Bend It Like Brower: Katie (Moller) Brower

Horses or soccer? That is the question Katie (Moller) Brower was asked by her parents after growing up around both.

Brower grew up on a hobby farm in Aurora, Ore., about 30 miles south of Portland on the western side of the state. Brower was raised on the small-scale farm and tended to horses, cows and also baled hay. Her parents never played soccer and she was the only girl grandchild on both sides of her family. So, at family gatherings, it was either sit and talk with the adults or go play soccer with the boys.

“That’s where I found my love for soccer is playing with them,” Brower said. “I played a couple of other sports because I was somewhat athletic, but as I tell people, I was not good at soccer and I was really bad at everything else and I honed in on soccer as my only sport.”

With a climate susceptible to year-round soccer in Oregon, Brower never took a break from the sport. If there was an offseason, she would play pickup soccer with friends from school.

After the eighth grade, Brower and her family moved to West Linn, which is about 15 miles from Aurora, and the move for her was for the best both academically and athletically. She was a four-year letterwinner at West Linn High School, was named the Three Rivers League Player of the Year and an All-Conference first-team honoree in her junior year. Additionally, Brower was named a first-team All-State recipient in 2013 and was also a four-year honor roll member.

Despite racking up all those accolades, Brower never really thought about playing the sport she loved in college.

However, those thoughts quickly changed after the staff at North Dakota started showing interest in her. It didn't take long to collect a scholarship off to be a member of the Fighting Hawks family.

“It was everything I had prayed about and it was a rebuilding season,” Brower said. “The coaches told me I can come in, make an impact right out the gate and there’s an opportunity there. I went there with the expectation knowing that we weren’t great, but we could be great. The town really supports the sports community. Between those many factors, that’s how I decided to go there. I definitely got a lot of slack for it coming from Oregon.”

Brower competed in the Big Sky Conference with the Fighting Hawks her first three seasons at UND. During her freshman season in 2015, Brower appeared in 17 games and started 16 of them, recording a team tying-high 38 shots with three of those finding the back of the net. Her first collegiate goal came against Northern Illinois in the 87th minute of the match, which gave North Dakota a 2-1 victory. 

During her sophomore campaign, Brower appeared in all 18 matches, making eight starts. She led the team in goals (3), points (6), shots (37) and shots on goal (18). Brower was also named to her second-straight Big Sky Conference Fall All-Academic Team.

In December, 2016, UND made a coaching move and hired Northern Iowa head coach and former North Dakota State Associate Head Coach Chris Logan to lead the program.

“We knew him from our combines and camps (with NDSU),” Brower said. “When he became our coach, we were really excited because we really enjoyed working with him the times we had over the years. You could tell he was a genuine person. One of my favorite things was he told me, ‘You’re a person above an athlete.’ I definitely felt supported as a person and a student before I was pressed to be an athlete."

During spring practice, Logan and Brower had a specific conversation about the expectations for her junior season, and something Logan said caught her by surprise.

“He sits me down in the spring and he’s like, ‘Alright Katie, I need you to be our goal scorer.’ I looked at him and I was like, ‘Chris, I scored six goals in the last two years and you want me to be your leading goal scorer.'? I was like okay, sure. Inside, I was freaking out, but the thing was Chris saw the potential in all of us. As nervous as I was, the more that he coached me and worked with him, I knew that I could do it because even through mistakes, he encouraged me and got to the point where he realized he couldn’t tell me that was a bad shot. He just had to tell me it was adventurous.”

And boy did she have an memorable final two seasons with the Fighting Hawks.

After tallying just those six goals in her first two years, Brower went on a tear in 2017 and racked up a career-high 10 goals, which led the team. She also led the Fighting Hawks in points (23), assists (3), shots (84), shots on goal (37) and game-winning goals (4). Brower earned All-Big Sky honors, the first in program history to do so and became the first player in program history to be named to the United Soccer Coaches NCAA Division I Women's Scholar All-West Region team. Her successes continued in the classroom as well, earning a spot on the Big Sky Fall All-Academic team once again.

“It was always apparent that Katie was a special talent, even from the couple of times I coached at other programs against UND,” Logan said. “I think the moment her career skyrocketed was after a special individual goal she scored in 2017 against South Dakota State. It seemed to give Katie the confidence that she could become an incredible player and after that moment she came up with big moment after big moment for us. It was a lot of fun to watch.”

For Brower, those nerves from being counted on as the team's go-to goal scorer seemed to ease after a netting a memorable goal against Western Illinois. Her scoring burst took off after that. 

“I remember Coach Logan told me to give it time and he was like, ‘Hey, it’s going to happen, stop forcing it and just wait and be patient.’” Brower recalled. "I took on two or three girls after (receiving the pass) and I knew I had time to take one more touch and it went in. That was the goal that started it all during my junior season. What made it the most memorable was it showed as a team saw that we could do it. That was the turning point and I feel for me, that was the goal that started it all.”

In Brower's final season with the Fighting Hawks, North Dakota made the move to The Summit League and Logan saw even more potential in Brower.

“I don’t think as a staff we really had to do too much to develop Katie’s leadership skills as she is naturally someone who will take initiative and others will follow,” Logan said. “Katie has a very strong personality and possesses exceptional morals, values and standards, so it was no surprise to see her take a key role in our leadership group, especially in 2018.”

Brower went on to be named the Summit League Offensive Player of the Year and was a first-team All-Summit League honoree after finishing second with a league-best 35 points and 15 goals. She also tallied five assists and recorded two hats tricks, including a four-goal match against Purdue Fort Wayne, the fourth four-goal match in league history.

Logan recounted a specific goal against the Mastodons that cemented herself as a leading candidate for the league's Offensive Player of the Year.

“There was a goal where she took a high punt out of the air at half field, flicked it past a defender, beat two more players, and hit a laser into the far corner that summed up why Katie was the offensive player of the year,” Logan said. “In my opinion, there wasn’t another player in the league that year who could have scored it. Obviously being the top scorer of the season that year helped statistically, but that goal in itself summed up exactly why she was the best offensive player as it was one of those goals only top players can score.”

Brower became the first player in Division I program history to record four goals in a match and with that incredible feat, she became the program's all-timer leading scorer in the DI era (2008-present)

“What a game," Brower said. “Behind the scenes, there were things going on and that was one of the first games where all of that kind of got resolved and I felt a lot of things that were weighing me down were released that day. I was able to play freely and knowing that my coaches were going to support me in whatever I was doing really helped me to excel.”

Brower certainly excelled during her final season at North Dakota.

“I think after looking at where I came from my freshman season and where this team came from versus where we finished my senior season, we definitely put in that work,” Brower said. “We helped turned the program into the competitive program that it is today.”

Not only did Brower have a stellar athletic career with the Fighting Hawks, she was even better academically.

Brower was a Senior CLASS Award finalist and a second-team All-American, where she was a double major in physics and communications. 

“The Senior CLASS award just sums up Katie’s dedication to all areas of her life,” Logan said. “She is an extremely motivated and passionate person on the soccer field, in the classroom and in her personal life. For as much as Katie loved soccer, she was eagerly as enthusiastic about her academics and this came across in how much she loved to speak about those interests too. It was an exceptional achievement for Katie to be honored with this achievement and she is fully deserving.”

For Brower, she never wanted to glorify herself. It was always about people seeing her outside of being a soccer player that made headlines and a good person who serves in her community and tries to make a difference.

“It was really cool to get recognition for the all-around person I was trying to be because that’s personally where my focus was and how can I be the best person I could be and Chris Logan was also cultivated that environment too," Brower said. "I felt very supported in all the things I was pursuing. It was cool for sure and my parents were really proud of me.”

After college, Brower worked really hard to set herself well to go into a career. She got a job as a sales engineer for Nalco Water, a company owned by ecolabs in Des Moines, Iowa and has been doing that for a year and a half. She also got married in mid-October to her husband, Tyler, and together, they joined an indoor soccer team to play on this winter. During their wedding, Brower's former teammates were invited and marked the first time in a while they were all together again.

“Katie is caring, passionate, driven, leads by example and is simply an all-around great person," Logan added. "We place a great deal of emphasis on personal values in our program and Katie lived up to and excelled in every human facet. It was a pleasure to have her as part of UND soccer.”

From growing up with horses in Oregon, to attending the University of North Dakota and becoming the program's all-time leading scorer, Brower has had a memorable journey.

“The thing I’m really most proud of was how my class came in as freshmen with a goal and mission in mind and that we, both on and off the field, were resilient and accomplished that goal," Brower said. "At one point, we were one of the worst teams on campus and got made fun of for it. So, I was most proud of being on that team and seeing where we did it, where we started and where we went. I was so proud to be a part of a program that turned it around that quickly and that no matter what adversity we were facing at any given time, we were all in to perform our best and do our best for each other and not for ourselves. That selfless mindset that we set for our freshmen year and carried through our senior year is what really helped us get through all the things that happened throughout the four years there.”