The Craig Hall Chronicles :: Liv Thorne-Thomsen

It was a Sophie's choice moment in Seattle a week ago today. Lars or Liv? Liv or Lars?

His game was scheduled long ago, everyone knowing that Seattle's home match against San Francisco on Nov. 14, the Redhawks' regular-season finale, would be his Senior Night, under the lights, the family making plans to be there about the time he first committed to Seattle U.

Then her team got by Idaho in a shootout in the Big Sky semifinals, got by Weber State in another shootout to win the championship, and wouldn't it be amazing if the Grizzlies were sent to Seattle to face Washington in the first round of the NCAA Tournament?

What more could two soccer parents ask for? What a perfect soccer weekend, two kids, two matches, same city.

They got their wish when the NCAA bracket was announced, Montana at Washington, the two fields – Seattle's and Washington's – only four miles apart. Then the date was announced. Friday. How perfect was that? One playing in the NCAA Tournament, the other playing on Senior Night, same day.

Finally, the start time came out, 7 p.m. local. Wait, that's when Seattle's match was scheduled to kick off. Liv would be playing at Husky Soccer Stadium at the exact same time Lars would be playing at SU's Championship Field?

What were parents supposed to do? Split up, one going to one match, one to the other, both kids feeling some on-site support? Do that but brave Seattle traffic and swap fields for the second half, hoping the 20 minutes the electronic map says it is between fields is accurate?

Lars or Liv? Liv or Lars, their given names simplified as much as possible to counterbalance having to add a Thorne-Thomsen to every assignment, to every job application, to every government form for the rest of their lives. But this was anything but simple. This was borderline cruel, having to choose like this.

It had to be Lars – right? – because a college soccer player only gets one Senior Night and Liv was just a freshman. She was playing in the NCAA Tournament, was in the starting lineup, but the choice was easy to make in the end. He was at the end, she was just beginning.

"We had to go with the senior," says their mom, Ragna. "We decided we couldn't really be present at either place if we tried to do both, so we watched my son's game and had the Griz on our phone."

They watched as Lars opened the scoring with his fourth career goal in the 15th minute, as Seattle built a 3-1 halftime lead, as the Redhawks held on to win 3-2 in Lars' final collegiate match.

They watched on their phones while sitting just four miles away as Montana took a 1-0 game from the 11th minute to the 90th before the Grizzlies fell 2-0 to the Huskies, the season coming to an end within minutes for both children, right around 9 p.m.

"It was great but a crazy roller coaster of emotions that day," says Ragna. "We were feeling very blessed as soccer parents for that to be our roller coaster." Then she adds, "We are more than hopeful that that will not be our last chance to watch the Griz in the NCAA."

That Liv Thorne-Thomsen's edition of the Craig Hall Chronicles got set to the side, the other seven freshmen getting profiled in August or early September, actually worked out for the best, considering how the season played out for the Grizzlies and the willowy midfielder.

Had she been written about before the season, eighth-year coach Chris Citowicki doesn't think he would have had much to say, other than he expected Thorne-Thomsen's on-field story to be largely written in the seasons ahead, not in 2025.

"What was the preseason article going to look like? Let's hope she plays well and gets some playing time?" he says. "Look at her now. What a season."

Lars played in seven matches as a freshman at Seattle, totaled 154 minutes. That's what his younger sister was anticipating going into her freshman season at Montana, and that's how it started out, Thorne-Thomsen playing in two of Montana's five matches in August, totaling 28 minutes.

That she ended up starting six times, including both of the Grizzlies' home games in the Big Sky Championship, plus Montana's NCAA Tournament match at Washington, it's easy to assume it came about because of injuries, the opportunity trickling down to the freshman more than her earning it.

Part of that is true, Thorne-Thomsen started her first collegiate match in Montana's regular-season home game against Weber State because of an injury to Emma Widmor. But when Widmor returned, she didn't bump Thorne-Thomsen back to the bench. Both would end up starting.

"I don't know if this kid is going to play," Citowicki remembers thinking to himself during preseason. "We have so much depth, so much talent. And yet who's always there performing consistently in practice? Liv. Let's put her out there and see if she can do this.

"Can she handle the physicality, handle the speed, handle being in a position where a kid from Missoula is starting a game in the first round of the NCAA Tournament? Yes. Yes, she can. What a rise from what you thought might be a long-term developmental project. It's pretty amazing."

She is last in the Craig Hall Chronicles, but no other freshman played more minutes this season than Thorne-Thomsen, and that's not something to overlook.

What other freshman midfielders got considerable playing time since Citowicki has been coaching the Grizzlies? Sydney Haustein in 2019. Maddie Ditta in 2022. Both evolved into fantastic players as their careers rolled along, jump-started by those early opportunities as first-year players.

"Liv is well ahead of the game, and it's only going to get better because she's doing the basics right now and doing them extremely well," said Citowicki. "Those first minutes when you first get here, they can really set you off in a completely different direction.

"When the swagger kicks in and she starts understanding that she more than belongs here, she is going to thrive. That's when we'll see her get to a completely different level. It won't be, can you keep the game simple? It will be, can you change the game? Can you do something special?"

They are products of their environment, Lars and Liv both raised in Missoula by physical therapists, by parents who opted long ago not to simply reside in western Montana's playground but to live fully in it, the kids learning to skate on a frozen pond in the Rattlesnake, to play soccer in the city's open spaces.

Lars' loves outside of soccer and hockey? Fly fishing, surfing, skiing. Of course. And how perfect, Missoula to his core, even if he'll remain in Seattle to work upon his spring graduation, his soccer itch being scratched by his roster spot on Bellevue Athletic FC of the United Premier Soccer League.

Where he went first, she followed, to the grass for soccer in its season, to the ice for hockey in its season, two sports that at first thought appear to be purely opposites, ice, skates and sticks versus grass, cleats and a sport where hands-on-ball is not allowed.

"It's head-on-a-swivel all the time, watching all the time. So much in hockey is happening before you have time to think about it," says Ragna. "But you're still making those triangles, you're still making all the moves and the give-and-goes. I think it carries over to soccer really well."

It certainly does, having to shield an opponent off the ball/puck, having to keep a big-picture view in an environment that is swirling around you, constantly changing, having to pass the ball/puck through that space to an opponent who might be streaking up the field/rink, needing to be led with the perfect pass.

"Hockey helped me become a better soccer player because hockey is so fast," says Thorne-Thomsen, who didn't just play the sport for a while, then dump it when soccer became more serious. She was still playing for the Missoula Bruins in January, the week before she early-enrolled at Montana.

The difference was most notable, most jarring, those first few soccer practices after another hockey season had ended, the space now available, the time now available, hockey on grass but finally with some elbow room.

"Going right out of hockey to soccer, wow, I have so much time in comparison to anything on ice," she says. "Oh my gosh, I have a couple seconds with nobody on me."

There were thoughts, way back when, of playing hockey collegiately, but the numbers come into play. There are 1,001 NCAA women's soccer programs at the Division I, II and III levels. There are 95 hockey programs and all of them are not just over the Continental Divide, they are mostly on the East Coast.

She was a freshman when her brother committed to play at Seattle, at which time she began watching college soccer a little more closely, started to see her future in the sport. Plus, sometimes there are just real-life issues that push a girl one direction or the other.

"Soccer has a lot less gear to put on," she says, not joking, an understandable sentiment to anyone who has had to arrive at the rink long before puck drop to allow enough time to get the necessary equipment on. "It's easier to put on cleats than a whole body outfit. That was a big thing."

Her freshman year at Hellgate High was also the fall that Montana advanced to the NCAA Tournament, after the Grizzlies had done the same thing in the spring, two NCAA Tournament appearances in less than 200 days, and that success, all that winning, was happening in her backyard.

"I started watching Griz soccer games more," she says. "I thought, it would be amazing if I could come out and play on this field. That also helped tilt it to soccer."

There was a problem. She didn't pass the eyeball test, this slight-of-frame player who looked like the Hellgate winds might just pick her up and deposit her in the Clark Fork anytime she tried to cross a Missoula bridge on foot.

"I remember her coming to camps, this skinny little kid. How on earth is she going to be a good soccer player?" says Citowicki, who didn't know how hockey had toughened her up, how she had come to develop a style of play on the soccer field that did not require supreme athleticism or brute strength.

"The way she holds the ball, her body sense, the ability to hold off players much bigger than her, it's quite remarkable. That's what allows someone of her size to thrive at a level like this. You better have the vision and the ability.

"This is kind of the other end of the spectrum, where you've got an extreme technical player who can see the game very differently and hold it in tight spaces. That's credit to (Missoula) Strikers for developing her that way. They got her to that point."

Citowicki was interested enough that he at least wanted to start the process, texting Thorne-Thomsen the first day he could the summer before her sophomore year. There was a problem. Thorne-Thomsen had only just gotten her first phone and wasn't really into this whole texting thing.

One day passed, then two, then a week, then two, a text from Citowicki, an opening invitation to her dreams, sitting unread on her phone.

"I'm from Missoula. I'm not going to get anything from anybody, so I didn't check my text messages until the end of June," she says. Then she saw the text, the one that had arrived two weeks prior. "I had a little breakdown," she says, assuming her non-reply signaled to Citowicki that she wasn't interested.

"I texted him back and was so happy when he replied. Oh my gosh, it's not over."

She was starting to fall for the Grizzlies, for the idea of putting on a Montana uniform. It wasn't that it was her hometown school. She was beginning to go to camps, to ID events, seeing what else was out there, was watching more and more soccer to see what kind of team she might best fit on.

Everything came back to Montana, from style of play to culture to how she felt anytime she attended a camp at South Campus Stadium.

She was at another Big Sky Conference school's camp one July, knowing Montana's extended one day beyond that. She texted Citowicki. Can I come to the final day? Please? He gave her the green light. "I was so in love with it," Thorne-Thomsen says. "Nothing compares to the University of Montana team."

She committed, then Citowicki presented the family with an idea. Would she want to enroll early, join the program in January, get a head start not just on soccer but classes as well?

"We were like, what? I didn't even think that was a possibility," says Ragna, but once the idea was planted in their minds, it was on. "That was pretty much when we started to make a move on it, as soon as we heard it was a possibility.

"Academically, she only had a couple more classes to take and although Strikers does an amazing job, it's hard to get the same exposure to that higher speed of play. She was a little scared to do it, but it was pretty much a no-brainer."

In January, her speed was too slow, according to Citowicki, though what did he expect? There went Chloe Seelhoff, gone in a flash. There went Kayla Rendon Bushmaker, gone just like that. There went Eliza Bentler, almost vanishing into thin air as she raced up the field.

In February, it was too slow, March as well. "By April we're doing some competitive games and all of a sudden Liv scores the game-winning goal. Later on, she does another amazing thing. Huh, maybe this kid will figure it out," Citowicki said.

Still, no one was surprised when she had more DNPs in August than matches when she stepped on the field. She knew how this all worked.

"I went in with absolutely no expectations," says Thorne-Thomsen. "I watched my brother's career. As a freshman he got almost no minutes. You know what? If I get in a couple games, I'll be on top of the world."

She played 30 minutes in Montana's 5-0 home win over MSU Billings on Sept. 7, and you would not have been wrong to assume that that may have been it, the likely highlight of her season, what with UC Davis, Gonzaga and Washington State coming up, then the start of league.

But she started making the cut for road trips, played against Gonzaga, played 39 minutes in a tight, tense match against Washington State, was elevated to starter against Weber State on Oct. 9 when Widmor was unavailable.

Knowing his freshman midfielder would be nervous, Citowicki simplified his ask of Thorne-Thomsen to such a basic level that she thought, wait, I can do that. She only needed to do her 1/11th, nothing more, only needed to be a dependable link in the chain against an opponent that would destroy a weak one.

"Pressure, cover, balance and play the simple pass," Thorne-Thomsen says of Citowicki's instructions. She didn't have to play outside of her role or her comfort zone. She didn't have to win the match. Citowicki's short list filled her with confidence. All of it were things she could do for her team.

"Also, the love and support from my teammates was just amazing. Before the first game, a bunch of people reached out. I have your back. I know you're going to do great. That confidence really helps you go into the game. Okay, it's not all on me but I'm going to help in any way I can."

Her first start: Montana 4, Weber State 0. Thorne-Thomsen played 83 minutes. She started three days later, against Idaho State, playing 71 more minutes in another win.

She started at Portland State, when Montana clinched the regular-season title with a win, started both games at the Big Sky Conference Championship in Missoula, playing more than 80 minutes against both Idaho and Weber State.

"I knew Liv had that in her," says her mom. "She isn't flashy but she is so solid and smart. We knew if she got a chance to get out there, she would make herself valuable.

"It's almost like the speed of play has slowed down for her. She doesn't look hurried. She looks more confident. I didn't feel at the end of the season that I had to be giving her power vibes from the side."

A year ago, she was less than two months from enrolling early, from getting her first taste of collegiate soccer. Now she is one week removed from starting against Washington in the first round of the NCAA Women's Soccer Championship.

That sped-up indoctrination will do something for a girl.

"I felt like I fit (on the field against Washington)," she says. "There are always improvements you can make. Consistency is something I can improve upon, but I definitely felt like I could play."

When she first joined the Grizzlies in January, her default setting when she got the ball, like most any freshman midfielder, was OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG GET RID OF IT DON'T MAKE A MISTAKE. And that's no way to play.

Now you see her get the ball in traffic and she keeps possession, eyes the field while holding off encroaching defenders, makes the right pass at the right pace to the right place, hockey becoming soccer becoming a player with some newfound confidence.

"Exposure in a game is different than any practice," she says. "Experience is a really important thing when it comes to games. I feel like I now have that experience. When I first came in, I didn't have any confidence on the ball." Now there is no looking back. Who knows where this could lead?

University of Montana Athletics

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Maddie Ditta

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Liv Thorne-Thomsen

Emma Widmor

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