Chris Citowicki wasn’t expecting much from a routine day of Griz soccer summer camp. The temperatures were blazing, and the players he’d mostly seen before. The season was still a month or more away and nothing, yet, was all that serious or required all that much attention.
Then, suddenly, he saw something that dropped his jaw.
A player had the ball on the endline, looking for a cross or a cutback into the box, when Citowicki saw his new transfer striker Jen Estes, who had joined the game because the teams were short a player, simply…stop.
“The run that most people would have made would have been to the wrong spot,” Citowicki explained. “But the way that she hit the brakes and readjusted herself to get to the right spot for the ball to be cut back to, I was like, ‘Oh, my God.’ … (Assistant coach) Ashley Herndon saw it at the same time, and we were standing next to each other. She was like, ‘Did you see what she just did?’
“Nobody on our team would have hit the brakes at that time to show up in that spot, nobody. And we were both like, oh my God, we may have just found a complete gem in Jen.”
The moment presaged what’s been, to this point, an incredible fifth-year senior season for Estes.
Heading into the Big Sky Conference tournament, the flame-haired striker from Princeton is leading the Griz in goals, with seven, and assists, with four.
In September, she scored twice against Wyoming to give the Griz a 3-3 draw despite losing last year’s Big Sky Golden Boot winner Delaney Lou Schorr to a season-ending injury in the first half.
A month later, Estes scored both goals in a 2-1 win against Idaho that was the difference in Montana winning the conference title over the second-place Vandals.
And last Sunday, it was her goal 61 seconds into the game that set the Griz on the path to a 3-0 rout of Weber State that officially clinched the conference crown, as well as their second straight undefeated Big Sky regular season.
In typical Estes fashion, the finish was simple but everything before wasn’t, as she held herself just barely onside when Charley Boone poked a blocked set piece back into the box before making a great first touch and sliding the ball past Weber’s goalkeeper.
“It’s the level of IQ that I was not ready for, beyond just traditional American athleticism,” Citowicki said. “And somebody who can strike a ball well, plus somebody who knows what she’s supposed to do, knows where she’s supposed to be, that’s what’s led to so many chances. … She understands the game.”
Three months ago, nobody would have imagined that the keys to the Griz offense – and, perhaps, their season – would rest with a transfer.
Montana brought back Schorr, plus the reigning Big Sky Offensive MVP, Skyleigh Thompson. Together, the two combined for 11 goals and eight assists in 2023. This year, thanks to Schorr’s broken leg against Wyoming and Thompson’s struggles (the star from Kalispell had no goals or assists in 15 games before suffering a likely season-ending injury late in the year), they’ve combined for one of each.
Winger Eliza Bentler, who scored four goals in 2023, has played just a fraction of the 732 minutes she saw a year ago. Sydney Haustein, Abby Gearhart and Kathleen Aitchison all graduated, which means the only multi-goal scorer from last year who’s continued at the same level is midfielder Maddie Ditta.
It was a recipe for disaster. Instead, thanks mostly to Estes and fellow transfer Chloe Seelhoff, the Griz offense has remained almost at the same level, averaging 1.61 goals per game compared to 1.74 a year ago and capturing a second straight conference title and undefeated season.
Despite going scoreless for the first eight games of the season, Seelhoff has six goals, second on the team.
Ditta has four goals, but nobody else on the team has more than two.
It’s the second year in a row the Grizzlies have gotten a high-level difference-maker at forward out of the portal.
Last year, Gearhart, a hard-working forward who’d scored 14 goals over four years at Bucknell, had four goals for Montana, winning the conference Newcomer of the Year award.
“If you were in the portal back in the day, it’s like, what did you do?” Citowicki said. “Why are you in there? Are you broken? And that’s not the case anymore, because players have so much freedom to move.”
This year, transfers have been even more crucial. As Montana heads into the conference tournament with Schorr out, Thompson out and nobody else scoring consistently, the fate of the Griz rests squarely on the shoulders of Estes and Seelhoff.
“It’s a fresh setting for them, where maybe they were frustrated at the previous school,” Citowicki said. “Jen wasn’t frustrated, but it was like, ‘All right, I’m done (at Princeton). If I’m gonna do this one more time, I just wanna end on a high. Who can sell me that high?’”
“We had to rip the two of them away from some really powerful, big programs, and I’m very happy that we did.”
Despite growing up about 30 minutes away from each other in the Seattle area – Estes is from Kirkland, Seelhoff from Snohomish – the two walked very different paths to get to Missoula.
Estes, who was the Washington Gatorade Player of the Year as a senior and was rated as one of the top 30 recruits in the country in the Class of 2020, went all the way east to Princeton in New Jersey.
Women’s soccer is one of the few places the Ivy League has not quite lost all of its long-buried athletic prestige, and in four years, Estes played on two teams that went to – and won a game in – the NCAA Tournament.
She ended up playing in 49 games, with six goals and six assists, but needed to transfer to keep playing after her fourth season because the Ivy League elected not to extend the extra COVID year of eligibility to athletes.
Estes played club soccer growing up with multiple Grizzlies, including centerback Charley Boone and Chloe Seelhoff’s older sister Maddie, so she had plenty of references for the program when Citowicki reached out.
“It was nice to, you know, text with them, hear about their experience,” Estes said. “Then I got to come on a visit here in the spring, meet some more of the team, and see more of what the Griz were about, and I just thought it would be a great fit for me.
“It was looking at an opportunity to have a fun season, and end soccer on a high note, and I’ve definitely been doing that so far.”
Seelhoff, a junior, transferred in from Washington in the offseason, joining Maddie on the Griz roster.
In two seasons with the Huskies, she’d played in 17 total matches and scored once (against, ironically, Idaho), but felt increasingly burnt out in Seattle.
“I loved everything about Washington and my teammates, but it was time for a change in the soccer world,” Seelhoff said. “I needed to find a fit for me, style-of-play-wise, coaching-wise.”
That made Montana the perfect situation for her. The Griz weren’t worried about where she’d fit into the team. Instead, Citowicki assured her that they’d fit the team around what she did best.
“He was like, I want to coach you to exactly where you need to be,” Seelhoff said. “And that was so refreshing to hear that, that he genuinely cared and wanted to get me to the best I could be.”
After a slow start to the season, Seelhoff found the right spot as a hybrid forward/midfielder/winger with plenty of freedom in Montana’s new 3-4-3 formation.
Beginning against North Dakota at the end of non-conference play, the fiery junior scored in three straight games. That included a brace against Boise State in a 2-0 win, perhaps the most impressive win of Citowicki’s seven years at Montana.
Like Estes’ field IQ, Seelhoff’s work ethic and confidence quickly became apparent.
“She’s so cocky and confident,” Citowicki said. “Her penalty kick against Boise, I’m looking through the field saying, who’s going to be the most confident (to take the kick) and Chloe was already standing there. She takes a couple of deep breaths, puts the ball down, and just smacks it in the back of the net. That (confidence) just oozes out of her. We’ve had a couple players like that. Alexa Coyle had it, and it’s just this extreme confidence in yourself that is so difficult for teams to stop when she’s on fire.”
In mid-September, Seelhoff scored a clutch late equalizer to get the Griz a 1-1 draw against Eastern Washington. Against Idaho State two weeks ago, she scored another crucial late goal, this one to give Montana a 2-0 lead in a match that put the Griz on the precipice of the conference title.
“When I met with Chris and the other coaches and figured out the environment of Missoula and how the team works, the style of play, that was super appealing to me,” Seelhoff said. “Just being able to find freedom in soccer again and really enjoy the game, instead of having these pressures of, if I mess this up, I’m subbed out. It’s more so turned into, wow, I get to come to practice, I get to try new things. I’m having so much fun performing, and the results are following.”
In the end, Montana has been a perfect fit for Estes and Seelhoff – and vice versa.
The confidence, experience and intensity that the duo added to Montana’s front line helped the Griz go undefeated in conference regular-season games for the second year in a row.
They’ve steadied a team that ended up losing four starters – Thompson, Schorr, goalkeeper Ashlyn Dvorak and fullback Mia Parkhurst (a transfer herself, from Georgia before the 2023 season) – to injury.
On Tuesday, Estes was named the Big Sky’s co-Offensive MVP, as well as Newcomer of the Year. Seelhoff made second-team all-conference.
Heading into the conference tournament, they’re just two games away from helping lead the Griz to a rare regular season/tournament double and an NCAA Tournament appearance.
And the future that Citowicki started to picture faintly through the heat waves, all the way back in July watching Estes school defenders at summer camp, suddenly looks a lot clearer.
“They’re completely different, but not in their competitiveness,” Citowicki said. “There’s a bunch of photos, in-the-moment pictures where they’re screaming in each other’s faces because one has scored and the other one has assisted her. They have some of the best competitive intensity and competitive edge that I’ve seen. You can’t describe it. You just have to see it.”
You can see it at South Campus Stadium in Missoula this week. Montana hosts the Big Sky Conference soccer tournament for the first time in 10 years.
