Griz collect first win of the season

Thursday, August 27

Missoula, Mont.

5 PM

Montana

1-3-0

Lethbridge

Team	1	2	Final F
Lethbridge	0	0	0
Montana	1	1	2

Photo by: Tommy Martino/University of Montana

8/27/2026 9:07:00 PM | Soccer

Box Score

By: Montana Sports Information

It had to be Liv, didn't it?

With Montana scoreless on the season and in an uncomfortably close game with Lethbridge on Thursday evening at South Campus Stadium, it was Missoula's Liv Thorne-Thomsen who made things right and sparked the Grizzlies to a 2-0 victory for their first win of the fall.

With Lethbridge's goalkeeper out of position and on the ground early in the 31st minute, Thorne-Thomsen raced to a bouncing ball at the top of the 18 and deftly feathered a shot with her off foot over a mess of bodies in front of her and into the net for Montana's first goal of the season.

Elli Lewis added a goal early in the second half and Avery Heeb made three saves as the Grizzlies improved to 1-3-0 on the season.

"You couldn't pick a person on the team that is more Griz through and through," said head coach Stuart Gore of Thorne-Thomsen. "Liv could share her Griz-ness with everybody and still have 100 percent.

"She came on and made an impact. She played really well."

Montana needed that spark after a back-and-forth start against a team that finished 0-13-1 last season but is making strides under a second-year coach.

Up 1-0 at the break after Thorne-Thomsen's goal, the Grizzlies overwhelmed the Pronghorns in the second half, dominating possession and out-shooting the visitors 12-3 over the final 45 minutes, 18-5 for the match.

"I think (Liv's goal) relaxed us," said Gore. "We played too individualistic in the first half. We played more like a team in the second half and it showed. It was more one-way traffic, more us playing in their half."

Megan Wilson-Sofield started the sequence that led to the game-winning goal when she touched a ball toward net that Lethbridge keeper Kate Prince had to slide to kick out of harm's way. The ball was bounding in open space when Thorne-Thomsen tracked it down and scored her first collegiate goal.

"It was kind of in my subconscious thought process on the field," said Thorne-Thomsen, a starter on Montana's NCAA tournament team last season and one of the holdovers who helped see the program through a tumultuous offseason.

"Your emotion is really high, your adrenaline is really high. You just have to put everything into this to put it in the goal. And it worked. Then Elli came out in the second half and got a goal and you could see the momentum shifted. They were barely in our half in the second half."

Lewis didn't get the start on Thursday but she subbed on in the 36th minute and turned the final minutes of the first half into her own unique force of will, a player doesn't have the term "quit" in her on-field vocabulary.

One minute into the second half, she turned effort into goal when she attacked Lethbridge's center back, who was casually playing the ball out of the back when Lewis invaded her space, bodied the defender and stole the ball, and had nothing between her and the goal but the Lethbridge goalkeeper.

Lewis, who totaled 24 goals over two seasons at Northwest College in Wyoming, scored inside the right post while that center back put her hands on her head in disbelief, wondering what had just happened.

What happened? Lewis happened. "Elli's goal sums Elli up," said Gore. "It's just tenacity, hard work. She won't give you a minute's peace."

A 3-0 final score or even 4-0 would have matched the one-sidedness of the second half as Gore picked up win No. 1 as Montana's head coach.

He was happy after the match but not quite in a celebratory mood. It's still only August 27 and he still wants a Division I win.

"It's a win with an asterisk because it's not a Division I win," he said. "A win's a win, gets the monkey off the back. Still a long way to go."

Montana will host NCAA Division II MSU Billings on Sunday at 1 p.m. at South Campus Stadium.