Grizzlies get it done. Again.

Viewed through the rearview mirror, the road Montana has traveled to reach 28 consecutive semesters with a cumulative GPA of at least 3.0 appears smooth and easily navigated as it stretches back 14 years, to its starting point, the fall of 2005.

But examine it more closely and you'll discover that road has been built by stories, now thousands of them able to be told by hundreds and hundreds of student-athletes, like the ones recalled this week by McKenzie Johnston of the Lady Griz basketball program, which is coming off a 3.44 semester.

It was March 2017 and Montana had lost a rough-and-tumble Big Sky Conference tournament game to Idaho State in Reno in what was Johnston's redshirt freshman season.

The team gathered early the next morning in the lobby of the Silver Legacy for its return trip to Missoula, and Johnston was a wreck.

She'd suffered a broken nose against the Bengals. On top of that, the play had left her with a concussion. On top of that, she'd learned, because of lab availability, she would have to take her practical for her human anatomy and physiology class by the end of the day.

To recap: Get up early in Reno. Bus to the airport. Take two flights back to Missoula. Arrive, get to campus and take the most important test of the semester for that particular class. With a broken nose and a concussion, both inflicted upon her while representing her school on the basketball court.

"I'm glad I studied before. Ten minutes into studying, I was like, I can't read this anymore. My head hurt and I felt sick," she recalled.

"They said they couldn't give me an extension but they could give me an extra 30 minutes to take the test, which wasn't going to help me prepare for it. That was probably the hardest time."

It's part of the disconnect most people have, between seeing their favorite student-athletes compete for the Grizzlies and the photo of Johnston from two weekends ago, in her maroon graduation stole, having earned her degree in exercise science in four years with a GPA just shy of 3.9.

That's where the stories come in, of what it takes to make it all happen.

"I don't think people understand the incredible organization these kids have to have and dedication to what they're doing," said Lady Griz coach Shannon Schweyen.

"Our academic staff does a tremendous job of helping our kids and giving them guidance on how to go down the right path to be successful, but it still falls on their shoulders. In the end, they have to be the ones who do the work."

There was the 6:30 a.m. final exam Johnston had to take in December, before the team traveled to Seattle for Washington's tournament. "That one was tough," she says.

Which was another road trip for a team whose season covers good chunks of both the fall and spring semesters, trips that always seem to start at 4 a.m. on campus. Then there is practice on the road, team meals, film sessions. All of it exhausting and hardly conducive to digging into a girl's academics.

"The hardest part is finding the motivation when you get to your hotel room at the end of the day," says Johnston, who points to missed class time as another major hurdle, especially for someone in the field of health and human performance.

"To not be in the classroom for classes like physics, you have to take pictures of other people's notes and try to teach yourself," which makes that degree she was holding 12 days ago and the GPA that went along with it just a little more impressive.

Johnston, who will be starting on a graduate degree in exercise science next year as she plays her final season as a Lady Griz, was one of more than 2,000 Montana students to receive a degree earlier this month.

All had their challenges to reach that point, all faced hardships of some type. All have stories they could tell.

For Montana's student-athletes, particularly the last 14 years, those stories have established a foundation that continues to be built upon, now 28 semesters strong, broken noses and all.

Academic notes:

* Montana's semester GPA was 3.18, the department's 11th consecutive term of 3.0 or better. Its average cumulative GPA is at 3.23, the 28th straight semester that metric has been 3.0 or better.

* Fresh off winning the Dusten Hollist Award at last month's Scholar-Athlete Awards Banquet, the men's tennis team recorded a 3.73 for the spring, the highest in the department.

* The soccer program matched its best semester with a 3.61, previously achieved in spring 2017. That makes it 12 consecutive semesters at 3.3 or better for that program.

* The women's tennis team had a 3.52 for the spring, that program's seventh straight semester at 3.4 or better.

* Softball came in at 3.49, the best mark in the program's five-year history, women's cross country at 3.46, women's basketball at 3.44, the second-highest mark for the Lady Griz in the record-keeping era.

* Women's track and field (3.28), women's golf (3.26) and men's track and field (3.03) were all above 3.0 for the spring semester.

* Football checked in at 3.0, its second straight semester at 3.0 or better, notable because they are the first two semesters at 3.0 or better.

University of Montana Athletics

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