The Craig Hall Chronicles :: Addison Stendera

It's the dichotomy of Small Town, America, that it's a great place to grow up but ultimately comes with a ceiling for someone who would otherwise keep discovering new ladders to climb, ascending one, then hopping onto another, their limits bound not by opportunity but only by their own ambition.

It's through that lens that we can see Taylor Stendera, going into her sophomore year at Chapman University in Southern California, the school located just six miles from Disneyland, a girl leaving her hometown of Renton, Wash., to bridge the gap to the Happiest Place on Earth.

Or Addison Stendera, who became one of the nation's top-ranked players in her age group, taking recruiting calls from schools from coast to coast, shocking so many around her by following her heart, not toward something Power 4 but to Montana, the small program with Power 4 spirit.

Hayley, the third of three sisters, the end-of-the-road daughter of Jeremy and Kristin? Her story is still in its infant stages. After all, she's only going into seventh grade, but she, too, will have what her sisters possess, the inherited mindset to go out and conquer.

None of this comes about if Jeremy, who grew up in Cashmere, Wash., with a population north of 3,000 only if you're ambitious enough to track down all the residents, hadn't himself known he needed to get out. Not that he couldn't one day go back but remaining in place couldn't be an option.

Not for what he had planned.

He went to Washington State for a semester, to get in early on the school's new golf-course management major that itself was still under construction, then headed west for Seattle Pacific, to cross paths with Kristin, also an SPU-er, to get a degree in business administration that sent him forward.

Down to California for the sun, the golf, the entry into an emerging company, DPR Construction, small at the time but today employing 9,000 with revenue measured in the billions, taking what he learned in three years helping that growth and moving back to Washington and getting busy doing his own thing.

"I come from a small town and loved growing up there, but it was always, get out," he says, this guy who has climbed about every ladder available since then, who goes by an all-encompassing, entrepreneurial title of Operations Management Executive, conqueror of worlds.

"The ones I knew who never left, a lot of them got stuck in ruts, but that's all the area allowed them to do." He got out, created a successful life for himself, and intentionally or not, passed that spirit down to his daughters. "We encouraged the girls to go out, find, and they've been comfortable doing that.

"We raised them by giving them enough room to breathe and stretch themselves and tell them there are bigger things out there than what you see around you. You can always come home, but this is the time in your life when you can get out and experience new things."

It's how Taylor ended up at Chapman, this girl who fell for all things Disney, who never grew out of it, who wants to make it a career, so she chose a school whose proximity to Disneyland gives Chapman a unique relationship, from its Club 55: The Happiest Club on Campus to Disney-themed classes.

She'll get a business degree and one day work for Orange County's largest employer, dream and career coming together to make her the happiest girl in the Happiest Place on Earth, almost like she came out of Montana soccer coach Chris Citowicki's program and its Dream > Work > Achieve ethos.

Maybe that's why Addison Stendera ended up at Montana, when so many schools with higher Q ratings were begging her to play center back for them, program and family syncing up that way, their shared DNA that says you can do anything, just believe in yourself and go for it.

But still, he never could quite wrap his mind around it all, the rise of his daughter in the soccer world, from local rec league to Pac-Northwest to national team training pools, putting her in elite company, one of maybe 30 in her age group to be chosen from across the entire country.

You can take the guy out of the small town, but some of that small-fish-in-a-big-big-pond mentality still lingers. "It probably sounds terrible but every time there was a tryout for something next-level, I was like, there is no way she is going to make it. And every time she did," he says.

"I guess I'm more of a realist. I've been in sports and it's really, really hard to keep moving your way up. I was pretty shocked. We finally learned there was a little something there, but we were still shocked all the way through."

Parenthood for him has been the joyful process of discovery, at first assuming his kids would mirror his own childhood, all sports all the time, their own equivalent of football in the fall, basketball in the winter, baseball in the spring, that academic-year cycle of a boy in a small town.

So when Taylor distracted herself on the field during another game, finding her outlet in cartwheels while everyone else was chasing the ball, well, maybe theater and dance was her thing, which it turned out was her nirvana, father joyfully navigating a world into which he'd never stepped foot.

"We wanted to figure out what their true passions were, whether it was sports or not. It came out pretty early for Addison. She always gravitated toward sports," he says. But their middle child is the outlier, the other two finding a home in that never-experienced world of theater and dance.

"They enjoyed sports to a degree, until it started getting a little more serious and they needed to start focusing on it. Then they found other passions. It's not what I was expecting but to see their joy and how much hard work they put into it, it's great for us as parents to see them do what they love."

But Addison needed something different, needed the competitiveness of sports, was both drawn to it while possessing everything she needed to be a star, though her dad, as he would time and time again, would need some convincing. Really, his daughter?

"She was playing rec soccer and dominating, but you think, these are just kids. No big deal," he says. But there was another parent who changed everything, who came over to Jeremy one day and said, that girl of his needed something bigger, something more challenging, that she had something special.

That she needed to try out for Pac-Northwest. He remembers saying, "I don't know about that. Those girls are probably next-level. She's just enjoying herself and doing well."

He brought her to the tryout, had his ride-home speech ready, the one he'd give her when she was crushed to discover she had made the third- or fourth-team. She made the second and within two weeks had been called up to the first. She was going places.

"She started doing really well and never looked back. If that other parent hadn't said that, I don't know how long it would have taken us before we recognized it," he says. "She was doing well but I didn't really know what that meant."

But what position would our protagonist gravitate toward, this kind soul, this gentle spirit? Center back? Really? That position that brings to mind not-on-my-watch fire-breathers? That position that gives its purveyors license to blow up an opponent while the referee shrugs and says, sorry, that's soccer?

She doesn't fit the mold, not even close, but have you ever met Charley Boone and Reeve Borseth, Montana's starting center backs the last two seasons, when the Grizzlies allowed 19 goals in 38 matches, when they twice led the entire country in a defensive statistic?

As that dynamic duo showed, the position can be played with a certain sweaty grace, the most important thing to be able to make the right read and play time and time and time again, and to be able to make it in the diciest of situations.

Because who can't picture Borseth somehow emerging out of trouble like it was nothing more than a practice warm-up drill? And who can't picture Boone as the last line of defense, controlling a dangerous ball and kicking it past two frustrated forwards, up to a teammate to start a counterattack?

That's Stendera. "That's always been her strength. When everyone else is freaking out, she's able to be calm and cool and work it out and figure out what needs to be done, all within a quick timeframe," says Jeremy, who's seen it over and over.

"That's why her coaches have always loved having her back there. When it gets chaotic, she seems to get even calmer, so that position seems to work pretty well for her."

Does it ever. "I think it fits my personality, cool and collected," she says. "You have to be solid and I think that's the kind of player I am. You can't make mistakes. I like that. I'd never want to switch positions."

She didn't know where all this was headed but could see little markers that soccer could take her places, like the time in middle school her Washington team went to Phoenix and won the US Youth Soccer West Region title, over Hawaii, over the two teams from the entirety of California.

She can look back now, look at the picture of that team and point to the Division I program each girl is playing for.

She saw it as a freshman, when the oldest Pac-Northwest team had all committed to playing Division I soccer. She was on the same trajectory.

She wasn't just Renton good. Wasn't just Seattle good. Wasn't just Washington good or Pacific Northwest good. She was good on the national level.

How else would you explain getting chosen for the U15 Youth National Team CONCACAF pre-tournament training camp in Tampa in 2022, the two U16 Youth National Team domestic training camps, one in Portland in November 2022, the other in Florida three months later?

Were there 300 players invited to those camps? Maybe 200? Certainly not only 100? Wait, 50? Nope. Try 30. Heady stuff. "Cool experiences I will never forget," she says. "You're literally surrounded by the best of the best in the country." And she was one of them.

Which makes what Citowicki pulled off even more impressive. He's in with Pac-Northwest, keeps an eye on its players at events but more importantly attends its hands-on ID camps, his way of eliminating the divide between coach-watching-on-the-sideline and coach-right-here-working-with-you.

He saw Stendera years ago, noticed a talent that jumped off the field, stood out to a coach who knows what elite center backs look like, even at that age. "She can organize and communicate. Seems like a great kid. Clearly a very good player," he says. Then, uh-oh.

"Then I hear rumors she's been in youth national team pools and, well, that might not be in our reach, but I'll try."

He recruits by the motto of Just Give Me a Chance, Let Me Get Even My Small Toe in the Door. That's all he needs. That's why he's hands-on at clinics as much as possible. He knows that if you get to know him, you'll never forget him.

Other coaches attend ID camps, work their station, watching, evaluating but remaining detached and thus becoming quite forgettable. Citowicki? He embraces the access, connects with players, has players leaving camp thinking, wow, he'd be fun to play for one day.

"He brings a different energy," Stendera says. "You get 30 minutes with a coach and they'd do a drill. Chris would do stuff like, this is what we do at Montana, just a totally different energy in such a fun way. I remember him being at camp. I could tell you what other schools were there but not the coach."

He knows how it works, the June 15 date, when Stendera could start to be contacted directly with phone calls, and did they ever come on opening day. It would be a smaller list of Division I programs that weren't interested than those who were.

"It's very exciting to be wanted and recruited," she says. "I had a lot of people reach out, a lot of big, name-brand schools. They know how to do it. That's their job, to get people to come to their school."

Having laid the groundwork of a relationship already, Citowicki played it cool, emailing her not on the 15th but the next day, telling her that he knew it must have been hectic, that he wanted to give her time and space to process it all.

She was in the center of a hurricane, her world going crazy but not as much as what was spinning around her, programs making offers, getting commitments, rescinding offers. One day you're being told you're going to be a program's four-year starter, the next, you never hear from them again.

It's a lot to process and there is hardly any time to do it. "It's a challenge working through all the programs and hearing their spiels. As adults, you're looking through the BS. You know they're saying this to every athlete and it's obviously not going to apply to every athlete," Jeremy says.

"It was trying to be realistic and help her walk through the process, even though they're being told they're the best thing since sliced cheese. How quickly that all changes, and it puts a lot of stress on the kids. They're trying to figure out the best fit with limited time and information."

It left her feeling like a pawn, like she had just entered more of a transactional world than relational. We need center back. She's a good center back. Let's get her here. That will give us the depth we need at that position. What's her name again? "You feel like a number and not fully wanted," she says.

Her dad remembers one Big Ten team, one that may or may not have played in Missoula in the fall of 2023, making its pitch, trying to sell his daughter on the soccer program by focusing on how good the football team is.

"The entire time we're having a discussion with them, 90 percent of it was about their Nike contract and how great the football program is and how fun it is to go to football games. That's great, but why is that your pitch?" he says. "That helped us to kind of start weeding out some of those programs."

That approach certainly works or programs wouldn't use it, but this family was looking for something different, something more grounded.

Montana wasn't atop her list but it was on her list, which was a win for Citowicki and the Grizzlies. The biggest win: Montana would be Stendera's first visit, giving Citowicki a chance to set a high bar, a very high bar.

"The other visits I took, I was comparing everything to here. Nothing was as good as this. It was so organized and everything was laid out. I fell in love with everything," Stendera says.

Did she surprise some people when she committed to Montana? Oh boy, did she ever. Why don't you go someplace bigger? Montana? That's so random. "Missoula is truly a hidden gem. If you go there and it fits, it fits. On my other visits, nothing else could live up to it."

Jeremy and Kristin did their own research, talked to past players, the parents of those players, asked them about their experience at Montana.

They heard stories like Ally Henrikson's, this promising player who suffered a season-ending injury six matches into her sophomore season, who struggled with setback after setback on her return to full health, how she played just three matches the next season, how she could have been forgotten.

How she could have been sent to the bottom of the depth list and left there, recruited over, labeled Do Not Touch, Damaged Goods. But she was kept in the fold, never forgotten, brought back at the speed her body allowed.

And now she's one of the best players in the Big Sky Conference, one of Montana's key pieces as it tries to win a third straight outright regular-season championship, something that's never been done in league history.

"I just loved the holistic approach Chris has with the kids. That's what I tried to get through with Addi. With these bigger programs, one little injury or one little thing, you go from shiny star to they don't even remember what your name is," says Jeremy.

"That's not to say don't go for it, but you have to factor that in with your decision. Montana was so holistic. We were really excited about everything about it."

Says Citowicki, "The next thing you know, she's coming out to visit, then here she is. It was difficult to try to land somebody like that. I'm amazed we did it."

She, like two other freshmen, actually arrived in January, got a semester of school under her belt, not to mention a spring of training with her new, older teammates, the ones who look at her now and say, Oh, yeah, I forget you're a freshman. Of course, she enrolled early. What else would you expect?

"She is so mature and so well put together," says Citowicki. "It's going to be helping her figure out the mental side of the game, how she can be the best version of herself every day. Once she does that, she'll take off. It will be amazing."

For all of her high-level experience, it was still eye-opening, all this talent from sideline to sideline, end line to end line at Montana in the spring. "The first day was, whoa, this is a step up. Everyone is fast and so soccer smart. They know what they want to do and everyone is communicating."

She says she needs to adjust to the physicality of her position at the Division I level, to find her voice, to leave her gentleness on the sideline when it comes time, "having a little more of a chip on my shoulder."

It's a process they've all gone through at Center Back U. Borseth played just 94 minutes in four matches as a freshman. Boone, the USL W Defender of the Year this summer and two-time first-team All-Big Sky selection, didn't become a starter for the Grizzlies until her second year in the program.

Stendera wouldn't have wanted to join a team where she was the best defender from Day 1 anyway. What kind of program is that? "She wanted to come here because she knows the legacy of the center backs. Who doesn't want to be a part of that story?" says Citowicki.

"It's a really competitive spot, so she'll have to learn and adapt and play the minutes that are given to her. But you can clearly see the potential. Her ceiling is massive." After all, it's the family story. Dream it, do it.

University of Montana Athletics

Players Mentioned

Charley Boone

Reeve Borseth

Ally Henrikson

Addison Stendera

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