Why is Chloe Larsen smiling?

She's become the Kevin Bacon of Lady Griz World, the degrees of separation from Jeanne McNulty-King to just about any former Montana women's basketball player almost always countable on one hand, if not just a finger or two.

If she didn't play with you, she helped you get on with a team overseas. If nothing else, she helped keep you in the fold, the good shepherd never willing to let a Lady Griz wander off on her own, without knowing what it's all meant, why it mattered and still does.

But Chloe Larsen, a freshman walk-on on this year's Montana team? No way McNulty-King would have a connection with this one, right?. Oops. Wrong. Again.

When McNulty-King was just McNulty and a stud athlete at Whitehall High, before she would go on to score more than 1,300 points as a Lady Griz, be named Big Sky Conference MVP as a senior, get inducted into the Grizzly Sports Hall of Fame in 2023, she and Dan Larsen were small-town sports royalty.

"He was a great athlete. All sports. Baseball, football, basketball. Really good at everything," says McNulty-King, who was in the same graduating class at Whitehall High as Larsen, their class going maybe 60 deep if everyone made an appearance. "He was one of my best friends. Still is."

It was an era when Montana, though still the same size from east to west, from north to south, just felt smaller, more connected, high school athletes tending to know one another or of one another, most of them staying in-state, playing for the Grizzlies, playing for the Bobcats.

"Lisa McLeod, Dawn (Silliker), Marti (Leibenguth), Shannon (Cate). I knew all of them really well," Larsen says.

He would graduate from Montana State, go to Cal in Berkeley and collect not only a Doctor of Optometry degree but Heidi Brott as well, fellow future optometrist but girl of the Golden State, raised in Sacramento, undergrad at UC Davis and not sold on Whitehall as a landing spot. Or even Montana.

"That's why I really didn't want to date him," she says in her unfiltered yet charming way. "I was kind of, ehh." They split the difference and settled on Missoula, Dan getting back to Montana, Heidi getting more than Whitehall, both of them finding a parents' dream scene.

"It made for a good family environment. That was a big thing," says Dan, and they'd need it, with Jacob arriving first, then the twins, Jack and Sophie. Finally: Chloe.

What choice did any of them have than to try to outdo everyone else, starting with their very family members? "I think we set a good example of a high work ethic," says Heidi. "We're hard workers, go-getters."

"They are all that way," adds Dan. "They are all driven kids from that standpoint, then they got a little nurturing at home."

What that looks like: Jacob graduated from Montana State and is now in his third year at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora. Another optometrist in the family? Nah. Try ophthalmologist. Try eye surgeon. "He needed to one-up us," says Heidi. "He's type-A, a go-getter."

Sophie? She's got her degree from Montana State. Jack? The future engineer is at Cal Poly.

Chloe, then, is the answer to the following question. What would happen if you take all that, all that drive, all that determination, that work ethic and put it in a girl who wants to apply it to sports. They all did, to some degree, but not like this last one, No. 4, eight years behind Jacob, four behind the twins.

What she was chasing – them and what they were accomplishing – would be impossible to catch at her age, but the environment gave her a chairlift up the mountain instead of having to trudge to the top herself, one of the hidden advantages of coming up last with plenty in front of you to pursue.

"Chloe was a little different. She just wanted to do everything they were doing, but she was four years younger than the twins and eight years younger than our oldest. She still tried to do all the stuff they were doing," says Dan, who let Chloe go untethered down the ski slope for the first time at the age of 3.

"She was always driven, always determined. She would spend hours out in the driveway shooting baskets, whether they were with her, whether I was with her or whether she was by herself. She was more self-driven when it came to sports."

There was the ski team, the swim team, the soccer team, the basketball team, sometimes in the same day, getting done with one, switching uniforms and suiting up for the next activity on the schedule.

"She just had endurance and stamina. She'd play club for one sport, do a quick change and play another," says Heidi. Always with one goal in mind. "It was always to make the team better. That was the thing that stands out the most. She just wants to win," says Dan.

Finally, high school, Hellgate, varsity from freshman to senior in both soccer – at defender, what else? – and basketball, the latter finally emerging as the winner in the What Will Chloe Finally Give Her All To? sweepstakes. "I liked the pace of basketball a little more," she says. "It was more competitive for me."

She picked up the Lady Griz dream early, as so many Missoula girls have over the decades, the UM players becoming heroes, pieces of them going home each summer after the last day at camp, their signatures on t-shirts, on basketballs, all of them becoming prized totems of what could one day be.

It remained a dream, as a freshman, as a sophomore, then, as a junior, contact with some schools, the dream becoming real, something that might actually be lived out, but not the PERFECT DREAM, the Lady Griz.

This was new to all of them, this recruiting thing, but they had seen it in her for so many years, this potential, like the time she was inserted into that state semifinal game as a freshman and single-handedly turned things in Hellgate's favor.

Again, two years later, when Alex Covill fouled out with six minutes left and Hellgate trailing by nine, in hostile territory in divisionals at Flathead's gym, the home crowd believing that the game was over, Hellgate's top player sitting for the rest of it.

What say you, Chloe Larsen? How about nine straight points from the junior to tie the game and bring a stunned silence to the gym? "Chloe was like, nope, we're going for the win," says Dan, whose daughter would be a two-time all-state selection, the Western AA MVP as a senior.

Four years on Hellgate's varsity, three runner-up finishes at the state tournament, none more memorable than last March, mask protecting her broken nose but hindering her ability to see the game as clearly as usual. Oh, well, she'll just play harder to balance it out.

"Can't see to even dribble. She's just a beast. She's got it. She will do what she has to do if it's something she wants," says Heidi, the game taking place on the home floor of the Lady Griz, Larsen putting in one final on-court interview for Montana's coaches.

"I performed pretty well. I knew this was my last opportunity. I put on a good enough performance to kind of get my foot in the door," she says.

There were other schools that wanted her, programs that could promise playing time from early on in her career. And there were other players who Montana's coaches could have pursued, but none had the flood of calls to Lady Griz head coach Brian Holsinger's phone like people calling on Larsen's behalf.

"I had more people reach out to me about her and who she is and what she's about and what kind of worker she is and what kind of family she comes from, the whole thing, than anybody," says Holsinger. "I was intrigued by how many people who reached out and said, 'Hey, you should look at this kid.'"

McNulty-King did her thing to help Larsen and her family, reaching out to coaches, to programs, sending film, a reference from a voice that carries a lot of weight in the basketball world, but she also kept whispering into Larsen's ear: If the Lady Griz are your dream, you have to go with it.

There was Plan A. Everything else was a safety school, not Montana and the Lady Griz, but they would do if it came to that. "I told Brian, she's not one who's not going to get time, then hit the portal," says McNulty-King. "She'll be committed and stay and work until she gets what she wants."

What she wanted was a first step. A visit, the same kind Lauren Dick, also a Hellgate grad, got two years before Larsen, a chance to present herself to Holsinger, not someone else reaching out on her behalf but her, in person, sitting across from the coach in his office. Let me show you.

"She was very persistent with it. I did the same thing I did with Lauren. I brought her in and we just had a conversation," he says. "What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to do? Because it's going to be really hard. Do you want to put the work in and be part of what we're doing?

"From Day 1 she was gung-ho. She wanted to do this and wanted to be here." Adds Heidi, "She had other choices, Division I, where she could have gone and played, but she always wanted to be here. This is her heart. She never wanted to go to any other school."

She committed in May. In June, she took her first step into this new world of Division I women's basketball, where everyone can play, where intense, physical players like MJ Bruno and Tyler McCliment-Call got into Larsen's business like no one ever had in high school.

And it was only Day 1 of summer workouts. "She's been great, but it was eye-opening, the amount of speed and size and athleticism, all those things and how hard you have to go. It's a huge adjustment for any freshman," says Holsinger.

"I keep telling her, you have to go fast, get out of your comfort zone. Your comfort zone in high school is completely different than your comfort zone here. At Hellgate, she was posting smaller guards, scoring inside, rebounding. At this level, she's one of the smaller players. That's a huge adjustment."

Instead of shying away from the challenge, she took two feet that were already all-in and moved them even further across the line, so much so that she was ready to skip out on playing in the Montana-Wyoming All-Star series. It would mean missing a Lady Griz practice or two. Unacceptable.

"Brian told her, that's an honor, you have to go," says Dan. "To her, she didn't want to miss anything, practice or anything that might help her bond with her teammates. She was 1,000 percent in."

She did travel to Billings and, once there, found validation of the kind she didn't even require.

"She was sitting with two or three players, all of them going somewhere to play college basketball and each of them said to Chloe, You're so lucky you get to go play for the Lady Griz," recalls Dan. "It was obvious they would have given anything to be in that same position."

It's different these days, for each of them, Chloe enrolled in upper-level advanced basketball with Professor Holsinger (meets daily), Dan for the first time in his life wearing maroon instead of Bobcat blue, Heidi for years watching Chloe as the star now become the one cheering on her teammates.

They arrive at games these days as soon as the gates open, get to their seats early to watch warm-ups, all 60 minutes of it, knowing, for this year, it might be their only chance to see Chloe get some court time on game day.

Heidi thought it would be tough, this parental transition, that she might hold it against the other players, those getting minutes, this opportunity they're getting and her daughter isn't. Then she met them, met their families, learned their stories, came to understand that everyone has earned it in her own way.

"Everyone has worked so hard to get here. You can only be happy for everyone. We love the other girls on the team," she says. "They feel like family now. They've been so kind to Chloe, so kind to us. I am all in. I love all those girls and want the best for them."

So, why is Chloe Larsen smiling? Because she's here, because she has an opportunity, a chance that wasn't guaranteed, and because, now, it's all up to her. And there is no situation in which she'd rather be. After all, she's been doing this her entire life. "I know I'll get out of it what I put into it," she says.

"She is so competitive, I think she knows she'll prove herself," says her dad. "For her, it's a process. She knows it's a journey and that it might take her a few years to get to that point but she's willing to put the work in and get to that stage."

Finally, McNulty-King, who knows as well as anyone what it takes to turn dreams into reality. "I think she'll put in the work and earn it. I think she'll get her time with the Lady Griz."

University of Montana Athletics

Players Mentioned

MJ Bruno

Lauren Dick

Chloe Larsen

Tyler McCliment-Call

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