Griz soccer program reaches the mountaintop

The awards roll in, mostly in the fall – individual, team, the two going hand-in-hand – the result of Montana having the Big Sky Conference's most successful soccer program.

More awards get announced in the winter, some for on-field performance, more for academic. The awards continue to trickle in as the calendar flips to a new year, but what does it all mean?

This soccer team wins an award, that team gets honored. What if there was an award that essentially pulled all of them together and declared, these are the most elite programs of them all?

That's why the United Soccer Coaches established the Team Pinnacle Award in 2019. While other awards can have hundreds and hundreds of recipients, this one would be different.

To receive it, programs would need to pull off the trifecta: earn the organization's Team Academic Award and its Team Ethics and Sportsmanship Award, plus have a winning percentage of at least .750.

That would separate the wheat from the chaff, right?

Indeed it does. For the 2023-24 academic year, Montana pulled off all three and earned the program's first United Soccer Coaches Pinnacle Award.

Again, it's another award, but here is what makes this one different: There are 1,830 men's and women's soccer programs in the country between Divisions I, II and III. Ten earned the Pinnacle Award.

That's not the upper one percent. That's the upper 0.006 percent. That's the elite of the elite.

Of the nation's 560 men's and women's Division I soccer programs, three brought home the Pinnacle Award for 2023-24. The women's programs at Montana and Stanford were two of those three.

Now do you understand what's happening in the Grizzly soccer program? Now do appreciate even more what coach Chris Citowicki, who will be entering his eighth season in the fall, has built?

"I'm excited. I'm proud. It's a good day to be a Griz," he said. "To nail all three, you want to build a program that achieves something like that. Stanford and Montana? Makes sense to me."

During the 2023 fall season, Montana played to a home draw with Ohio State, defeated Oklahoma, went unbeaten through league to win the regular-season Big Sky championship.

The season ended with an RPI of 96, Montana's best for a fall schedule since 2000, and a record of 13-3-3, topping the .750 winning percentage needed for the Pinnacle Award.

Over 19 matches and 1,710 minutes, the Grizzlies totaled only nine yellow cards, half the amount their opponents collected, and no reds. That earned them the Team Ethics and Sportsmanship Award.

Off the field, over in the classroom, Montana had a 3.69 GPA for the 2023 fall semester, a 3.62 GPA for the spring of 2024. The United Soccer Coaches sent the Grizzlies another Team Academic Award.

"The hardest one to get is the ethical component on the field. Are you playing a style of soccer that isn't racking up the yellow cards, the red cards?" said Citowicki.

"To be over the .750 win percentage is pretty hard to do as well. It's not like we've played cupcake schedules. We've done quite well to earn something like (the Pinnacle Award)."

Having reached such heights, Citowicki will stop and enjoy the view. For a moment. Then he'll turn his focus to the next one, that mountain over there, the one even higher, loftier, more challenging.

What if we could achieve that? He asks the questions, his program keeps following his lead, going where no one thought it ever could.

University of Montana Athletics

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