(Editor's note: University of Montana news release)
MISSOULA — With 15 minutes still remaining on the countdown clock before the final match of the Rumble in the Rockies on Sunday afternoon, fans of the Montana soccer program were looking up at a rapidly filling grandstand at South Campus Stadium and wondering, Where am I supposed to sit?
By the time they had all shoehorned in, all 1,190 of them, the second-highest attendance in program history, the Grizzlies delighted their followers with a 3-0 dismantling of Oregon State to improve to 2-0-0 on the season.
The steady rise of both, the crowd sizes and Montana’s play on the field, have been in lockstep, a love affair that is 100 percent organic and zero percent gimmick.
“It’s building,” said seventh-year coach Chris Citowicki, whose first team, in 2018, played in front of an average of just more than 400 fans. Last season the Grizzlies ranked just outside of the top 50 in the nation, pushing 800 fans per game.
“People are not being triggered by giveaways," Citowicki added. "People are showing up because it’s a beautiful product. You want to watch it.”
If Friday morning’s 1-0 victory over Colorado College was a grind-it-out special, Sunday’s was the kind of match that will have people crosschecking their calendars to see how many more of these they can make this season. It was that fun.
It took less than three minutes for Montana to open the scoring. The Grizzlies led 2-0 at the half and won going away, outshooting the Beavers 18-6 and holding a majority of the possession to defeat Oregon State for the first time since 1997.
“It’s the best thing to start warm-ups and people are already filling the stands,” said senior Ava Samuelson. “It really shows that Missoula is such a big soccer community and gives us so much support. The energy they bring goes into us. We play so well because of our fans.”
Citowicki added, “Ava is right. The more people show up, the more you want to give. It makes their hearts beat faster, the blood flow more. They just want to win so much more when so many people show up. It’s a beautiful thing.”
Montana scored its first goal before people had had a chance to get comfortable after standing for the national anthem.
Jen Estes’s close-range shot from the left side of the box was saved by Oregon State goalkeeper Mya Sanchez. The rebound was tracked down by Maddie Ditta, who left-footed the ball into traffic in front and it pinballed into the right side of the goal.
It was Estes’s first point as a Grizzly, Ditta’s fifth career goal and a signal that Montana could now defend the next 87 minutes and slog its way to a 1-0 victory. The Grizzlies had the goal they needed. Now they could sit back and squeeze the Beavers into submission.
Wrong. That may have been the case for Citowicki’s early teams, who didn’t have the scoring prowess of his more recent squads. Now the mindset is, we’re only getting started.
“The whole message the entire time was, we have to attack, we have to attack, we have to attack the whole game. Don’t stop,” Citowicki said.
His Grizzlies didn’t, going up 2-0 in the 35th minute when Bella O’Brien scored her fourth career goal on her 11th career shot.
Kayla Rendon Bushmaker touched the ball to O’Brien at the top of the box and the midfielder scored inside the right post not by force but by lofting a ball to a spot no goalkeeper outside the World Cup was going to touch.
“Coming off the bench, if my number is called, I’m ready. We all play a role,” said O’Brien. “Huge credit to Kayla for laying the ball off to me. Great assist by her.”
It was a magical moment for a senior with two starts in her career.
“Kudos to Bella. She is playing the best soccer of her career,” said Citowicki. “Leader on the field during practices, leader in the locker room and working so hard to get minutes. Now when she’s getting them, she’s maximizing them. It’s exactly what you want everybody to do in this program.”
Montana led 2-0 at the break. And Citowicki wanted more, because that’s what the best teams in the country do, they come and they keep coming, and he’s conditioning his team for more than a match in mid-August.
Sunday was a building block for November, the Big Sky tournament, hopefully more.
“We talked in the locker room, how much heart can we put into this thing? Between the crowd and the energy we bring, can we overwhelm them to the point where they just don’t want to be here anymore by the end?” Citowicki said.
“We wanted to make it as difficult as possible for them to play. I think we accomplished that.”
As the second half wore on, energy everywhere started to wane as the temperature cracked 90 degrees, that is until the O’Briens — Bella and Riley — brought the facility back to life in the 78th minute.
Bella had her eyes on her second goal of the match, lofting a shot that hit off the crossbar and left the OSU goalkeeper on the ground. That left an opening for Riley to step up and head the ball into the net, her fourth career goal.
That made it four goals on the weekend by four different players, two starters and two players who had come in off the bench.
“The more we play with each other, the more we get that chemistry and kind of figure out how everybody plays together,” said Samuelson. “The more games we play with each other, the better we’ll get. We’re just slowly building into a great team.”
Goalkeeper Ashlyn Dvorak collected her 13th career shutout in her 21st career start, while needing to make just one save, Montana collectively locking down on the dangerous McKenna Martinez, who entered the match with 28 career goals for the Beavers.
She was limited to just three shots on Sunday, eight fewer than when the teams played last fall in Corvallis, a 0-0 draw.
“She is extremely gifted,” said Citowicki. “It can never be one person defending her. It always has to be two. If she beats the first, the shot better hit the second person. The amount of mental attention that has to go into defending a player like that is extraordinary. For us to shut her out is amazing.”
Montana is off to a 2-0-0 start for the second consecutive season. To get to a third win on Thursday will take something special, when the Grizzlies travel to Washington State to face the Cougars, a team that competed well in the Pac-12 and now is picked second in the strong West Coast Conference.
Remember, it was only five years ago, in 2019, that Washington State was playing in the national semifinals. The Grizzlies haven’t defeated the Cougars since 2004.
Washington State has become Citowicki’s white whale, the program he’s been chasing and measuring his against since he was hired. The first three times his teams faced the Cougars, Washington State outscored Montana 14-2.
In the teams’ most recent meeting, in the 2021 NCAA tournament, it was a 1-0 match in the 79th minute before the Cougars scored two late goals to win 3-0. The gap had closed. Soon, time for a new measurement.
All four matchups have come under the lights on festive evenings in Pullman on the heart of campus. Thursday will be no different.
“We’re going to go up there and have some fun,” Citowicki said. “Every time we’ve gone there, the crowd has been amazing. It’s a tough place but a memorable place to play, just like (South Campus Stadium) is becoming now.
“All of this is supposed to make us better and better and better so we can compete in conference play. What can we do over there, what can we learn over there? Even if it doesn’t go the right way, by November we’re going to be 1,000 times better because we’ve played in that setting.”
The way things are trending, one day a team will say the same thing about traveling to Missoula to face the Grizzlies.
