There are many ways to tell how dominant an athlete is compared to his or her peers. Stats. Highlights. Accolades.
One of the best ways to tell a superstar from a regular player is by watching – but there are caveats. Talent – not always, but in rare cases – begets ease, nonchalance. Simple, not spectacular. It’s a paradox: the player doing the most looks like they’re doing the least – and by that measure, Ava Samuelson is the best player to come through the University of Montana soccer program in a long time.
The senior fullback/winger doesn’t so much dribble past defenders – she glides. Her teammate Skyleigh Thompson dribbles with palpable effort and energy, a locomotive. You can almost imagine the force of her steps creating mini earthquakes as she churns past her markers.
Samuelson is different. One second there’s a defender in front of her, the next there’s not. No flash, no force – a magic trick of simplicity.
It’s a feeling that extends to every part of Samuelson’s game – crossing, defending, shooting.
Against Wyoming in September, she picked up a loose ball at the top of the box, on the left side of the half-circle. Taking one touch to her left, she fired a shot across her body, around two closing Cowgirls defenders and past the desperate leap of the goalkeeper into the top right corner. Impossible for others, expected for Samuelson, and the celebration confirmed it – just a quick shake of the head, tongue hanging out a la Jordan, before she raised her arms to the Montana bench like Walker Buehler on the mound at Yankee Stadium.
“Let me put it to you this way,” Montana head coach Chris Citowicki said. “I’ve heard that if you were to coach somebody like Mia Hamm, or you coach somebody like Cristiano Ronaldo, you don’t teach them how to play soccer, right? You don’t have to, because they have a skill set that is exceptional as it is. And so you don’t do technique with Mia Hamm, you don’t do technique with Ronaldo, you don’t do technique with Ava. Ava’s just exceptionally good at what she does.”
As a high school senior in Louisville, Colorado, Samuelson knew immediately after her visit to Missoula that she wanted to play for the Griz. Her father convinced her to at least wait a weekend before texting Citowicki her commitment.
As might be expected from someone with that level of conviction, Samuelson stepped onto the Montana campus with her confidence already fully formed.
She played in all 20 matches for the Griz as a freshman, assisting two goals. Although she didn’t score, she finished fifth on the team in shots – a five-foot-four scrap of a freshman outside back, already unafraid to let it rip.
“Sometimes I’d look at her like, how did we get this kid here?” Citowicki said. “(She was at) Real Colorado, very, very high-level team. She was on the cusp of youth national team call-ups. So I don’t know, it was a miracle she came here.”
In practice, she didn’t back down from the team’s three-time all-conference right back Taylor Hansen, who finished her career as Montana’s all-time leader in games started.
“There were just some practices where she’s like, ‘I’m gonna beat you,’” Hansen said. “You can always tell, we wanted to win, if it was a battle 1v1 against each other, and I think that’s ultimately what made us better. The most fun was just competing with her.”
Samuelson’s competitiveness and confidence came with downsides as well. Secure in her own talent, she became frustrated when teammates didn’t measure up, or when something didn’t go her way. Worse than that, she let it show.
“She was a brat when she first came in, just hard to manage at times, hard to coach at times, very strong with her personality,” Citowicki said. “She was trying too hard and just being angry for no reason. It’s like, who cares? It’s just a sport. Just get back in shape and defend. It was just an, I’m cool and I’m tough, type of thing, which strong personalities come in with sometimes.”
Hansen recognized some of her own shortcomings and strengths in the headstrong freshman, and took Samuelson under her wing.
The two practiced crossing together before and after practices, talked trash, joked and laughed.
“I think if you saw Taylor and I at practice, you would see we were almost like sisters,” Samuelson said. “We would mess around with each other a lot. … Working under her was a blessing, and it really helped me grow quickly in the program.”
Hansen was the perfect mentor. At the same time as she marveled at Samuelson’s physical talent – “she was already doing stuff her freshman year that I didn’t figure out until, like, my junior year,” Hansen said – she taught the freshman how to control her emotions, managing her competitive flame so that it didn’t leap out and burn her teammates.
“The emotional part of it, not letting your emotions completely overwhelm you on the field, whether you’re super amped up or frustrated, I know that’s something that I really struggled with,” Hansen said. “I didn’t really have the tools or the skill set to let things go. But I also think that’s just something that you learn in freshman year. … It just comes with being super passionate, and I think it’s something that you find a balance to. I was able to kind of connect with her on that point, because that’s something that I noticed my freshman year for myself.”
Citowicki put it slightly more bluntly.
“Ava, when she was deciding to not make recovery runs and get frustrated about a ball that somebody missed, Tay would be like, you know, get your head out of wherever, and let’s get back to work.”
After the season, Hansen went on to get a shot with her hometown San Diego Wave in the NWSL, even playing minutes for the team in the preseason Challenge Cup – among the most impressive professional accomplishments ever for a Griz soccer player.
Samuelson, meanwhile, followed in her friend’s footsteps with the Griz.
As a sophomore in 2021, she started all 20 games, averaged 80 minutes per game, finished fourth in the Big Sky with four assists and was named second-team all-conference.
As a junior in 2022, she started 15 games, finished second in the Big Sky with six assists and was named first-team all-conference and third-team all-region.
Along the way, she became a beloved figure and a valuable leader, her ever-present pink foam-tape headband a common sight in the middle of the Grizzlies’ pregame hype circles.
“(Taylor Hansen) was such a mature and grown player at the time when I came in, she was in her fifth year, so I was just learning off of her and understanding what she went through and how to grow as a player,” Samuelson said. “I think I had a little bit of a different style of play coming in, and just learning how to be an outside back in the program and how to lead with maturity and lead with grace was a really big one as well.”
This year, Samuelson has just one goal and two assists, but has been dangerous as ever on the left flank for the Griz. She was voted first-team All-Big Sky on Tuesday.
Her ability to beat defenders and either take a shot or put in a dangerous cross is one of the reasons Montana felt so confident switching to a 3-4-3 formation partway through the season.
Years ago, she would argue with the coaches about her role, always wanting to attack more and defend less. In the 3-4-3, that’s exactly what they’ve given her the freedom to do on the left side of the midfield.
“She brings with her a level of independence and a conviction for how her position should be played, and a style that she wants to hold on to while still doing what the team needs,” associate head coach J Landham said. “It would be a problem if she was truly trying to do her own thing, just like it would be a problem if we were trying to fit her into a mold. And so we found this really cool middle ground that brings out the best of Ava as a human being and as a player, and it involves her being free, while knowing that the team needs her to to show up and be a mentally strong and confident player who can make mistakes, just like everybody does, and then in a split second completely change the game by a run that she makes and a cross that she makes, or a ball that she intercepts to create a shot that ties us or wins us the game.”
Since Hansen graduated, the Griz haven’t had many players go pro (although Maysa Walters likely would have last year if she hadn’t torn her ACL).
Both Landham and Citowicki said that Samuelson has enough talent to break that trend, whether that’s giving the NWSL a shot like Hansen or playing overseas.
“I would love to see what life is like outside of college soccer,” Samuelson said. “I mean, as a student and an athlete, I think there are some options there. I would love to see where it takes me and just kind of decide when it happens.”
Before that, Samuelson and the Griz will take on the Big Sky Conference tournament this week in Missoula – two games left, potentially, to watch a player who was mentored by a Grizzly great and then went on to make her own path, to marvel at someone who makes the impossible look so easy.
“Amazing player, amazing person,” Citowicki said. “She has just become so mature and is playing such high-level soccer right now, just free-flowing. I’m loving the way she plays and yeah, just the way she bounces around in pregame. If you watch her in the warmup, that’s Ava’s personality. She’s just bubbly and happy. … She’s a very special player.”
