MISSOULA – As the final buzzer sounded on Sunday, the 900-plus fans at South Campus Stadium rose, as one, to applaud the Grizzlies soccer team.
Their 1-0 win over the Portland State Vikings was the end of a historic – and transformative – regular season at the stadium framed by the bowl of Mount Sentinel and the South Hills.
In late August, the Griz set a program record with a crowd of nearly 2,000 at their 2-2 draw against Ohio State. A week later, they recorded the first Power 5 win of head coach Chris Citowicki’s six-year career, 1-0 against Oklahoma in Spokane. They were the first Big Sky team to finish the conference season undefeated since…Montana under Citowicki in 2019 (Idaho, in 2015, was the last non-Montana team to finish the conference schedule without a loss). They finished 13-2-3, the best winning percentage in program history and second-best in conference history, and they’ll advance to the conference tournament two weeks from now in Flagstaff, Arizona, as the No. 1 seed.
It was a three-month long record of accomplishment that owed a great deal to the six seniors who the Griz fêted before kickoff of Sunday’s game.
“It’s a big senior group,” Citowicki said. “And it’s a really impactful senior group.”
There was Sydney Haustein, the only member of the class to begin her career at Montana, a tiny, freckled central midfielder who knit the Griz defense and forwards together all season with her soft touch, passing vision and positional nous…and added four goals and two assists, to boot.
“Knowing this was my last game we were gonna play here was definitely sad,” Haustein said. “But at the end of the day, we still had to come all together and get the job done. So we did that, and I’m proud of our team for that. … It’s a great class, all the fifth-years, the few transfers, came in and meshed perfectly. There were no downs, there were only ups.”
The rest of the senior class were those transfers: Maysa Walters, the intense, technically-talented attacking midfielder originally from Billings who returned to her home state after multiple years at New Mexico, only to see her senior year cruelly cut short by an ACL injury; Kathleen Aitchison, the lanky defensive midfielder from Nebraska who made slide tackling into an art form; the linchpin Canadian fullback Molly Quarry; the attacking duo Abby Gearhart, from Bucknell, and Audrey Teague, from Division-II Regis, who joined before the 2023 season.
“They all did a wonderful job coming into the program and getting to know people,” winger Skyleigh Thompson said. “They could have had the mindset of, I only have six months in Missoula. They could have stayed closed off, but all of them became a part of our team, our family. … So I’m very thankful to have had them brought in, because although they were only here for a season, they gave a lot to the program.”
That sextet did more than anyone else in the locker room to create the professional, no-nonsense atmosphere that Citowicki and every player has cited as a huge reason for Montana’s success this year. And they were deservedly the focus of the pre-game ceremonies Sunday. But once the whistle blew to start the game, it was impossible to ignore that, while the Grizzlies were celebrating the present and soon-to-be past of their program, they were showcasing the future.
Regular disclaimers about the transfer portal aside, the two players who combined on the only goal of the game – Thompson’s blind cross to the back post that Delaney Lou Schorr poked home – will both be back next season.
So will the goalkeeper – Ashlyn Dvorak – and centerbacks – Charley Boone and Reeve Borseth – who combined on their 11th shutout in 18 games (Citowicki confirmed after the game that Boone, nominally a senior, will use her extra year of eligibility to return for the 2024 season).
So will left back Ava Samuelson, blessed with the innate ability to glide past opposing markers and a computer targeting system for a left foot. So will Georgia transfer Mia Parkhurst, who played more minutes than Quarry this season in Quarry’s role as a competent dual-sided fullback. So will winger Eliza Bentler, from Billings, who had four goals and three assists in under 700 minutes. And Ally Henrikson, a former starter who returned from a difficult injury late in the season. And Kayla Rendon Bushmaker, another winger with multiple years experience who was recovering from injury for most of the season. And the O’Briens (not related), Riley and Bella. And the freshmen who earned Citowicki’s early-season trust – defender Riley Carolan, midfielder Perrin Pennington and winger Taija Anderson.
“We’ve built such a good foundation that they’re just going to continue to get better,” Haustein said. “And the team’s just going to get better. This program is gonna go really far from when I’ve been here, so I’m happy that I got to be part of it.”
All season, the seniors have provided an experienced, tone-setting, never-ruffled backbone for the team. But as the year progressed, UM has increasingly found match-winning moments from its underclassmen.
Thompson’s assist on Saturday gave the flame-haired dynamo from Kalispell four on the season, tied for sixth in the conference, to go with her six goals, tied for second. She, her teammate Schorr (five goals, four assists), Portland State’s Abi Hoffman (five goals, five assists) and Eastern Washington’s Maddie Morgan (13 goals, four assists, although she scored just three of those goals in conference play) are the only players in the top 10 in the conference in both stats.
In recent weeks, Thompson has started looking at defenders the way cartoon sharks look at cartoon fish, sizing them up and using her speed and improved touch to burst past them one, two, three at a time.
“The older you get, I think you just build up this confidence,” Thompson said. “And I give a lot of kudos to my teammates around me who continue to support me in moments when I’m failing or hitting a cross out of bounds or kicking the ball into someone’s shins. It’s inevitable that that’s going to happen, but having my teammates around me supporting me, telling me keep going, keep going. I mean, that just makes it so much easier to want to try it again.”
The combination of Samuelson’s crosses and Schorr’s physicality has won the Griz multiple games, including against Idaho and Northern Arizona, the two other best teams in the league and likely the two teams Montana will have to go through to win the conference tournament.
In two games against that duo (a 2-0 win against the Vandals and a 2-1 win against the Lumberjacks, both of the road), three of Montana’s four goals have come on Samuelson crosses for Schorr headers.
The other was an unstoppable Thompson thunderbolt off her weaker left foot after she created a turnover near midfield and made a solo run to the top of the box against Northern Arizona.
“I was so tired,” Thompson said. “The camera didn’t really show it. I was just so glad the play was over, I just needed to breathe. But yeah, that was a cool shot. I’m glad that I was there and had my teammates to celebrate that with me.”
On the other end of the field, Dvorak, the much-hyped redshirt freshman from Billings, has saved Montana points with clutch saves all year, including on Saturday, when she dove to her right to stop a Portland State header with under seven minutes to go.
It’s impossible to tell the story of the 2023 Montana soccer team without the Grizzlies’ seniors.
But, as the Griz enter a conference tournament that threatens to erase all of their historical accomplishments (per Montana sports info, none of the last five teams to go undefeated in regular-season Big Sky play won the conference tournament), it’s clear that story of success will continue on, even after they’re gone.
“They’ve grown up and can win you games,” Citowicki said. “I remember at one point with Alexa Coyle, it was like, yeah, she’s going to win us the game. Taylor Stoeger can win you a game, Taylor Hansen can win you a game. And now we play games, and I’m like, any minute now, Skye’s just going to get it done, or Delaney is going to get it done. So yeah, we’ve got players of that caliber. And we’re bringing them back.”
All photos courtesy of Montana Athletics.
