The glory days just keep happening for Alexa Coyle

There is another, sadder version of this story, call it the Bruce Springsteen edition, where those four years, when she was a high-scoring forward on some highly successful Montana soccer teams, were as good as it gets, as good as it would ever get for Alexa Coyle.

Two Big Sky Conference regular-season championships, two trips to the NCAA tournament, 19 goals scored – a top-10 mark in program history – four times named Academic All-Big Sky, four times voted to the Big Sky All-Tournament team, once named Scholar All-West Region by the United Soccer Coaches.

Glory days, indeed, they'll pass you by. Unless you don't let them, if a girl uses that time on campus not to create a highlight that will never be matched but instead as a launching pad for what would come next, experiences that somehow keep topping whatever it was she last set her mind to.

It's hard to believe that it was only four years ago that Coyle played her last game as a Grizzly, against South Carolina in April 2021 in an NCAA tournament match, considering how many experiences she has managed to pack into the last 48 months.

She played for the Hibernian Football Club in the Scottish Women's Premier League. Upon returning to the States, she co-founded The Female Edge, whose goal is to connect with young athletes holding a dream and help turn those into realities, something they've already done 18 times. And counting.

Of course, that's something she pours her heart into in her spare time, once her demanding day-job duties as Marketing Manager for both the Seattle Seahawks and Lumen Field have wrapped up, leaving someone following along to wonder how she finds the time.

Turns out she's been doing it for a while now.

"What's been amazing is how far the skills I developed and learned as a college athlete have translated into the workplace," she says. "The way it's impacted and benefited me has been more than I would have ever imagined.

"Setting goals and being intentional about how you reach those, and the work ethic and how to manage your time, all those skills you learn as a college athlete, you think those will take you far in life, but until you actually experience it post-sport, you don't know how much it will translate. It's been incredible.

"That experience has really contributed to my success in the workplace and my ability to achieve what I have at a young age."

Coyle's story – except their own version of it – is what Montana soccer coach Chris Citowicki wants for all of his players. Make playing for the Griz the most important thing in your life while you're on campus, then take what you've learned and go conquer whatever worlds you want to take on.

Coyle certainly has. Last week Citowicki pulled up Coyle's LinkedIn account and scrolled through the timeline. It was exhausting just trying to follow along.

There she was, back in Bozeman for a Breakfast with Champions event, highlighting women who have turned athletic experiences into leadership success.

There she was, organizing a panel discussion between some of her co-workers with the Seattle Seahawks and students in Montana's College of Business, her old stomping grounds as a management information systems major.

There she was, getting a shout-out for her work at the Seahawks' fourth-annual Women's Summit, that following her appearance at Linfield University in Oregon to take part in a Women in Sports discussion.

At the end of 2024, she posted a list of her favorite moments and professional accomplishments for the year. It read more like a career reflection than something pulled off in 366 days, because you know she took February 29 of last year and just maxed it out, bonus time not to be wasted.

"She is just checking boxes off as she climbs up the ladder. She's doing everything. The Alexa Coyle I had here and was lucky enough to coach is doing the same stuff in life," says Citowicki, who no longer looks at Coyle as a unicorn but the type of person he wants to keep finding to fill his roster.

"That's the kind of people you want graduating from here, just elite people. The ultimate vision is you pump these people out into the world and the effect multiplies itself. Now we've taken over the world, so to speak. That's the way I want to do it."

It's the part of college athletics, how they prepare student-athletes for the next phase of life, that's getting overshadowed these days by all the talk of name, image and likeness, revenue sharing, the business side of things. But at its core, it hasn't changed.

"It feels like all we do is highlight what people do on the field. It's more than that. We highlight next-level Griz in professional sports but there is also next level in someone graduating and doing cool things in life, and that's exactly what Alexa is doing," Citowicki says.

"Collegiate athletics is still collegiate athletics. You still get to play high-level sports, you still have the opportunity to get a degree and you still get to be successful in life, too. Alexa is a story of someone who has done just that."

She was hard-wired this way for sure, but she also credits her home life and coming up the younger sister of Brock, who needs no further introduction here, not after what he did as a Grizzly, a next-level professional football player and into his post-athletics life.

"I was always really supported by my family and encouraged that I could do anything I put my mind to," Coyle says. "And having an older brother like Brock, getting mentorship from him at a young age helped instill in me a belief that I can have confidence and can achieve anything I set my mind to."

Arriving from Bozeman High, she led Montana in goals and points as a true freshman in 2017, when the Grizzlies finished second in the Big Sky.

Citowicki arrived in 2018 and with Coyle leading the team in points the coach's first three seasons, Montana advanced to the NCAA tournament in 2018, won the Big Sky regular-season title in 2019, then the Grizzlies did both in the 2021 spring season, COVID hardly making the program hiccup.

Cue up Springsteen, right? Time to sit back and reminisce about how it will never be this good again, right? Time to talk about the glory days, right? Wrong, all of it.

Citowicki's goal is to have a player's time at Montana become an entry on a resume that, while always critically important, declines in relevance as the years go by and more and more impressive entries get added, Grizzlies as foundation, a base, not the pinnacle.

"It's taking immense pride in what you're representing and that being the primary focus. I felt like I did that and got the most out of my experience," says Coyle. "At the same time, Chris does an incredible job on having perspective, that once sport ends, there is so much more out there to achieve in life."

First it was off to Scotland for what could have probably been the start of a lengthy professional career, with Coyle having her pick of places to live and play, but that fire began to dim just as another roared to life. She was ready for bigger and better things, life beyond sport, at least the playing of it.

"It was a gut feeling that I had reached that goal. I knew it was time to move on," she says. "I was ready to start a new venture and challenge myself in new ways, with the goal of achieving at the highest level in a new capacity."

In the spring of 2022, she and former Hibernian teammate Toni Malone founded The Female Edge. If you're a girl with a dream, The Female Edge is for you, from mindset mentoring to college recruiting services. Their tagline, motto, creed, guiding force: Empowering women in sports.

In just a few years of existence, they've placed 18 athletes in college programs, every girl who has sought their help. By this summer, that number will jump to more than 25. They are just getting started, the founders growing more passionate by the athlete helped, by the dream fulfilled.

"Empowerment is such a powerful term to me," says Coyle, whose Seattle Seahawks/Lumen Field marketing team is made up of nine people, seven of whom are female. "It's believing they can achieve in any space with anybody, in any way a male has or can."

Outside of her work with the Seahawks, for which she oversees all the organization's retail operations and pro shop, plus game-day promotions, it's her work with Lumen Field that gives her the spice of variety.

The Lumen Field 2024 Concert Series featured the Rolling Stones, Kenny Chesney, the Zac Brown Band and Metallica. This summer the facility is hosting the FIFA World Club Cup, next summer six matches of the FIFA World Cup.

"There is a lot of variety, so it's very fun and engaging," she says. "It's a busy life and busy industry but it's very fun for sure. It's a perfect fit."

It wasn't that long ago that Coyle was scoring her final goal as a Grizzly, in a 3-1 home win over Eastern Washington at a COVID-empty Missoula City Stadium. These days she's helping coordinate and market a soccer event for next summer that is the biggest in the world in the sport, if not all of sports.

And if someone four years ago, when she was packing up after graduation, had listed out for Coyle her near-term future, going to Scotland to play professionally, returning to the U.S. and starting a business, then landing in her current professional gig, really, what would she have thought?

"I wouldn't have been shocked but I would have been pleasantly surprised by what I've been able to do and accomplish in the short period of time between then and now," says Coyle, embodiment of female empowerment.

"But I'm not satisfied yet. I feel like I'm just getting started, too, which is exciting. There is still a lot I want to achieve and do and impact I want to make."

For starters, she's been appointed to a spot on the National Advisory Board for Grizzly Athletics. And could you think of a better caretaker?

"It's a true honor to be on it," she says. "I think I have a perspective that's valuable, being the age I am and having been through the athletics program in a more recent phase, knowing what's important for athletes, especially in this modern era. I'm excited to be a part of it and contribute my input."

Just another iron in a fire that seems to have no shortage of fuel, something else to think about as she makes the daily drive to and from the Seahawks' Virginia Mason Athletic Center, a jewel of a place hard against the shore of Lake Washington in Renton, Coyle's work base when she's not at Lumen Field.

Everything about her life is now big. Big city, big facility, big responsibilities, big opportunities, big dreams. She mixes passion and purpose to make it all work, escaping to Seattle's surrounding waters to provide the balance a Montana girl needs.

"It's been a nice addition for my love for the outdoors and outdoor activities," she says. "But it's not the mountains of Montana. Montana will always have my heart for sure." Home of plenty of glory days, with more on their way, a lifetime of them sure to come, wherever she may go, whatever she may pursue.

University of Montana Athletics

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