March 2025 ~
It can be a bit surreal when she thinks about it, and one has to assume she thinks about it regularly considering her “favorite role now” consumes a healthy slice of her life.
Two decades ago, Christine Soma Stenberg (Grant, 2004) was one of the girls on the pitch, soaking up her coaches’ instructions and turning them into star play on her way to two-time 1st team All-PIL status while helping the Generals to three straight PIL soccer titles. Today she’s one of the coaches imparting her own wisdom to a new generation of Grant players. What’s more, she’s now doing it alongside her old coach from her days at Fernwood (now Beverly Cleary) Middle School.
And where she once starred in track and field, earning team MVP honors as a sophomore, junior and senior and running on a state-champion 4x400-meter relay team, Stenberg has for the last 12 years served as an assistant coach. At one time, she was again working with a former coach, Michael Donaghu, and his daughters, Ruby and Ella, the latter considered one of the best prep runners in Oregon history.
“I used to babysit those girls when I was in high school,” says Stenberg.
So, yes, kind of surreal. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, especially, when you have Grant blue and gray coursing through your veins, as Stenberg does. “The sports memories I cherish most are all from high school,” she says.
But before high school, there were the formative years when Stenberg was throwing herself into multiple sports to see what might stick. “I think it was easier to do multiple sports back then,” she says. “I played rec. soccer and joined the basketball team at school and ran CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) track. I credit some of my successes to not picking a sport and specializing too soon. I coach now and see that happen, and I guess sometimes it’s necessary, like with soccer, which is such a technical game. But I’m glad I didn’t have to make a choice like that so young.”
Which is not to say Stenberg didn’t have a favorite sport. Early on she developed a passion for soccer that only grew in middle school where she started learning from a former member of the Greek national team. “He really knew what he was doing and instilled in me a love for the game,” she says of Manolis Tjuanakis.
At Fernwood, Stenberg also continued to run track and play basketball, though she wasn’t sure she’d compete in the latter once at Grant.
“I wasn’t the best basketball player, so I was thinking I wouldn’t play it in high school,” she says. “But some of my best memories were on that team. Ultimately, I decided I wasn’t going to not play a sport just because I wasn’t great at it. I’ve always loved the team aspect of sports, and I loved basketball because of that. It was fun and we had a great coach (Margaret Calvert, another important former Grant mentor and, now, friend) and we found success as a group of players even though, individually, I didn’t excel. I just remember having such love for our school and being so proud to wear the blue and gray. In team sports, you’re playing for something larger than yourself, and that’s one of the reasons I coach now.”
Stenberg enjoyed plenty of team success at Grant, even in track, where team success is largely dependent on team members being successful as individuals. While Stenberg was 1500-meter PIL champion as a freshman and 800m champion as a sophomore (in addition to being a three-time team MVP), she says her fondest memories came as a member of two PIL championship 4x400m relay teams and, as a senior, a state championship 4x400 team, helping the Generals finish second overall.
“Winning that state 4x400 championship felt so much bigger than any individual accolades I ever got,” says Stenberg, who ran her 400m leg between fellow PIL Hall of Famers Lizzy and Sara Wild. “Winning relays meant the most because it was something we accomplished together. Running and winning at Hayward Field, with the energy of that crowd cheering us on, was an amazing thing to be part of.”
Stenberg’s team-first philosophy was also at play in soccer. While she was team MVP and 1st Team All-PIL in both her junior and senior years, Stenberg says those honors take second to being able to contribute to three PIL championship teams.
But her individual honors, which also included being named the 2004 PIL Sportswoman of the Year, shouldn’t be downplayed because Stenberg worked hard to earn them. They also weren’t limited to sports. As a sophomore, she was named a MAC (Multnomah Athletic Club) Scholar Athlete, an acknowledgement of her ability to balance sports and academics without sacrificing performance in either.
“I did put a lot of time and effort into academics as well as sports,” Stenberg says. “I remember so many track meets at Grant when I’d cross the finish line in the 1500 or 800, grab my stuff and head out to soccer practice on the west side, which started at 7. That was just normal then, but looking back I’m, like, When did I do my homework?
“But sport is such a teacher of life skills, whether time management, talking with teammates, communicating with adults or sometimes having to commit yourself to stuff that’s not all that fun like waking up earlier or training in rain. Sports is a great way to learn important skills that have suited me well even in my post-athletic life.”
Before Stenberg got to that stage of her life, there was college. While she had grown up watching soccer games at the University of Portland, then a national women’s soccer powerhouse, Stenberg wound up accepting a scholarship to Gonzaga.
“I wanted to get away from Portland and have a college experience away from home – but not too far away,” she says.
Gonzaga didn’t have anything close to the soccer pedigree Portland had, but it offered her a chance to make an early impact. So, she headed to Spokane to join a team that had nowhere to go but up.
“When I was a freshman, I think the seniors had lost all their games the previous year, but by my sophomore or junior year Gonzaga made its first tournament,” Stenberg says. “So, it was remarkable to see the program grow and great being part of its early success.”
Stenberg did indeed make an early impact, earning WCC All-Conference 2nd Team as a freshman and Honorable Mention as a sophomore and junior.
In 2006, she was named a finalist for the Bill Hayward Amateur Athlete of the Year Award, given annually by the Oregon Sports Writers and Sportscasters’ Association to the state’s top collegiate and professional athletes and teams. (Her older sister and fellow PIL Hall of Famer, Kate Soma Conwell, had been a finalist for the award a few years earlier.)
Stenberg left Gonzaga fourth among the school’s all-time assists leaders and with a degree in public relations. After working in the university’s athletic department for a year, she completed a year of volunteer service on the East Coast before moving back to Portland and starting a family with her husband, Joel, whom she had met while working at Gonzaga. They have three young daughters and own and operate two coffee shops (greenbridgecoffee.com) where they donate a portion of their sales to Portland nonprofits.
When Stenberg isn’t doing office work for the shops or mother work for the kids (including coaching her middle daughter’s soccer team), she’s likely giving back to the school for whom she still “bleeds blue and gray.”
“I’d love to know what spare time is,” she laughs. “I got started coaching at Grant when I was on maternity leave with my oldest. My old track coach, Michael Donaghu, told me if I had time, I should come help him out. I agreed to do that until my maternity was over. Here I am 12 years later.”
Stenberg is also assisting Tjuanakis, who now coaches the Grant girls’ soccer team, 25-plus years after playing for him in middle school.
Yeah, sort of surreal, right?
Stenberg says she was thrilled to be inducted into the PIL Hall of Fame in 2019, and not just because it was one less thing for her sister, Kate, inducted in 2014, to lord over her (both are also members of the Grant Hall of Fame).
“Kate and I never really competed against each other in sports, but being in the PIL Hall of Fame was something she had always been able to kind of hold over my head,” Stenberg says with laugh. “While it was an honor to be recognized for my accomplishments, to me it was also recognition of the hard work a lot of people put into me over years. Like my parents and the coaches I’m now coaching alongside or still friends with who were so important in my life. This wasn’t honoring just me but them as well.”
Do you know Christine Soma Stenberg? If you'd like to reconnect, she can be reached at [email protected]
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~ Profile written by Dick Baltus (Wilson, 1973)
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