The way I feel today about practice is exactly how I felt that day. I hadn't felt that way in any other setting, in any other kind of work. Nothing made me feel like that."

He had the passion but not yet the depth. Coaching then was putting his boys through drills, helping them improve, helping them win games, surface-level stuff. He first learned about the profession's greater potential when he saw the movie "Miracle," how Herb Brooks used more than drills to turn a bunch of college kids into a cohesive hockey team that would win a gold medal in 1980 in Lake Placid. "That was it. I want to chase that. I knew then there was more to this than developing kids and playing soccer," he says.

But: uh-oh. There was a clock ticking down in his own life. He was in the U.S. on a student visa. Unless he found a way to continue being a student, he was going to have to pack his bag and return to Australia. He turned to the NCAA's website and searched "soccer" and "graduate assistant" and got a long list of available positions, men's and women's programs. He thinks he applied to every single one of them. The dream was alive and he would chase it anywhere, even Bemidji.

Stone, who isn't much older than Citowicki, played collegiately at Concordia College, another of the Division III schools in Minnesota. He graduated in 1998 and by 2002 was the head coach at Bemidji State, after giving coaching his own shot at high schools in Fargo, N.D., just across the river from Concordia's campus in Moorhead, Minn.

"There was a learning curve for me early on. I was coaching JV girls soccer and was kind of hit with a few things that were kind of a shock. In the men's game, this would not have been happening," he recalls. "I had to kind of take that in and wrestle with it."

Stone was a PK before he ever attempted a PK as a player or tried to instruct one as a coach: a pastor's kid. He used that as a foundation as he went about coaching, balancing soccer with a relational approach to his job. "I think that made it a natural fit. My lens into the world was a faith-based lens, a Biblical lens," he says. "People need things regardless of who they are and where they come from. Everyone has a desire for love and relationship. I think that's how God created us. I definitely took that with me to Bemidji State."

After going 4-12-0 in 2002 and 5-13-1 in 2003 in his first two seasons, Stone and his Beavers have been their own model of consistency, 16 times in the last 20 seasons winning 10 or more matches, Stone five times being voted his conference's coach of the year.

Back in 2006, his program was coming off a breakthrough season, BSU going 12-4-7 in 2005. That's when his advertisement for a graduate assistant coach was answered by some guy in Pennsylvania who hadn't even played college soccer.

"I'd look at it as God's plan, but honestly I was kind of living off the 'beggars can't be choosers' model. It's not like I had applicants pouring in," Stone says. "We were living by that model recruiting-wise early on as well. But to have Chris come to Bemidji, what a blessing that was. Total home run."

Citowicki didn't know anything about Bemidji or Stone or the Beavers, but he knew this would extend his student visa and that Bemidji was in Minnesota, and Herb Brooks was from Minnesota, so how could this be wrong? What he didn't know is how impactful those two years, 2006 and '07, would be, not only personally – hey, who's that cute girl behind the window? – but professionally. This would be Citowicki's first time coaching at the collegiate level, his first time coaching college-aged women and he had stumbled upon someone who would give Citowicki his first big building blocks for his own career.

"His expertise was building culture. Talk about the perfect person to work for for a first timer," says Citowicki. "He won me over with his soccer knowledge, then to see how he was toward his players, how you can love and care for people, it's the first time seeing, oh, you can win without being a tool? You can actually be nice, a good, solid, caring person and still get high-level results? Okay, that's really interesting."

Most coaches had told him, you have to put in the work. Work, work, work. That's what separated winning from losing, good teams from great teams. Stone showed him there was a different way: we need to care for these players. If we do that, we can get the most out of them. "He always viewed them as people first, not players. That was my first eye-opening experience with that. Then I thought maybe that was normal at the college level. Turns out I had stepped into a very different field. It fit with me. Of all the places in the whole country that had an opening at the time I had to find a job before my visa expires and I get kicked back home, Bemidji? With Jim Stone? Which triggers the rest of my career? How on earth does that happen?"

If this was an awakening, an enlightenment, all it did was add to Citowicki's natural curiosity. He applied his usual energy and enthusiasm and off the pair went. "Probably never met anyone as passionate about the game or passionate period," says Stone. "Lots of energy, incredible enthusiasm. Mind's going a million miles an hour, he's throwing ideas out left and right, almost quicker than we could implement them. The guy just had a passion for people and the game and to teach it."

Stone and Citowicki won 19 games over two seasons, and Citowicki won his future wife's heart, convincing her, after their relationship had grown deeper, to take a leap of faith. And what a leap it would be, from her professional options, which offered security and stability, to his, which is to say he didn't have any at the moment. And if something did come his way, his job performance would fall upon his ability to lead two dozen girls in this sport she knew nothing about. Okay!

"Chris, in a very direct and forward way, had a conversation with me of, is this what you want? Because this is going to be a huge commitment, not only from me but from you as well," she says. "My mom and dad knew Chris. They both saw this spark that he had. We all went all-in on his dream, and I accepted that my dreams were going to be put on hold."

It's been nearly two decades now for the girl who didn't know coaching soccer was actually a thing a guy might do full-time and not something in his spare time. Now she knows there is no spare time, not for a college coach. He's missed one game in his career, the day after Sebastian was born, and there was Citowicki, on the phone with his assistant the entire game, doing what he could to honor both commitments, his families, small and large. If he's ever missed a practice, she doesn't remember it.

"It's a unique experience to be married to a coach. It's not your typical 9 to 5. When he gets home, it never stops. It's texts, it's emails, it's watching film," Aryn says. "In the earlier years, when I was trying to figure it all out, it was like, can't we have some boundaries here? After a while, this job just became part of our life, our marriage. It's me, Chris, the kids and the soccer program," the fifth seat at the dinner table, needing its own attention. Accept that or it doesn't work.

Where to start, where to start? Hey, Shattuck-St. Mary's School in Faribault, in southern Minnesota, a boarding school (and future home of one Sydney Haustein) had an opening for its director of soccer. Citowicki put his best self forward on paper and was summarily dismissed. And therein lies the challenge for Citowicki, whether it was applying for jobs back then or today going after recruits others in his position might view as unattainable. He just needs a chance. Him. Not a letter, an email, a text. Him, either in person or over the phone. Words on a piece of paper or on a screen can't come close to getting it done, can't possibly produce the full Citowicki effect.

Even today, he just can't give up that initial phone call to a recruit, can't pass it off to an assistant coach so they can tell the player what the program's head coach is like. "Every single person in this program was first talked to by me. I can't let that go," he says. "That's the entry point to see who they are and for them to see who I am. Nobody else can share me the same way I can share myself."

That was the issue at Shattuck, his cover letter only getting him maybe 10 percent of the way there. He had no shot, unless he did something about it.

"I taught for 20 years here, a seminar class, and used Chris as an example," says Stone. "When he got denied, when he got told no, he reached out and told them, I'll come interview on my own dime. Just give me 30 minutes, an opportunity. He put a presentation together, made some handouts and went down there and knocked their socks off and ended up with the position. That's just who Chris is. I taught in that seminar that in the real world, persistence pays off. You have to dig and grind and pursue things if you want them to happen. Chris was just not going to give up."

Chris and Aryn were 25 and 23 and provided with housing by Shattuck-St. Mary's and a small stipend. "We thought that was just amazing, that we'd made it," Aryn says. But the elders at the Episcopal-affiliated school weren't going to stand by and watch as these unmarried love bugs cozied up in any housing they were providing, and Citowicki did need his green card, so in front of her mom and his aunt, they got married at the local courthouse. A year later, on Shattuck's campus and with a bulk of their guests not knowing any different, the couple went through it again in a more public setting.

"I'm glad the way we did it," Aryn says. "It was so intimate and personal at the courthouse. Then when we did the big wedding, there weren't any nerves. It was about celebrating and having fun. I wouldn't have done it any other way."

But that position had a ceiling and Citowicki, after time, had reached it. He wanted to get back in the college game.

There are giants in the coaching profession, of any sport, those who hold easy name recognition. Then there are those who do it in the shadows, at lower NCAA levels, coaches who are just as good but do it without the fanfare. Larry Zelenz was one of those, coaching men's soccer at Division III Gustavus Adolphus in Minnesota for 24 years, going 280-114-44 and winning seven MIAC regular-season championships, four playoff titles. It's who Greg Holker, now the men's coach at Augsburg, played for, earning All-MIAC honors as a senior, then spent two seasons soaking up everything he could as an assistant.

Holker, just four years after graduating, took over the moribund program at Augsburg in 2004, inheriting a program that had gone 7-70-3 in MIAC matches over the previous eight seasons. Like Stone was in the process of doing at Bemidji State, Holker performed his own program resurrection. By Year 3, in 2006, Augsburg would go 13-3-3 and Holker was voted the MIAC coach of the year. Winning is all he's done since, taking the Auggies to three NCAA tournaments. After 21 years at the school, he is within six wins of 200 for his career.

Holker may have ultimately figured it out on his own, but playing under Zelenz, then seeing behind the curtain for two seasons as an assistant at his alma mater, gave him a running start in his first role as head coach.

"Learning from Larry and watching his organizational model was a really valuable thing for me," Holker says. "It was obvious to me that Larry was organized and had a real good structure and had a plan." Holker took what he learned, combined it with his own strengths, and the Augsburg program, which hadn't won more than seven matches in a season from 1980 until Holker's third year, in 2006, hasn't been the same since.

"I've always been a pretty strategic guy. That characteristic probably led me to a little bit of a perfectionist mentality," he says. "I love control, which isn't always a great thing, but there were elements of operating a program that if I could get control of and be responsible for, the more things I felt I had my hands on, that would help the program collectively."

Citowicki would land at the school as an assistant coach for the women's program in 2010, the year Holker was leading the men's team to a 16-win season and the second round of the NCAA tournament. Citowicki was all-in on the women's team but couldn't take his eyes off what was happening just down the hallway in the men's program, not just how the Auggies were winning but how Holker was doing it, how he had a Program, not just a program.

"He was a massive influence on me," Citowicki says of Holker. "What Jim was doing culture-wise (at Bemidji State), (Holker) was doing professional-wise. When I sit here today and say I want to run the best women's soccer program in the nation, that's all influenced by him. He is running an absolute machine. Every little nook and cranny has been looked into. He's maximizing every component of the business. I would stare across the hallway and think, that's so cool. I was drawn like a moth to that flame."

They were two peas of the same pod, Citowicki recognizing it first, then Holker later as this assistant from another team kept hanging around, asking questions, wanting to learn how Holker did this and how he did that. "Chris would come home and if he had been able to go in and sit with Greg, he'd tell me all about it. He'd be so excited," says Aryn.

It's not just the control piece Citowicki picked up from Holker, having his hand in every little thing that is happening in his program or has the potential to impact it, but the maximizing piece as well. If he can do something that might make the program one percent better, 0.1 percent better, 0.01 percent better, why wouldn't he, especially in a sport with such a thin margin between winning and losing? "He's the first coach I've seen who looked at the NWSL level and said, we can do this, we can implement this," says Hansen of Citowicki. "He'd compare the two sides and say, why can't we do this? What are they doing that we are not? He spends so much time figuring out how to be great."

That pursuit of knowledge, of an edge, has him not resting on his laurels but constantly trying to be better, to become better, even at this point of his career. Most of the year, his days begin at the student rec center, the building next to the one that houses his office, where he works on both body and mind, always listening to something through his ear buds, on soccer, on leadership, on who knows what. Every moment of the day is a chance to learn, improve. "His willingness to self-reflect and adjust is really remarkable. That's not always a characteristic of people who have had success," says Haslam, Montana's AD. "He's constantly looking to himself. How can I improve, how can I make things better?"

After the 2010 season, Citowicki and Holker shook hands on a new arrangement. Citowicki would become Holker's assistant, Citowicki no longer coaching women's soccer but now the men's game.

"I saw a lot of him in me. It was really fun. When you recognize the desire to learn in an individual as early as I did with Chris, you know you have a future head coach," says Holker. "It was clear Chris wasn't in it for himself. That was the important thing for me. He believed in serving other people and he was creating the ability to do so more effectively and more broadly."

Who knows how this story would have turned out, what path it would have taken had Holker not played at Gustavus Adolphus, had Eric Stacey not played tennis for the Gusties a few years earlier, had Holker not had the quick success he experienced at Augsburg, had Citowicki not gotten on with the women's program there, had Stacey not become Director of Athletics at St. Catherine, the all-women's Catholic school not five miles from Augsburg, had Citowicki and Holker not hit it off like they had, had Stacey not reached out to Holker in 2011, putting their alma mater's unofficial slogan of "Gusties take care of Gusties" into action, had Citowicki, just a few months into his new position under Holker, not been sitting in the coach's office the same time the phone call came through, had Holker been a little more selfish and possessive, had told Stacey, You need a head women's coach? Nah, I don't know anybody like that. Sorry.

"When Eric called me, he goes, I'm looking for somebody who can do what you did at Augsburg with our women's program," Holker recalls. "I remember going, Son of a bitch. He's sitting right next to me. It would have been really rewarding for Chris and me to spend a year together, but I wasn't going to hold somebody back for self-serving purposes, but it crossed my mind, that's for sure."

St. Catherine began playing women's soccer in the MIAC in 2001. To find their position in the league over the Wildcats' first decade, it's quicker to scan the historical standings from the bottom up. St. Catherine sat in the bottom four each of those first 10 years, finishing last out of 12 teams three times and winning a grand total of 19 MIAC matches.

Stacey had big dreams for the program and now he was being advised by someone he trusted and respected that he should give this Citowicki guy a chance. At least talk to him. "Chris definitely made an instant impression. He brings genuine enthusiasm for anything he takes on. It became clear pretty quick that he was the right person to try to start turning our soccer program around," says Stacey. "We'd had some success but not a lot of competitive success, so he was taking over a program that needed to be turned about completely. It was a perfect situation for a first-year coach."

It was time. Citowicki had learned under Stone. He'd been able to try some things at Shattuck-St. Mary's. He had learned under Holker. He'd been coaching club in the Twin Cities every other waking moment. Now it was his time, his program, his future. "(Eric) could have told me, this is the worst program in the world and I would have said, 'Done! When do you want me to start? I can fix it.' I don't know if confidence was the right word, but I was ready to try. Give me a shot. I can figure it out."

Bukowski was raised in Two Harbors, Minnesota, on the north shore of Lake Superior – go up to Duluth, then keep going – started playing on her high school's varsity team as an eighth grader, committed to St. Catherine's previous coach and was a freshman at the school in 2011, the year Citowicki was hired. "Me and two other girls were recruited by (the former coach). We kind of felt dropped. Didn't know what was going to happen. Who is this new coach?"

It was Citowicki, who went from successful college programs at Bemidji State and Augsburg to one that needed a total makeover, one that had never made the MIAC playoffs, that had accepted its place in the league's hierarchy, which meant looking up at just about everybody else. "They were okay with being mediocre," says Bukowski, of the program she joined. "Chris saw so much more, and I wasn't okay with being mediocre either."

Citowicki's first go at this head coaching thing ended with St. Kate's finishing 1-17-0, with the Wildcats getting outscored 55-10. "That first season was rough, but he began finding his footing," says Aryn. "He'll admit he made a lot of mistakes along the way, figuring out how he wanted to do things, growing as a coach. How do I discipline people? How do I build my recruiting model?"

With the 2011 season behind them, the Wildcats began looking forward, began buying into everything Citowicki could see but they couldn't, the players who didn't want to invest, out, the players who wanted to follow Citowicki, in. "There was a lot of work to be done, fitness-wise, skill-wise, new standards," says Bukowski. "The new girls thought this is going to be great. We're going to be the best program in the MIAC. We believed him. It was a belief that was taking set. We wanted to be the team that was the best St. Kate's had ever seen."

When Citowicki interviewed for the job, he did so in the voices of Stone, of Holker, of other coaches who had influenced him, reciting things he had come to believe but had not yet internalized, had not yet truly made his own. On the field, he made coaching points like others would make them. "You're trying to create your own identity as a young coach but I didn't have my own voice," he says.

St. Catherine allowed him to go through the process of self-discovery. "It was kind of we were his chemistry set that he was doing experiments with, and 95 percent of the time they were the right things to do," says Stacey, his AD at the time. "It was a really good setting for him to grow very quickly."

Everything was changing. Citowicki as a coach. St. Catherine as a program. And now Aryn was pregnant with the couple's first child. Before they left the school in 2017, the second would arrive. "Those years professionally, then personally with having kids, there was so much change happening. It was so much positive change in such a short period of time," says Aryn.

What Citowicki came to learn most was that he needed to be true to himself. From the age of 11, he had wanted a big family. He had a small one at home but now he would extend that to his program. He sold that to recruits, not because he thought that's what they wanted to hear but because he wasn't going to do it any other way. If you liked that idea, great. If you didn't, maybe this isn't the program for you.

"What I figured out is you have to coach to who you are," Citowicki says. "For me, I'm a family-oriented person. Those values weren't pulled out of a hat. They're my values. They're what I believe in. That speaks to certain people. Some people hear it and say, that's not me. Others hear it and say, that's my kind of setting."

Slowly he began making recruiting inroads, goalkeeper Danielle Mendez, of Bloomington and the Academy of Holy Angels, saying yes in 2012 on a phone call to Citowicki just as he and Aryn were about to enter the Science Museum of Minnesota. What's a coach to do but scream out in pure excitement, forget where he happened to be. "He yelled in this massive four-story lobby and it echoed," recalls Aryn, still horrified at the memory but knowing that was just Chris being Chris. "He was so determined to do something with this program."

The team that had gone 1-17-0 in 2011 went 9-8-0 in 2012, making the Wildcats the most improved program in all of NCAA Division III that season. St. Kate's scored 22 goals, allowed only 25 with Mendez in goal. It wouldn't be a meteoric rise to the top of the MIAC and it wouldn't have been nearly as rewarding if it had been that easy.

"After that first year, even winning a few games, everything just felt better than the year before," says Aryn. "We were on this trajectory and I never felt like we'd go backwards. I had full trust in him and the process. The passion and the drive were always there."

In 2015, a 12-6-1 record and the program's first-ever appearance in the MIAC playoffs. In 2016, another breakthrough. An 11-6-2 season, another trip to the MIAC playoffs, this time a home game in the first round against the team that had won the playoff title the year before, Gustavus Adolphus. (OMG! What's an AD to do! So many conflicting loyalties!) St. Kate's advanced, the program that had been the game all its opponents had long circled on the schedule as an easy W, the program that took the players other MIAC programs passed on and turned them into warriors was winning in November.

"We were the rejects. Nobody wanted us. Everybody thought we're not good enough. First time we made it? Unbelievable. Still one of my all-time greatest achievements," Citowicki says. "People didn't believe in them, but if you believe in them enough, if you develop them enough, you can do some amazing things."

One of Citowicki's greatest strengths? Being present and all-in wherever he is, while also somehow being able to keep an eye on the future, on what else might be out there. Now he wanted it all. "At the end, I was trying to run the best D-III women's soccer program in the country," he says. "This is what we're doing. Do you want to be a part of it? I had evolved. I had lost Greg Holker's voice, Jim Stone's voice. I'm thankful for the influence and that they helped shape me, but this is who I am. That's what I had figured out by the end of it. I began to trust myself more."

But a guy can dream as well, and what says "dream" more than the women's soccer program at NCAA Division II Minnesota-Duluth? Athletic scholarships? In a beautiful setting? Two hours from Ely and Aryn's parents? "That was our dream job in the house for a long time. When we started having success and I learned my methods work, I started to wonder if they could work somewhere else."

The 2016 season would be his final one at St. Catherine. Citowicki had done all he could. "For some people, the right thing to do is stay in one place and build something," says Stacey. "It was clear Chris had that What else is out there? idea. That's not a bad thing. We want people to have success and have opportunities. I knew he'd be successful wherever he is because he is so genuine and so enthusiastic. That just endears him to his athletes."

What Citowicki and his players at St. Catherine built was solid and for the long haul. Under coach Jesse Campos, who Citowicki recommended as his replacement, St. Kate's won the regular-season championship in 2021 and has won the last four MIAC playoffs, becoming the first program in league history to accomplish that feat.

"If you're doing it right, when you do leave a program, you should want it to have continued success," says Stacey. "That shows more than anything the positive impact you made on a program. Chris is part of our program still."

"Chris was the catalyst to it all," says Bukowski. "That's the energy he brings, just this explosiveness. During my time, it was more of a slow burn. Now it's the wildfire that Chris wanted. I never got a MIAC championship but I'm really glad these girls can do it. If Chris hadn't shown up, we wouldn't have put in the work. If we wouldn't have had that 1-17 season, they still would be there."

"I used to tell the team, people will talk about you forever if you're the ones who get it done, if you're the ones who break through and get this thing rolling. I take a ton of pride in it," says Citowicki.

Citowicki now had Division I soccer on his mind but he knew no AD would look at his success at the Division III level and say, that's our guy. He needed an intermediate step, somewhere he could put "Division I Associate Head Coach" on his resume. What he got instead was that plus a final mentor, someone who saw the game as a chess board, who viewed the ability to adapt as not just essential but, in the end, just a lot of fun.

Citowicki met new North Dakota coach Chris Logan at a recruiting event in St. Cloud in 2017, and they got to talking. "Chattiest guy ever and I was just enamored by his X's and O's," Citowicki says. Logan had an opening on his new staff and Citowicki was ready to take on a new challenge.

Three weeks later, the Citowicki family was in a U-Haul, moving to Grand Forks, Aryn in tears the whole way. No matter where Citowicki goes in his career, nothing will ever be what St. Kate's had been to the family. "I think it will always hold a special place in both of our hearts. It was his first head coaching job but the players he brought in were such wondering people and part of our lives when our family was growing. Chris got to do the pregnancy announcements and both times everybody was crying. It felt like our family grew along with his program. I'm so grateful for that time and those people."

North Dakota would be a brief layover between Citowicki's head jobs at St. Catherine and Montana, just one season, but it was influential nonetheless. Taking a team that had gone 2-14-2 the season before, Logan and Citowicki created an 8-8-2 masterpiece. Had it not been for a 2-1 loss against the Grizzlies in Missoula that fall, the Fighting Hawks would have made the Big Sky tournament.

UND did it while playing under a head coach who was unafraid of trying new things, anything, crazy, outside-the-box things if it might give his team an edge, whether they had worked on the adjustment in a practice setting or not. "What stood out was his tactical flexibility," says Citowicki. "I thought he was insane. We're going to do a 3-4-3 with a box in the midfield. 'What!? I don't even know what that is!' Of course it works. We overperformed drastically."

It's a willingness – and a need, really, if the situation calls for it, with injuries and such – to adapt and be flexible that Citowicki carried with him to Missoula, from where he called his wife in October 2017, after his team had lost to the Grizzlies at South Campus Stadium, and told her, if this job ever opens up, this is the place for us. (He even bought a Missoula magnet when UND visited. Call it a talisman. It's still on their refrigerator today.)

The job did open up and Citowicki did interview in the spring of 2018. "Even when it opened and he applied, it still felt like an unrealistic dream," says Aryn. "I didn't get too invested. We were supposed to go to Mexico for my best friend's wedding but then he was invited (to Montana) for the interview. I ended up going to the wedding in Mexico by myself. He was really confident in how he did but he was like, I don't know, I don't know."

Remember that night at the bar in Bemidji, when Citowicki had one of his players do some reconnaissance work on his behalf as he tried to get an in with this girl from Ely? That was Megan Wallner. She was living in Missoula the day she saw the news, that Chris Citowicki was the new coach of the Grizzlies. She texted him. "A full-circle moment," says Aryn.

In the end, this is just a long love story, at its core one girl's willingness way back then to put her own dreams on hold, to go all in on a shared dream, his becoming theirs. Where were they headed? No one knew. Was it going to work out? She believed it would. But there were no assurances. Strong relationships can be forged in the pressure of the unknown, as both sides go all in, jump without knowing how long the freefall may last, if the landing would be soft or hard. You just grab the other's hand and don't look back. "(Cardiac rehab) was her passion. It was her sacrificing that," says Citowicki. "She's sacrificed a ton to allow me to chase whatever I'm chasing here."

It's given her a front-row seat to all that's happened since, their time in Bemidji, at Shattuck-St. Mary's, at Augsburg, at St. Catherine, at North Dakota, now, somehow, the time just flying by, with wins and championships piling up as a matter of routine, seven seasons into his tenure at Montana. Imagine all those highs, all those lows, all those times he came home with a problem from work and they figured it out together. No coach goes alone.

"He's more calm and thoughtful now, less reactionary," Aryn says of her husband, who's barely reached his 40s but seems to have the knowledge and experience of someone much, much older. "In his younger years of coaching, he'd be very reactive to things, whether they be good or bad. As time has gone on, he's found that being reactive isn't helpful, that it's always best to sleep on it, then make a decision and take whatever action you have to take. But for most people, as they age and gain life experience, they become less reactive."

He makes it look easy, never appearing to be weighed down by his responsibilities, by the pressure to keeping winning championships, but it isn't. Like Holker, Citowicki's fingerprints are all over everything that has to do with his program, all those same nooks and crannies examined, any rough edges sanded down, everything ordered, by his hands, to his desires, so it's maximized, fitting together perfectly. It takes his all. Then he gets home and his family asks for it as well, his all, his best. How he pulls it all off, how he keeps it all together, nobody really knows.

"Nine times out of 10, he's that energetic, full-of-life person when he walks in the door," says Aryn. "He's 100 percent engaged with the kids. He can go right into it. That part always leaves me in awe. Then one time out of 10, maybe one time during the season, he needs to be left alone. Maybe he goes for a drive or goes into our room and shuts the door for a while. Okay, you're human, Dad needs his space and we're going to give that to him. He'll let us know when he's ready." A wife fully in-tune with her husband's, this coach's, needs after all these years.

Citowicki, Stone, Holker, they all have families, they all have successful soccer programs that have been winning so much so often that it's come to be expected, expectations of their own creation, a weightiness few understand. Getting to the top of the mountain is one thing. Staying there is quite another. If only we could be part of their ongoing group text messages, where they support each other, celebrate one another in the best of times, sustain one another when they're not. But, in the end, theirs are lives none of us would be able to understand.

"A big piece of it is sharing the burden of being a coach, sharing some of those stressful moments and the frustrations and supporting each other through those lows," says Stone. "The highs are easy. Everyone is congratulating you when success has happened. When there is a struggle, some of the deeper stuff is the strength of it, the beauty of it. That's when you realize those relationships are real and important and really valuable."

This is a love story as well for him, his love of the sport, his love of creating family where one didn't exist, a team of different parts coming together to become one, everyone in it together, the team succeeding as one, dealing with heartbreak as one.

No, he wasn't born to coach, but he found along the way that for which he is best suited. "He is the smartest coach I have ever worked with," says Hansen, who would play for the Grizzlies and go on to play in the NWSL. "How to read people, who needs what, how to motivate someone to get the best out of them, how people fit with each other, how they play together on the field."

Once he discovered it at Bemidji State, this secret within coaching that is hidden from most, mainly because they can't live it like some can, he did his thesis on it. "What are the main characteristics that female student-athletes want to see from their head coach? The biggest thing is communication. Can you communicate with me and can you keep this culture together?" Citowicki says.

He did his thesis on it, then made it the foundation of his coaching philosophy, this idea of ownership and empowerment. The overbearing, unrelenting, my-way-or-the-highway coach? You won't find that in his office, in his locker room, on his field. Or shall we say their locker room, their field. He's the coach but it's their program, all of theirs, from coach to freshmen.

"It's extremely difficult and the thing we pour the most energy into. You build it over time, each individual taking it step by step by step so they can help us manage the overall feel of the entire program. You get better and better with your recruiting message, with finding the right people. They have to have the same vision for the program that I do. Then all of them are empowered to take care of this program. That's what makes it special, in my opinion. I put a lot of this on them. We're running this thing together. Please take care of it how I take care of it."

Will he be at Montana the rest of his career? Unlikely. He loves it, everything about it, but he's got those dreams that just keep getting bigger and bigger. It wasn't that long ago that he wanted to build the best Division III program in the country. Now that he's been at Montana and seen what first worked at St. Catherine can work at this level, he wants it all. He believes he can win a national championship, given the right school, program and resources. If something, someday comes along that can help him get there, he'll listen. Until then, he won't lose focus on what's directly in front of him. There are more Big Sky championships to pursue, that first NCAA tournament win.

If that day ever arrives, we just have to take the Eric Stacey approach and attitude. Good for him. He's earned it. What a legacy he'll leave behind. "He is such an in-this-moment person, but he has a vision on the horizon," says Bukowski. "Not a lot of people can do that. He's worked so hard for it and has never lost sight of it. He doesn't want to sacrifice anything, so he works really hard not to because he wants it all."

It's been a heck of a year for Citowicki. He won a Montana Washers World Championship in June. In October, his team won another Big Sky championship. Now he's got this. Chris Citowicki is the 2024 GoGriz.com Person of the Year. Quite a trifecta.

"Zero surprise at all," says Holker, when asked if he's been surprised in the least bit by the run Citowicki has gone on since he left Augsburg for St. Catherine in 2011. "I would not have expected anything less. The consistency of his success is what I'm proudest of and most excited about for him. Good coaches can get to the apex of their space, but to maintain that over the course of time, through raising a family and being a good human being, that's what impresses me the most today. But I would have expected nothing less than what he's doing."

University of Montana Athletics

Players Mentioned

Sydney Haustein

Related Videos