How Grizzly Soccer Found Success Amid Numerous Injuries This Season
Entering 2024, Montana Grizzlies Soccer was selected as the Big Sky Conference Preseason favorites. And why shouldn't have been? They were the regular season champs a season ago and returned a lot of talent. Unfortunately, too much of that talent suffered serious injuries this season.
Fortunately, the remaining players filled the gaps and then some. The Griz are 8-2-2, winners of 4 in a row, 2-0-0 in conference play, 7-0-0 at home and have yet to surrender a goal at South Campus Stadium. How are they doing this?
"We ended up changing formations," said Griz Soccer Head Coach Chris Citowicki. "We keep on trying the same thing. We could grind results I felt like that, but Air Force and Wyoming (games) didn't feel right. We weren't attacking as much as I wanted us to."
The change happened when Citowicki was sitting on the airplane ready to fly back to Missoula.
"Got on the plane, took out my computer. There is this one system that I use to set up all my training sessions and has all their formations. So I just started cycling through every single formation. Do I like this, do I like this, do I like this..."
Bingo. He found the one.
"I kind of like that. That actually suits every single one of our players."
Cito's squad moved into a 3-3-4 (three in the back, three midfielders and four forwards) to become more aggressive. Since the team changed formations, Montana has outscored four opponents (North Dakota, Boise State, Northern Arizona and Northern Colorado) 9-0 en route to a 4-0-0 stretch. I would say it paid off.
Injuries forced the hand of Coach Citowicki but you still need players to play and the Griz freshmen stepped up in a key way.
"It hasn't been easy," Citowicki said. "Hayley Bass and Carly Whalen pretty much start every game now."
Citowicki had some incredibly high observations of Whalen specifically.
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"Every game if you look it back she has touched the ball before we've scored except for one. So for a freshman to have that much of an impact is really amazing right now. She is on fire. She keeps asking questions and I keep telling her 'I don't want to coach her because she's doing everything right, so just stay away from me,'" Citowicki joked.
If you haven't caught the Grizzly Soccer team in action yet you have two chances this weekend. Thursday afternoon at 2 VS Idaho and Sunday afternoon at 1 VS Eastern Washington.
The full interview with Coach Citowicki can be found below.
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Gallery Credit: Ace Sauerwein