The Accidental Leader

The pack awaits its leader, this semicircle of superb soccer players already anticipating her arrival, their energy rising with each passing second that's she gone. It's not game time until she has them ready to go, until she has her say, until she takes them from their current state of readiness to full Griz Mode.

Ally Henrikson, known from Day 1 and forevermore as Ricky, has been at midfield, announced as a starter, has gotten her mind right during the anthem, has jogged to the South Campus Stadium grandstand for the pregame ball-toss.

Now she heads their way, the agitation of the pack rising as she approaches.

She takes her place in the middle and the circle closes tightly around her, starters, reserves, all linked, so united, so unbreakable that the emotion of what's about to spring forth will find it impossible to escape, so it accepts its only remaining outlet and flows right into the heart of each of them.

"It sets everybody on fire before we play," says Maddie Ditta, who adds that the Montana soccer team's pregame circle of strength actually has a calming aspect. If a player was nervous for what's ahead, of what's to come over the next 90 minutes on the field, she can submit it to the power of the pack.

"I think it helps everyone calm down and helps everyone's nerves go away, realizing we're all in this together. She's able to have that effect and bring everyone together in the moment."

What happens in that circle, what gets said by Henrikson is proprietary, theirs to know, ours to guess, but the results speak to the moment's effectiveness. Montana recently became the first program in Big Sky Conference soccer history to win three consecutive outright league titles.

The Grizzlies have lost one league game the last three seasons while winning 18 times and drawing five.

The talent level is high, yes, but the team goes through a handed-down tradition of pregame rituals, from locker room to that moment, when it's just them again, on the sideline right before kickoff. It's all a build, with Henrikson setting the capstone in place. The game can now begin. Montana is ready.

"It's hard to put into words. It feels like an out-of-body experience," she says, of being at the center of the circle. "You feel so together with everyone, so in unison. You feel like you're all moving in one direction."

It's such an emotional lift that even Henrikson, as the circle breaks up, her work now done, has to take a few seconds to compose herself, to come down from such a high. "I have to take deep breaths after. Okay, we still have to play. All I want to do is run through a brick wall."

You'd swear she was born for this, this three-time winner of the team's Heart of a Grizzly award. Just look at photos from that moment, every eye on her, everybody locked in on what she has to say, not a wayward glance or thought to be found. They are the drink, she is the straw, fuel to her match.

"I have no idea where that comes from. It just is," says Montana coach Chris Citowicki, who has guided Henrikson through her ups and downs of the past five seasons. "She has the ability to lead people in whatever she does. In whatever setting you put her, she has it.

"I don't know how to describe it. It must be part of her personality. She is approachable and likeable but also driven and vision-orientated and motivational. She has the total package. It's really impressive and really rare. She's one of the best leaders I've ever been around."

Every other player on the roster would agree, that Henrikson has it, whatever that it happens to be for them. The only one who doesn't see it is Henrikson herself.

"I have the biggest form of impostor syndrome ever," she says, to which everyone else says in unison, yeah, right! "I've never felt like I've belonged as a Division I women's soccer player. I don't think I've ever understood why people follow me."

Which leads to the question: Are great leaders born or are they made? Probably both, though Henrikson seems to have come by her gift naturally, from a young age keeping a small group of incredibly close friends, focusing on their needs instead of pursuing any sort of more wide-spread popularity.

It was her first circle, the size of which would only grow over the years though the tightness would remain, at Henrikson's insistence. She knew: The closer the better, especially when it came to sport.

Add in a full helping of the Henrikson family competitiveness and you have the makings of the player who will lead the Grizzlies into next week's Big Sky Conference tournament at South Campus Stadium. "We're competitive as a family. If it's cards, it's cards," meaning, it's on.

That's Anne Henrikson, who watched her second of two daughters emerge as such a soccer talent in the family hometown of Pueblo, Colorado, that some of the top club programs in the country from up in Denver, like Colorado Rush, the one that landed Henrikson, came calling.

Enter: Belief, another necessary ingredient in what would become The Full Ricky. "She fit right in. It never looked like she didn't believe in herself," says Anne, who blessed us, through her daughter, with even more life lessons.

"We always talked about how humility goes a long way," she says. "She played with really good players on really good teams, and she worked hard to stay humble through it all.

"I think that's what developed a lot of her leadership qualities. If she could be as good as she was and still work to support her teammates and be positive, I think that's what developed her leadership most of all."

It jumped off the field in California when Citowicki first saw Henrikson, the leadership, the picture back then the same one that gets taken today, Henrikson pointing, talking to a teammate, helping, guiding, not in charge as much as walking alongside her teammates, always taking them in the right direction.

"I remember watching her play before we had even committed her and thinking, I need her not because of the soccer but because of the leadership," the coach says. "You could already see it, the presence that she had. That's the main reason to recruit her. And, by the way, she happens to be a really good player."

She arrived in Missoula in the summer of 2021, the only player on this year's Montana team that knows what it feels like to win a Big Sky tournament championship, what it's like to watch Selection Monday, what it's like to see Montana pop up on the 64-team bracket, what it's like to play in the NCAAs.

Back then she was just a freshman but the person and her character were already in place, foundational elements not to be swayed.

"She was just so personable, so easy to talk to," says Charley Boone, who wore No. 5 to Henrikson's No. 4, the two of them becoming even closer than that, besties forever. "We had a great way of communicating. It was free-flowing and so genuine. We were really able to talk to each other."

Henrikson played in 17 matches as a true freshman, the program's most recent NCAA appearance, started the first six matches of the 2022 season, twice going 90 minutes, then going down in the opening moments of Montana's home match against CSU Bakersfield on Sept. 4, 2022. Torn ACL.

There was a silver lining, at least from the timing of it. If her recovery followed the traditional path, she'd be back at full health by the start of the 2023 season, and because she had gotten injured in the team's sixth match in 2022, she'd get the season gifted back to her.

But nothing about her return to play was traditional or straightforward, or easy, the spring season, in particular, gnawing at her spirit, her teammates moving forward while her recovery was two steps forward, one step back, if not two, keeping her in place, her knee even requiring a follow-up surgery.

"It was so messy. I thought she'd never play again," says Citowicki. Her mom adds, "I think she kept a lot from us, how much she was hurting through it all and how much she worried, to protect us.

"The timing of the injury, then the timing of the second surgery, she could do the math. Her junior season was at risk as well. The fact she kept going, that to me says more than anything. She just kept going, kept doing the work, kept showing up."

That Henrikson is playing the best soccer of her life in 2025 means something significant happened at some point. Hey, Ricky, what changed? "Haley is what changed," Henrikson says, giving way more than a nod of appreciation to the team's athletic trainer Haley (Yager) Lowe.

"For eight months I had not really progressed at all. At the end of third year fall, that's when I felt I was back to myself. Then the season ends. It was the worst timing."

The 2023 season was the start of Montana's current magical run, the Grizzlies going 13-3-3, the draw with Ohio State in front of a record crowd at South Campus Stadium, the victory over Oklahoma in Spokane, the 7-0-1 run through league, championship No. 1 of what would become three this year.

Henrikson, who missed the final 14 matches of the 2022 season, was only able to get on the field for 32 minutes across three matches late in the 2023 season, her housemates, including Boone, experiencing the highs of the season while living with someone at the other end of the sports spectrum.

Household as narrated by Jim McKay: The thrill of victory … and the agony of defeat … the human drama of athletic competition.

"It was really hard. You're balancing those highs, but I feel you can only be as happy as your saddest friend," says Boone. "You're still feeling all the emotions she's feeling. I felt like I wasn't even fully happy because she was going through such a hard time.

"It weighed on everybody else, but that's the impact Ricky has. We wanted her to feel the highs as well but she was going through something that was so, so challenging. You see the sadness every day. That's not something you can push to the side and ignore."

Who was the team's Heart of a Grizzly award winner for both of those seasons, when she was limited to nine matches, when no one would have blamed her for checking out? Henrikson. "She was such a positive light during that time, so good with the team, just the best hype woman ever," says Boone.

"It makes me cry thinking about her getting the Heart of a Grizzly award three years in a row," adds Anne Henrikson. "I tell her that means more than anything because it means she is respected by her teammates since they are the ones who vote on it."

She was feeling good just in time for … Christmas break, then the spring season, then the summer, and would the games just get here already?

Finally, the 2024 season opened, Henrikson starting at the 6 and getting 70 minutes in Montana's 1-0 home victory over Colorado College in the Grizzlies' season opener, Henrikson committing five fouls, announcing that she had no intention of easing back into things. Oh, yeah, Ricky was back.

"She genuinely made me have a heart attack every game because I thought she was going to get injured," says Boone, who is now playing for the Spokane Zephyr in the USLS. "She would make tackles where her limbs would go in every direction but she would still come up with the ball.

"It would scare me so bad, but she's fearless. She plays how she is, just this awesome energy out on the field. She is the heartbeat of the team. I wish I could play with her again. Maybe I'll get her to come to Spokane."

Montana would outscore its opponents 29-10 on its way to another Big Sky title and 12-2-5 record.

"When she was playing the 6 with me last year, that was the best time of my life," says Ditta. "She just has that beast mentality. She was inspiring for me from the start. But she's so relatable. That makes you gravitate towards her.

"I can always look at her on the field and know if Ricky's okay, I'm okay, and Ricky's always okay. Everyone looks to her for that confidence, whether she knows it or not."

Her class – including Boone, so sad! – departed last season but her injury gave Henrikson one more year. Her injury also gave her something else, something new to tap into to make her an even better, more relatable leader.

"The injury part gives her perspective on what people are going through, gives her a wider array of how to bring people in, how to address certain issues, how to hold people accountable and how to be a very supportive teammate on and off the field," says Boone.

"She's able to use her own experiences to create a positive environment but one where the standard is so high. She's able to play both ends of the leadership."

Her power is her ability to take a team forward with her drive. Her superpower is her ability to let the pack go on without her, confident it knows the way, while she tends to someone who may have dropped off. She figures out what they need and provides it.

"Most players think, how am I doing, how am I playing? She somehow, I don't know how, has the bigger picture, how are we all doing?" says her mom. "Let's all go through this together so we win as a team, we lose as a team.

"It's not that she doesn't care about herself, she just cares about other people going on that same path with her. I've been blown away to watch her grow into who she is as a person."

She's been challenged in the last year like few leaders in program history, two key players going down to ACL injuries either late last season or in the offseason, costing them this fall. There have been five more season-ending injuries during this season, four of them ACLs.

"It's about what happens to us and how we respond to it," says Anne. "It's always in the response that makes us who we are. I think she has tremendous compassion for people who have had the rug pulled out from under them.

"She wants to make it better but not in a way that pities them but in a way that respects them and their emotions."

She's moved back on the field as a fifth-year senior, taking over Boone's spot at center back, becoming the best defensive player in the Big Sky, leading Montana to an 11-3-3 record, an unprecedented third straight outright league title.

For the third straight November, the Grizzlies will take the No. 1 seed into the Big Sky tournament.

"I've never loved soccer more," she says, but she's showing her age, soccer having a way of aging a player who goes all out like Henrikson in dog years. She's slower to get up after a hard slide tackle but hard-nosed is in her DNA. It's not like she's going to stop doing it.

"Sure, you're going to hit your head a few times or get stepped on a few times but nothing that's going to keep me out of a game. Some of those things would have taken me down as a freshman. I would have had to get a sub. Now, you're going to have to wheel me off before I'm coming off.

"But the day after a game, don't even try to watch me walk because it's going to be ugly."

She already has her undergraduate degree in finance. She'll finish her MBA in May. She tutors finance undergrads now and you know what that means. "Impostor syndrome through the roof," she claims. "I just pretend. It works. Luckily I know what I'm talking about for this class."

Her Lewis and Clark-inspired pregame speech before Senior Day will go down in program lore and next week she'll have the chance to bookend her five-year career with a second trip to the NCAA tournament.

But she's on the clock now and it's ticking down. No one knows when it will come to an end but it would only be fitting if she gets to extend it with a header goal in a key moment after coming so close on multiple occasions earlier this season. "I'm saving it for when it really matters," she says.

But it's always mattered and that's what's made her such a good leader, whether it's a grind-it-out morning practice in mid-February or a Big Sky semifinal match in November. There is only one way to bring it and that's all out.

Next Friday, on the sideline at South Campus Stadium, prior to a win-or-go-home semifinal, the non-starters will form their semicircle and the pack will await the return of the Big Dog, ready to get her charges fully prepared one more time, for what everyone hopes will not be the last time.

"It's a special moment, coming together with people who you love for a common goal," she says. "I'll miss that moment a lot. It's so much passion, so much competitiveness, so much love when we're all together.

"I wasn't always good at it, but I've learned to bring everybody in, to circle around and don't hold anything back. The second you hold back, someone else is going to hold back. Pour as much heart into it as you can and people pour it right back. I'm going to miss it so much."

As much as the program will miss her, this legend, whether she believes it or not.

University of Montana Athletics

Players Mentioned

Charley Boone

Maddie Ditta

Ally Henrikson

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