Photo by: Tommy Martino/University of Montana
JoJo’s jump: Montana’s infield ready to perform
1/29/2026 4:10:00 PM | Softball
It can be difficult to get a read on JoJo Christiaens' freshman year by simply looking at Montana's statistics from the 2025 season.
She appeared in 30 of 50 games. She made 21 starts, a dozen at third base, eight more in left field, one in right. She had 10 hits, scored four runs, drove in three, most of it nondescript.
The numbers don't provide much of a clue as to what to expect from Christiaens as she goes into her sophomore season, which is why it's going to be so fun to watch people do double-takes and ask, wait, that's JoJo? What happened?
JoJo Christiaens: The breakout player you didn't see coming.
Oh, she provided glimpses last year. In the fall of 2024, during the exhibition season, she deposited the first pitch she saw in a Montana uniform over the fence in left for a walk-off home run against Carroll.
It wasn't a shock to her. She hit her first lifetime home run as a nine-year-old, at a time when her peers were just trying to hit the ball past the infield, or just hit the ball, period.
In the middle of last February, at Montana's second tournament weekend of the season, in Las Cruces, N.M., Christiaens was in left field in the Grizzlies' first of two games against Nebraska.
It was the bottom of the second and the Cornhuskers, who would go 43-15 on the season, were trailing the Grizzlies 4-0 but had runners on second and third with two outs.
Bella Bacon singled through the left side to score Hannah Camenzind and Nebraska coach Rhonda Revelle waved Talia Tokheim to follow, because what was the freshman in left going to do about it? She probably wasn't even on Nebraska's scouting report.
Well, Christiaens roped one to Madison Tarrant at home plate, no bounce, straight to the glove for the tag-out. That was sweet. What happened in the bottom of the sixth was even better.
With the ball heading to Christiaens in left again and Ava Kuszak approaching third, Revelle put up an emphatic two-hands-up stop sign. She was done testing the freshman's arm. She'd seen enough. She'd learned her lesson.
"I think that was even better. You don't want to run on me. My arm has always been fairly strong, so throwing is my favorite thing to do, especially from the outfield," Christiaens said.
Wait, isn't this supposed to be a preview of Montana's infield? And we're going on and on about Christiaens and her play in the outfield? That's the JoJo Experience, a player whose versatility and talent defy any pigeonholing.
"She can play first base, third base, she can catch. You'll probably see her in the outfield. She'll do anything you ask her to do and do it at a really high level," said second-year coach Stef Ewing.
"The only difference is that last year she would have given you a look that said, oh, I'm a little nervous. This year, she's like, I'm ready. Hit me the ball, pitch me the ball."
It's the same freshman story that's been lived since Harvard and Yale lined up to compete in a rowing race more than 170 years ago, the unofficial start of intercollegiate athletics. A young adult leaves home and adapts to life as a college athlete, a newcomer navigating their way in a strange world.
"Last year I was scared of everyone and scared of making a mistake. I was extremely timid," admits Christiaens.
"She struggled a little bit," says Makena Strong, last year a teammate of Christiaens', this year a graduate assistant coach for Ewing. She saw a teammate doing her best to try to fit in, in whatever way she could. "I think she felt like her only purpose was to make the team laugh."
What stands out now, one year later? "Just her confidence and the ability to be herself," adds Strong. "She's stepped into a leadership role. She's learned how to lead by being herself and built a lot of confidence in herself and her abilities."
She comes from a Southern Cal ball-playing family, her older brother and sister first blazing a trail down the first-base line, Christiaens and her twin sister, Peyton, following.
She played baseball before she ever tried softball, rejected any suggestions that she put the former aside and try the latter. "I fought my mom on it," she says. Then she tried it, saw her skill-set applied to both, "then I got better than my sisters and I liked that a lot. The competition of it fed me."
She's almost 1,300 miles from home these days, but there are a couple stories that help bridge that distance, make it more understandable.
Her dad, Brent, was born in Butte and raised in Hamilton, where he played every sport he could fit into his schedule. Her mom, Casi, started her life in Ohio but moved to Darby before she was 10, later attending Hamilton High as well.
When Casi's family moved to Southern Cal, Brent followed and made a career for himself in the home-automation space, starting his own business more than a decade ago, AVC Integration.
What does that look like? Say there's a ranch near Bigfork that wants the whole thing, everything connected, integrated, the home theater, the home's lighting, the home's speaker system, the property's WiFi. Might take years to complete from start to finish.
Maybe the place is located in Hawaii, maybe San Diego, near the family's home in Lakeside. Wherever it is, whatever it is, Brent's your guy, AVC Integration doing the design, the programming, the installation. He's the guy who answers the question, I wonder if it would be possible to … ? Yes, yes it is.
Brent Christiaens: Fulfiller of visions and dreams.
That's one story. The other: COVID. When the California Collegiate Athletic Association shuttered sports for the 2020-21 season, it left Ewing, then the coach at Cal State San Marcos, looking for options to get her softball and coaching fix.
She picked up a 16U team, one that co-practiced with an 18U team that had Christiaens at third base. "She was always on the third-base line and that's where I was," says Christiaens. "It was very nerve-racking but I really liked her."
At the time, Christiaens wanted to get on the track for veterinary school, which she believed took San Marcos off her list of potential options. It wasn't until she one day shadowed an actual vet that she learned that maybe it wasn't the profession for her.
To see her today at the field is to see someone locked in. "At practice, she does not get outworked," said Ewing. "She won't ever be a rah-rah leader but is someone who every day shows up with her lunch pail." Until someone with a dog walks past the outfield fence at Grizzly Softball Field. AHHHHHH!!!!
Then it's game over, timeout, until they are out of view. "There are always these Golden Retrievers walking around the field. They're so cute," she says.
That's how this animal lover from a family of them ended up passed out on the floor that day at the veterinary clinic, learning firsthand that, maybe, just maybe, she wasn't cut out for the day-to-day requirements of a vet when she witnessed a Golden Retriever get spayed.
Now she's majoring in physiology, with the goal of working in … an emergency room? That she can handle? "I like dogs better than people," she explains, which isn't unusual. A dog with a broken leg? Tragic. A guy at the ER? You'll be fine. Quit your whining. We'll cast it up and have you on your way.
When Ewing got the job at Montana, she made a call to Christiaens, who had recently decommitted from another school. "She said, come see it," says Christiaens, who did and had that piece of her soul, that love of Montana passed down from her parents, filled on her visit.
There are players who get tagged as utility but few who provide the range of on-field options that Christiaens does. "Growing up, started as catcher, went to third, played right field, played shortstop for three years, back to third, to catcher, to left field. I was everywhere," she says.
It's not just her experience at so many different positions that separates Christiaens but that she could go from one position one day to another the next, after not having played it in forever, and make it look like it's the only one she's ever tried.
"She will be our true utility. It's special to have somebody who can do that, who has her natural instincts for the game," said Ewing.
Nowhere on that list of experiences was first base listed, but that was the conversation when fall camp opened. Hannah Jablonski started 45 games at first last season. She graduated and the other options for Ewing's second team have been dealing with injuries.
JoJo, wanna try first? Maybe even play it when the season rolls around? "At first I felt like I was lopsided or backwards because I was on the other side of the field," says the player more used to holding down third if she's part of the infield defense.
"I would step with the wrong foot forward. Reading throws was hard. Getting throws from other people is different," she says. That lasted about a week before anyone watching her for the first time would have assumed she'd been there since she first put on a glove.
"The first couple of weeks last fall, I started to expect to be there all season, so I prepared like it. Coach (Marc) Kendrick would stand a couple feet away and hit picks at us. That was really helpful. My picks have gotten a lot better."
And just like that, she'll anchor one of the infield corners next week when Montana opens its season at the UCSD La Jolla Invitational in San Diego, likely part of an all-underclassman starting lineup, with sophomores Grace Lopez at second and Anna Cockhill at short, with freshman Brianna Gutierrez at third.
"It's going to be smoother, cleaner," said Ewing, when comparing her team's infield defense to last season's. "I love how they push each other. There is a standard that we're going to make plays at a high level. There is a lot of confidence in that group."
Chloe Saxton, the team's only senior, will work her way back into the mix, as will freshman Kailee Mejia, both overcoming physical ailments.
Gutierrez is a freshman at the hot corner who plays it like an upperclassman, a more smooth, polished third baseman you'd have to search long and hard to find. "She never looks rushed, never looks panicked," said Ewing.
Then there is Cockhill, who batted .283 as a freshman, scored a team-high 28 runs and stole a program-record 27 bases, all while playing a high-energy shortstop. In her second year, she'll be even better, a wiser version of her former self, set to play smarter, not harder, though always all out.
"The gaps have shrunk," said Ewing, meaning the space between infielders, where potential base hits are more and more turning into outs, keeping runners off the bases, helping the pitchers, shortening the half-inning. "Our returners have been able to learn where they can cheat a little bit.
"I've had that conversation with Anna. The ball that's on the second-base side isn't really your ball. Why don't we take a step into the 5-6 hole? Anna covers more ground to her left, to her glove side, than anyone I've ever seen. Where we've seen her grow is to her backhand side.
"She has redefined what a routine ball is. Now everybody in the infield has upped the ante for what a routine play is instead of it only being the ball hit right at you or one step to your right or one step to your left. She has motivated players to her right and left to make those plays, too."
Ask Ewing about Christiaens and she'll mention the work Christiaens put in last summer, then again over Christmas break. But what does that look like for someone playing a team sport like softball?
"Back home in San Diego last summer, I got a trainer at a power-lifting gym. He helped me with my mobility training," she says. "I got 10 times stronger. I got here in the fall and maxed out, did double what I did last year."
When she wasn't there, she was at the batting cage, an hour every day. "I really worked on the outside (pitch). I was really handsy last year. I worked on getting (to the outside pitch) with my arms and using my legs a lot more. My bat speed has gotten a lot faster. I've tightened up my mechanics."
You heard it here first. JoJo Christiaens: The breakout player you didn't see coming.
"Last year at this time we knew we had an athlete who could play multiple positions but she was a freshman who was still trying to figure out her confidence. Typical freshman year. You have those welcome-to-softball moments," said Ewing.
"She's another example of that sophomore class who has settled in and has worked really, really hard. The power with the bat has really grown. She will be at the top or the middle of the order all year. She's really put the work in and she's seeing the benefit."
She was part of last year's eight-win team, part of the group that said – and put the work in to back those words up – that it won't happen again. "We definitely want it more than last year's team," she says. "We don't want what happened last year to happen again. It won't, for sure."
This girl who was born Alanna (a-lan-ah, not a-lawn-ah, not a-lain-ah and certainly not at-lan-ta, which she's heard; on the field she's just JoJo, short for Josephine, her middle name, JoJo first bestowed upon her by her dad) is only looking forward, even to senior day in 2028.
She wants to play all nine positions in her final game at Grizzly Softball Field, even get a pitch or two in the circle to complete the circuit. The last time she pitched? A championship game in rec ball. She hit the first three batters she faced but her team got the final out at home, so it all worked out in the end.
A true utility player fulfilling her destiny. One game, all nine positions. "I'm going to ask for one pitch." Who says no?
She appeared in 30 of 50 games. She made 21 starts, a dozen at third base, eight more in left field, one in right. She had 10 hits, scored four runs, drove in three, most of it nondescript.
The numbers don't provide much of a clue as to what to expect from Christiaens as she goes into her sophomore season, which is why it's going to be so fun to watch people do double-takes and ask, wait, that's JoJo? What happened?
JoJo Christiaens: The breakout player you didn't see coming.
Oh, she provided glimpses last year. In the fall of 2024, during the exhibition season, she deposited the first pitch she saw in a Montana uniform over the fence in left for a walk-off home run against Carroll.
It wasn't a shock to her. She hit her first lifetime home run as a nine-year-old, at a time when her peers were just trying to hit the ball past the infield, or just hit the ball, period.
In the middle of last February, at Montana's second tournament weekend of the season, in Las Cruces, N.M., Christiaens was in left field in the Grizzlies' first of two games against Nebraska.
It was the bottom of the second and the Cornhuskers, who would go 43-15 on the season, were trailing the Grizzlies 4-0 but had runners on second and third with two outs.
Bella Bacon singled through the left side to score Hannah Camenzind and Nebraska coach Rhonda Revelle waved Talia Tokheim to follow, because what was the freshman in left going to do about it? She probably wasn't even on Nebraska's scouting report.
Well, Christiaens roped one to Madison Tarrant at home plate, no bounce, straight to the glove for the tag-out. That was sweet. What happened in the bottom of the sixth was even better.
With the ball heading to Christiaens in left again and Ava Kuszak approaching third, Revelle put up an emphatic two-hands-up stop sign. She was done testing the freshman's arm. She'd seen enough. She'd learned her lesson.
"I think that was even better. You don't want to run on me. My arm has always been fairly strong, so throwing is my favorite thing to do, especially from the outfield," Christiaens said.
Wait, isn't this supposed to be a preview of Montana's infield? And we're going on and on about Christiaens and her play in the outfield? That's the JoJo Experience, a player whose versatility and talent defy any pigeonholing.
"She can play first base, third base, she can catch. You'll probably see her in the outfield. She'll do anything you ask her to do and do it at a really high level," said second-year coach Stef Ewing.
"The only difference is that last year she would have given you a look that said, oh, I'm a little nervous. This year, she's like, I'm ready. Hit me the ball, pitch me the ball."
It's the same freshman story that's been lived since Harvard and Yale lined up to compete in a rowing race more than 170 years ago, the unofficial start of intercollegiate athletics. A young adult leaves home and adapts to life as a college athlete, a newcomer navigating their way in a strange world.
"Last year I was scared of everyone and scared of making a mistake. I was extremely timid," admits Christiaens.
"She struggled a little bit," says Makena Strong, last year a teammate of Christiaens', this year a graduate assistant coach for Ewing. She saw a teammate doing her best to try to fit in, in whatever way she could. "I think she felt like her only purpose was to make the team laugh."
What stands out now, one year later? "Just her confidence and the ability to be herself," adds Strong. "She's stepped into a leadership role. She's learned how to lead by being herself and built a lot of confidence in herself and her abilities."
She comes from a Southern Cal ball-playing family, her older brother and sister first blazing a trail down the first-base line, Christiaens and her twin sister, Peyton, following.
She played baseball before she ever tried softball, rejected any suggestions that she put the former aside and try the latter. "I fought my mom on it," she says. Then she tried it, saw her skill-set applied to both, "then I got better than my sisters and I liked that a lot. The competition of it fed me."
She's almost 1,300 miles from home these days, but there are a couple stories that help bridge that distance, make it more understandable.
Her dad, Brent, was born in Butte and raised in Hamilton, where he played every sport he could fit into his schedule. Her mom, Casi, started her life in Ohio but moved to Darby before she was 10, later attending Hamilton High as well.
When Casi's family moved to Southern Cal, Brent followed and made a career for himself in the home-automation space, starting his own business more than a decade ago, AVC Integration.
What does that look like? Say there's a ranch near Bigfork that wants the whole thing, everything connected, integrated, the home theater, the home's lighting, the home's speaker system, the property's WiFi. Might take years to complete from start to finish.
Maybe the place is located in Hawaii, maybe San Diego, near the family's home in Lakeside. Wherever it is, whatever it is, Brent's your guy, AVC Integration doing the design, the programming, the installation. He's the guy who answers the question, I wonder if it would be possible to … ? Yes, yes it is.
Brent Christiaens: Fulfiller of visions and dreams.
That's one story. The other: COVID. When the California Collegiate Athletic Association shuttered sports for the 2020-21 season, it left Ewing, then the coach at Cal State San Marcos, looking for options to get her softball and coaching fix.
She picked up a 16U team, one that co-practiced with an 18U team that had Christiaens at third base. "She was always on the third-base line and that's where I was," says Christiaens. "It was very nerve-racking but I really liked her."
At the time, Christiaens wanted to get on the track for veterinary school, which she believed took San Marcos off her list of potential options. It wasn't until she one day shadowed an actual vet that she learned that maybe it wasn't the profession for her.
To see her today at the field is to see someone locked in. "At practice, she does not get outworked," said Ewing. "She won't ever be a rah-rah leader but is someone who every day shows up with her lunch pail." Until someone with a dog walks past the outfield fence at Grizzly Softball Field. AHHHHHH!!!!
Then it's game over, timeout, until they are out of view. "There are always these Golden Retrievers walking around the field. They're so cute," she says.
That's how this animal lover from a family of them ended up passed out on the floor that day at the veterinary clinic, learning firsthand that, maybe, just maybe, she wasn't cut out for the day-to-day requirements of a vet when she witnessed a Golden Retriever get spayed.
Now she's majoring in physiology, with the goal of working in … an emergency room? That she can handle? "I like dogs better than people," she explains, which isn't unusual. A dog with a broken leg? Tragic. A guy at the ER? You'll be fine. Quit your whining. We'll cast it up and have you on your way.
When Ewing got the job at Montana, she made a call to Christiaens, who had recently decommitted from another school. "She said, come see it," says Christiaens, who did and had that piece of her soul, that love of Montana passed down from her parents, filled on her visit.
There are players who get tagged as utility but few who provide the range of on-field options that Christiaens does. "Growing up, started as catcher, went to third, played right field, played shortstop for three years, back to third, to catcher, to left field. I was everywhere," she says.
It's not just her experience at so many different positions that separates Christiaens but that she could go from one position one day to another the next, after not having played it in forever, and make it look like it's the only one she's ever tried.
"She will be our true utility. It's special to have somebody who can do that, who has her natural instincts for the game," said Ewing.
Nowhere on that list of experiences was first base listed, but that was the conversation when fall camp opened. Hannah Jablonski started 45 games at first last season. She graduated and the other options for Ewing's second team have been dealing with injuries.
JoJo, wanna try first? Maybe even play it when the season rolls around? "At first I felt like I was lopsided or backwards because I was on the other side of the field," says the player more used to holding down third if she's part of the infield defense.
"I would step with the wrong foot forward. Reading throws was hard. Getting throws from other people is different," she says. That lasted about a week before anyone watching her for the first time would have assumed she'd been there since she first put on a glove.
"The first couple of weeks last fall, I started to expect to be there all season, so I prepared like it. Coach (Marc) Kendrick would stand a couple feet away and hit picks at us. That was really helpful. My picks have gotten a lot better."
And just like that, she'll anchor one of the infield corners next week when Montana opens its season at the UCSD La Jolla Invitational in San Diego, likely part of an all-underclassman starting lineup, with sophomores Grace Lopez at second and Anna Cockhill at short, with freshman Brianna Gutierrez at third.
"It's going to be smoother, cleaner," said Ewing, when comparing her team's infield defense to last season's. "I love how they push each other. There is a standard that we're going to make plays at a high level. There is a lot of confidence in that group."
Chloe Saxton, the team's only senior, will work her way back into the mix, as will freshman Kailee Mejia, both overcoming physical ailments.
Gutierrez is a freshman at the hot corner who plays it like an upperclassman, a more smooth, polished third baseman you'd have to search long and hard to find. "She never looks rushed, never looks panicked," said Ewing.
Then there is Cockhill, who batted .283 as a freshman, scored a team-high 28 runs and stole a program-record 27 bases, all while playing a high-energy shortstop. In her second year, she'll be even better, a wiser version of her former self, set to play smarter, not harder, though always all out.
"The gaps have shrunk," said Ewing, meaning the space between infielders, where potential base hits are more and more turning into outs, keeping runners off the bases, helping the pitchers, shortening the half-inning. "Our returners have been able to learn where they can cheat a little bit.
"I've had that conversation with Anna. The ball that's on the second-base side isn't really your ball. Why don't we take a step into the 5-6 hole? Anna covers more ground to her left, to her glove side, than anyone I've ever seen. Where we've seen her grow is to her backhand side.
"She has redefined what a routine ball is. Now everybody in the infield has upped the ante for what a routine play is instead of it only being the ball hit right at you or one step to your right or one step to your left. She has motivated players to her right and left to make those plays, too."
Ask Ewing about Christiaens and she'll mention the work Christiaens put in last summer, then again over Christmas break. But what does that look like for someone playing a team sport like softball?
"Back home in San Diego last summer, I got a trainer at a power-lifting gym. He helped me with my mobility training," she says. "I got 10 times stronger. I got here in the fall and maxed out, did double what I did last year."
When she wasn't there, she was at the batting cage, an hour every day. "I really worked on the outside (pitch). I was really handsy last year. I worked on getting (to the outside pitch) with my arms and using my legs a lot more. My bat speed has gotten a lot faster. I've tightened up my mechanics."
You heard it here first. JoJo Christiaens: The breakout player you didn't see coming.
"Last year at this time we knew we had an athlete who could play multiple positions but she was a freshman who was still trying to figure out her confidence. Typical freshman year. You have those welcome-to-softball moments," said Ewing.
"She's another example of that sophomore class who has settled in and has worked really, really hard. The power with the bat has really grown. She will be at the top or the middle of the order all year. She's really put the work in and she's seeing the benefit."
She was part of last year's eight-win team, part of the group that said – and put the work in to back those words up – that it won't happen again. "We definitely want it more than last year's team," she says. "We don't want what happened last year to happen again. It won't, for sure."
This girl who was born Alanna (a-lan-ah, not a-lawn-ah, not a-lain-ah and certainly not at-lan-ta, which she's heard; on the field she's just JoJo, short for Josephine, her middle name, JoJo first bestowed upon her by her dad) is only looking forward, even to senior day in 2028.
She wants to play all nine positions in her final game at Grizzly Softball Field, even get a pitch or two in the circle to complete the circuit. The last time she pitched? A championship game in rec ball. She hit the first three batters she faced but her team got the final out at home, so it all worked out in the end.
A true utility player fulfilling her destiny. One game, all nine positions. "I'm going to ask for one pitch." Who says no?
Players Mentioned
INF/C
/ Softball
INF/OF
/ Softball
INF/UTL
/ Softball
INF
/ Softball
INF
/ Softball
INF
/ Softball
INF
/ Softball
C
/ SoftballGriz Basketball vs. Idaho State Highlights - 1/24/26 [N7 Game]
Tuesday, January 27
Griz Basketball vs. Weber State Highlights - 1/22/26
Tuesday, January 27
Lady Griz Basketball vs. Northern Arizona Highlights - 1/19/26
Tuesday, January 20
Griz Basketball vs. Northern Colorado Highlights - 1/3/26
Thursday, January 15
