MISSOULA — The Montana soccer team started off its campaign in 2025 with a splash as UM blew past Southern Utah 3-0 on Thursday evening at South Campus Stadium.
The two-time reigning Big Sky Conference regular-season champion, Montana was again picked to win the league this season, and the Griz made their presence felt out of the gates.
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Senior Maddie Ditta opened the game's scoring in the 26th minute off an assist from Mia Parkhurst for the first goal of the season. From there, the floodgates opened as just moments later in the 33rd minute, Chloe Seelhoff sent her first goal of the year into the back of the net off of an assist from Reagan Brisendine to make it 2-0 Grizzlies at halftime.
"We have a lot of great energy going out there for our first game," Ditta said. "We were super excited and we had a goal of shutting out this team and getting a lot of goals to start the season and we did exactly that, so it's super exciting to start like that."
Seelhoff tacked on one more in the 65th minute as Ashlyn Sandow provided the assist, and the Grizzlies walked away with the opening victory on cruise control from there.
"This team just has a different energy," Seelhoff said. "We've just attacked it, every single day in practice we're so competitive. And we get out here and we're not comfortable with a 1-0 win and that's something Chris (Citowicki) prides us on and we pride ourselves on.
"If it's 1-0 we're not going to hold back, we're not just going to play defense. We're going to score as many goals as we can because we're chasing milestones and we're celebrating the little wins and so we just got to celebrate as a team."
Bayliss Flynn and Ashlyn Dvorak both split duties in goal for the clean sheet. Flynn handled goal in the first half while Dvorak took care of business in the second as the two each tallied one save.
"You could feel the nervousness in the locker room before the game," said Citowicki, UM's eighth-year head coach. "Even though everyone's like, 'I'm happy,' it's like, 'No, you're not. You're scared.' And so we just had to move through it which is why those first 20 minutes were so clunky, in my opinion, but then when it clicked it was just beautiful to watch at times, especially in that second half."
UM (1-0) is once again home next Thursday for its next contest when it hosts Seattle in the first of two games for its home tournament, the Rumble in the Rockies.
