Griz looking to regain championship form

Sometimes it takes getting punched in the mouth for a program, one that had been living a charmed existence for years, to take a long, hard look at itself.

From 2018 through '21, the Montana soccer program under coach Chris Citowicki made it look easy, advancing to three NCAA tournaments in four years, winning a Big Sky Conference regular-season title in the other.

Four seasons, some type of championship hardware to show for each of them.

That's why Citowicki went into last season, his fifth, not just talking about getting back to the NCAA tournament but winning a game and advancing to the second round for the first time since 2000.

It wouldn't be that simple and straightforward. It rarely is.

That Montana needed help on the final day of the regular season just to get the last spot in the six-team Big Sky tournament reveals just how fickle success in a sport like soccer, one that isn't always fair to start with, can be.

One day you're dreaming of winning an NCAA tournament match, the next you wake up to find yourself fighting just to advance to your league's playoffs.

That's not to suggest Montana, at 7-7-6 overall and with a trip to the Big Sky semifinals, had a bad year.

The Grizzlies finished .500 or better for the fourth straight season and went 7-5-4 over their final 16 matches, with four of those five losses coming by a single goal, including a season-ending 1-0 overtime loss to Idaho in the Big Sky semifinals.

Montana was close – Maysa Walters' header against Idaho, anyone? – but close doesn't make the NCAA tournament or win a Big Sky championship. Ending a season without any sort of trophy, regular season or postseason, was the rude awakening Montana needed, from head coach on down.

"What we needed as a coaching staff, as a program, was to lose. That's what was needed," says Citowicki, who is entering his sixth season leading Montana.

"We needed to realize that this isn't going to come easily every single year. Barely scraping into playoffs, then losing, it was deserved. That's the butt-kick we needed to light the fire for the next phase.

"We got to the top and got a little too comfortable and thought it would naturally come, and it didn't. We had to get back to work."

That Montana had a 0.84 goals-against average, good enough to rank 54th in the country, yet won just seven times in 20 matches and got shut out five times in 10 matches against Big Sky opponents, was not just a motivator for the offseason. It led to a change in the look of Citowicki's sixth team.

He dipped into the transfer portal and landed a pair of high-scoring fifth-year seniors in Abby Gearhart (Bucknell) and Audrey Teague (Regis). They join junior Delaney Lou Schorr, who led the Big Sky in goals last fall with seven on just 23 shots.

But behind Schorr, who was voted first-team All-Big Sky at season's end, nobody else scored more than three goals last season, and that was a factor when Montana's leading scorer was lost for the season at Idaho State, just before the postseason.

The Grizzlies lost their next match, their regular-season finale, at Weber State by shutout, and later lost 1-0 to Idaho in the Big Sky semifinals.

Schorr had become Montana's go-to target as the season progressed. Without her presence in front of goal, no other player was in position to reliably fill her cleats.

"We just didn't put games away that we needed to put away," says Citowicki, whose team got shut out in four of eight Big Sky matches.

"We started relying on Delaney. When she got hurt, now we're in a spot where it was going to be hard for someone else to step up and score goals. We were missing the one confident person who was doing it."

If Montana remains healthy, the Grizzlies will have scoring options and scoring depth in 2023.

Gearhart scored 14 goals in four seasons at Bucknell, 11 of those coming the last two seasons as the Bison twice advanced to the NCAA tournament. Teague scored 23 goals in mostly three seasons at NCAA Division II Regis.

Montana returns nine of its 11 goal-scorers from last season, the players who scored 21 of Montana's 25 goals, including junior Skyleigh Thompson and underclassmen Riley O'Brien and Eliza Bentler, who each scored twice.

Junior Ava Samuelson, second-team All-Big Sky last season and one of the league's top players with the ball at her feet, also returns.

"It was hard to rely on Skyleigh the underclassman to win us games," says Citowicki. "Now, Skyleigh the junior is different. You could see that over the course of the spring. The problems she caused BYU and Idaho State and (MSU Billings), we've never seen her like that before.

"Delaney's confidence is great, Eliza's is good, (Kayla Rendon Bushmaker's) is good, then you add in the transfers on top of that and we've got depth and it's experienced depth, not learning-on-the-job depth."

If Montana's potential up front is a highlight, the team's strength is its midfield, where three fifth-year seniors return: Walters, honorable mention All-Big Sky in her first season as a Grizzly last fall, Sydney Haustein and Kathleen Aitchison, not to mention Maddie Ditta.

Walters scored twice last season and tied for the Big Sky lead with six assists. Haustein, the last player remaining from Citowicki's 2019 freshman class, scored five goals two seasons ago.

Along with the addition of Gearhart and Teague, it gives Montana the benefit of five fifth-year seniors on the roster.

"That means maturity and experience," says Citowicki. "Gearhart has the experience of going to the NCAA tournament two years in a row and being a big-time goal-scorer. Teague's ability to consistently score over and over again is remarkable.

"Kat was tremendous this past spring, same with Maysa. They were really impressive. And I've never seen Syd look so good, so loose and free of thought when she's playing. It's just instinctual now."

The back line will be led by rock-solid senior center back Charley Boone, who has a knack for always being in the right place at the right time and always making the right play, the type of player you take for granted until she is not on the field. Senior Molly Quarry has started 36 matches the last three seasons.

Transfers also join the defense, with junior Mia Parkhurst arriving from Georgia, sophomore Hazel Dirk from Kansas.

"The midfield is full of talent, the back line is looking good. Who's in goal? That becomes the question," said Citowicki.

With the loss of Camellia Xu, the Big Sky Goalkeeper of the Year in 2021, Montana enters the season with four goalkeepers on the roster, none of whom has played a minute in goal during a fall match.

Ashlyn Dvorak and Shelby Stordahl, who played behind Xu last season, are the returners, Bayliss Flynn and Devan Webb the incoming freshmen.

"We got a glimpse of them at ID camp (earlier this month) and it's just tight competition across the board," said Citowicki. "They are all extremely talented. We're very lucky to have the goalkeepers we have."

The preseason, then, will become a daily tryout to earn the top spot. It's not unlike 2021, when the great Claire Howard was gone and Montana went into the season with Xu and Elizabeth Todd, both inexperienced.

The Grizzlies began the season playing both goalkeepers at Creighton in the opener, and Citowicki soon learned his team, which would go 13-6-1 that fall, would be just fine.

"That was scary. We went from Claire into the unknown. Even though I'd seen them train, I didn't know what to expect out of them in a game," says Citowicki. "It wasn't until the first couple saves were made that I knew we'd be alright."

Montana lacks that game experience again, but Dvorak and Stordahl both have the benefit of having played in the spring, during the Grizzlies' exhibition matches.

"We'll use the preseason to figure out who the No. 1 is," says Citowicki, whose team will host both Air Force and Calgary in exhibition matches in early August before traveling to North Dakota for the season opener on Aug. 17.

"I would hope somebody has claimed it by then. The second situation is they continue to fight it out."

Montana will open with matches at North Dakota and North Dakota State, the former a reuniting of Citowicki with the program where he coached in 2017.

The rest of the nonconference will mostly be played at home, with three Power 5 O's highlighting the schedule: home for Ohio State, Oklahoma in Spokane and at Oregon State.

Montana's home opener will be against MSU Billings on Thursday, Aug. 24. The Grizzlies also will get Colorado State, Georgia Southern and Miami (Ohio) at South Campus Stadium, where Montana went an uncharacteristic 4-3-4 last season. The Grizzlies went 14-2-3 in Missoula the three previous seasons.

"We just didn't take care of business at home last season," says Citowicki, whose team led Fresno State 1-0 going into the 90th minute last September before giving up the late equalizer. It was just that kind of season.

Montana would go 1-2-1 at home in league, with tight one-goal losses to Idaho and Northern Arizona, the teams that played in the Big Sky championship match. "We didn't do some basic things to take care of business at home. It was a good lesson," said Citowicki.

"It also lessens the pressure of having to protect our home record. That's gone. Now it's time to rebuild it. It allows you to shift the mindset a little, from let's protect this thing that's happened forever to let's start something new. It's an exciting challenge."

Montana ends the nonconference at Oregon State, the type of road match the Grizzlies would face if they get back to the NCAA tournament, if they hope to one day advance beyond the first round, because even with last season's step back, that remains the goal.

"If you're going to win in the NCAA tournament, it won't be at home. You've got to learn how to beat good teams on the road," says Citowicki. "If we can come out of nonconference over .500, I'd be ecstatic going into conference play."

If Montana mostly had its way with its Big Sky opponents during Citowicki's first four years, going 29-5-8, last season was the year the league fought back, punching the Grizzlies in the mouth. It was the first time they finished below .500 in league since 2013, only the second time since 2010.

Most striking was this: Montana scored the opening goal just one time in eight regular-season Big Sky matches. That's a lot of stress, a lot of time spent playing from behind, a lot of chasing after a result instead of taking it.

Out of 720 minutes of action during league, Montana held a lead for only 154 of them.

"I've never seen so much hunger from the rest of the Big Sky and development and improvement," says Citowicki. "We couldn't be at 75, 80, 90 percent and expect to win games. We had to be at our best, and last season we were not at our best."

Montana wasn't the only team to take an uncharacteristic hit last year. Preseason favorite Northern Colorado, one of the league's most consistent programs, finished 0-7-1 in the Big Sky and missed the six-team tournament the Bears hosted.

Montana will open with Eastern Washington and Idaho on the road, and the schedule will remain a challenge as September rolls into October.

"You've got to be proud of what the conference has done and how competitive we are," said Citowicki. "That leads to stress within conference play, but that's the point. You want programs to be competitive.

"That allows me to wake up every day and think about how we can get the results we want. We have to be smarter and find new ways to try to get the advantage."

The hope for 2023? That it's the year the Grizzlies punch back and, come the first weekend of November, are the last Big Sky team standing.

University of Montana Athletics

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Players Mentioned

Kathleen Aitchison

Eliza Bentler

Charley Boone

Hazel Dirk

Maddie Ditta

Ashlyn Dvorak

Bayliss Flynn

Abby Gearhart

Sydney Haustein

Riley O'Brien

Mia Parkhurst

Molly Quarry

Kayla Rendon Bushmaker

Ava Samuelson

Delaney Lou Schorr

Shelby Stordahl

Audrey Teague

Skyleigh Thompson

Maysa Walters

Devan Webb

Camellia Xu

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