Montana opens home stand with Tigers, Redhawks

The Montana softball team will open a 14-game home stand this week when its hosts Pacific at Grizzly Softball Field on Friday and Saturday.

The teams will play a doubleheader on Saturday starting at 1 p.m., with Sunday's finale scheduled to start at 11 a.m.

Montana will then turn around and host Seattle in a three-game series, with a doubleheader on Monday starting at 1 p.m., with first pitch for Tuesday's game set for 11 a.m.

The Grizzlies will begin their Big Sky Conference schedule with weekend home series against Portland State (March 28-29) and Northern Colorado (April 3-4).

The long home stand will conclude with a doubleheader against MSU Billings on Tuesday, April 7.

Coverage: All 14 games of the home stand will have coverage on ESPN+. The first six games will have an all-star line-up of play-by-play broadcasters. Scot Gladstone will call the Pacific series, Jackson Wagner the Monday doubleheader against Seattle, Riley Corcoran the final game against Seattle.

Montana storylines:

* Montana arrived home on Sunday night after having played its first 24 games of the season on the road, which will always be the case for the Grizzlies, given their location.

Montana has never opened the season with fewer than 18 straight games away from home. Last year's team played 26 straight away from home, the most to begin a season.

This year's team has traveled to La Jolla, Calif.; Las Cruces, N.M.; El Paso, Texas; Phoenix, Ariz.; Seattle, Wash.; Moraga, Calif.; and Santa Clara, Calif., for games.

Montana started and ended that run of games on high notes, winning three of five games at the La Jolla Invitational and on Sunday knocking off West Coast Conference preseason favorite Santa Clara.

* Montana's 14-game home stand will match the longest in program history, equaling the 14 straight home games the 2017 team played.

That team went 10-4 on its 14-game home stand on its way to winning the Big Sky Conference tournament and making the NCAA tournament.

* Montana should win its 100th game at Grizzly Softball Field this season. Montana is 96-71 all-time on its home field.

The success of that record largely came in the first five years of the program, when the Grizzlies went 66-25 at home, going 17-5 at Grizzly Softball Field in 2017, 16-3 in 2019.

Montana hasn't had a winning record at home since 2019. From 2020 to 2025, Montana went 30-46 at home. The Grizzlies are 1-17 at home in their last 18 games against Division I opponents.

* When Montana won 5-3 at Santa Clara on Sunday, the Grizzlies snapped a 13-game losing streak, the second-longest in program history behind the 2023 team's 0-20 start to the season.

In its streak-breaking win, Montana got out to a 5-0 lead through three innings and held off the Broncos the rest of the way.

Santa Clara scored three unearned runs in the fifth to make it 5-3 and had the potential tying run at the plate in the sixth but would be held to three runs by Cameryn Ortega and Audri Elias.

During their losing streak, the Grizzlies lost games they led 5-0 (8-7 vs. Seattle) and 6-0 (8-6 vs. Saint Mary's).

* Grace Lopez added to her breakout sophomore season at Santa Clara when she had three multiple-hit games and went 6 for 11 for the series.

Lopez leads the team in batting average (.377), hits (29), extra-base hits (10), runs scored (17) and slugging percentage (.584). She ranks first on the team with nine multiple-hit games on the season.

* Anna Cockhill, then a freshman, batted lead-off all 50 games last season. She batted lead-off in the first 21 games this season before second-year coach Stef Ewing tweaked her line-up card at Santa Clara.

Lopez batted first in three games against the Broncos, with freshman Ava Puttler batting second, Cockhill third, followed by Mackenzie Bekofsky in the clean-up spot.

After going 0 for 5 in the series' first two games, Cockhill went 2 for 4 in Sunday's finale with a run scored.

* Puttler got her first position start of the season in the second game of Friday's doubleheader at Saint Mary's and had her first two collegiate hits, singles in the fourth and sixth innings.

She would have four hits over the final five games of the six-game road trip to Saint Mary's and Santa Clara.

* When Montana hosts Seattle on Monday and Tuesday, the Grizzlies won't have to dig deep for a scouting report. The teams played a three-game series in Seattle on March 6 and 7.

That was supposed to be a six-game road trip, with three games against North Carolina Central and three against Seattle, but NCCU dropped out, leaving only the Grizzlies and Redhawks.

They were going to play a four-game series over three days but the finale got rained out. The teams added a game in Missoula to what was originally going to be only a two-game doubleheader.

* Seattle swept the three games at Logan Field but all three were tight.

In Game 1, which spanned Friday and Saturday because of rain, Montana led 2-0 and was down 4-3 going to the bottom of the fifth before the Redhawks pulled away, winning 7-3.

Montana led Game 2 by a score of 2-1 going to the bottom of the sixth before the Redhawks put up five runs on their way to a 6-3 victory.

The Grizzlies jumped out to a 5-0 lead in the top of the first in Game 3 but allowed the Redhawks to score four in the bottom of the first and the game stayed tight the rest of the way.

Seattle tied it at 6-6 in the fourth, then added runs in the fifth and sixth to go up 8-6. Montana scored one in the top of the seventh and had the potential tying run on the bases when it ended 8-7.

Lopez batted 5 for 11 in the three-game series but Montana hit only .198 as a team while Seattle batted .369.

Seattle (14-10) has not played since, with its home series against Sacramento State this past weekend canceled.

The Redhawks play a three-game series at Idaho State on Saturday and Sunday before bussing to Missoula.

Seattle is batting a robust .327, which leads the West Coast Conference and ranks 49th nationally. The Redhawks rank 41st in runs (6.8/g).

* Montana has dropped six straight games against Seattle and trails the all-time series 12-6. The Grizzlies are 5-3 against the Redhawks in Missoula, where the teams have not played since 2022.

* Pacific is 9-19 going into its home game against Nevada on Tuesday afternoon. The Tigers opened the season 1-9, won three of five at Cal Poly's tournament and has been playing .500 softball since.

Pacific went 1-2 at home over the weekend in its Big Sky-WCC series against Northern Colorado, winning the opener 4-3 before falling 3-1 and 5-4.

Pacific is batting .237 on the season, last in the WCC and 277th nationally. The Tigers average 3.4 runs per game to rank 267th.

Pacific is solid in the circle with a team ERA of 4.32. Alexa Lewis (2.98 ERA) and Justice Alcaraz (3.57 ERA) have accounted for eight of the team's nine wins.

Pacific went 16-34 last season but swept two games from the Grizzlies at CSU Bakersfield's tournament, winning 5-3 and 9-0 in five innings.

The Tigers went 7-10 in league to finish fifth out of six teams in 2025. They were picked seventh out of seven teams in this year's preseason coaches' poll.

Senior infielder Amanda Bricker and redshirt senior outfielder Olivia Silvestre were voted to the All-WCC preseason team.

* Montana is 2-6 all-time against Pacific. The teams have never met in Missoula.

Montana notes:

* Senior Chloe Saxton started at third base in all three games at Santa Clara and had a hit in all three. She takes a three-game hitting streak into the Pacific series.

* Madison Tarrant has had a hit in five of Montana's last seven games, with seven of her 10 RBIs for the season coming in those seven games.

* Mackenzie Bekofsky has hit safely in six of Montana's last seven games. … Grace Lopez has hit safely in 16 of Montana's 24 games this season.

* Cameryn Ortega picked up the win in Sunday's 5-3 victory at Santa Clara. She didn't allow an earned run in 4 1/3 innings. It was her second win of the season, the fourth of her career.

* Freshman Audri Elias earned the save on Sunday, pitching 2 2/3 scoreless innings. It was Montana's first save of the season, the Grizzlies' first in more than a year.

Upcoming: Montana will open league with a three-game series at Grizzly Softball Field against Portland State on Saturday and Sunday, March 28 and 29.

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Players Mentioned

Mackenzie Bekofsky

Anna Cockhill

Audri Elias

Grace Lopez

Cameryn Ortega

Ava Puttler

Chloe Saxton

Madison Tarrant

University of Montana Athletics