Eyes up, staring intently through a thicket of mesh mannequins, Bayliss Flynn dives to her left, then quickly back to her right to corral a bouncing soccer ball. Backpedaling furiously, she rises up to catch a cross, then resets back to the goal line as J Landham lasers a shot at the net.
“Yes!” Landham yells as she turns the ball around the post.
With miniature hockey nets, seemingly random slalom poles and a small army of the ubiquitous mannequins, Landham’s corner of the Griz soccer practice field looks more like an unfinished mini golf course or a demented circus ring than anything having to do with the beautiful game.
Landham stalks through it all like the ringmaster, keeping up a steady patter of encouragement, correction and philosophy as Flynn and Ashlyn Dvorak work through increasingly esoteric goalkeeper drills.
Little bit back on those heels there, just note it, he calls out as Flynn makes what looks like a completely comfortable save.
Our version of patience, he notes, lapsing briefly into theory, is different from everybody else’s.
What are your thoughts there? he asks Flynn after a tricky shot to the low corner hops just over her outstretched hands, getting down on the ground to demonstrate.
After 25 minutes, he wraps things up as the Griz goalkeepers prepare to rejoin the team.
“That’s the session right there. So much fun,” he calls out, zealously re-staking a mannequin in the soft turf.
Landham is just over six feet tall, with a shaved head and a mustache – Flynn’s Halloween costume of him was a hit. Despite growing up in Tennessee, he’s a quintessential Montana man. He runs up mountains. He floats rivers. And in his free time, he thinks very, very deeply about how to develop talented goalkeepers. Montana head coach Chris Citowicki calls him a “mad scientist slash Labrador.”
Ever since he arrived in Missoula in 2019, that combination of ebullient positivity and obsessive attention to detail has made the Griz goalkeepers unmatched in the Big Sky Conference.
In each of Landham’s five seasons with the Griz (he left for a one-year sojourn at Villanova in 2022 before returning in 2023), a Montana ‘keeper has made one of two all-conference teams. Claire Howard in 2020 and Camellia Xu in 2021 were named the conference’s Goalkeeper of the Year. Last year, Dvorak did not win the award despite comfortably leading the conference – and finishing in the top 10 in the country – in save percentage (.900), goals-against average (.474) and shutouts (11 in 19 games).
“I feel like there are coaches who coach, and then there are coaches who are teachers,” Citowicki said. “J could be a teacher in another life, quite comfortably. And that’s his superpower.”
Just five games into 2024, though, Landham was presented with a completely new challenge.
On August 29, Dvorak broke her wrist against Fresno State.
Running on pure adrenaline, she finished the game, but it was clear immediately after that the fiery, athletic and uber-confident stopper from Billings was going to miss significant time – perhaps the entire season.
That made Flynn the starter – and, to be honest, Landham and Citowicki weren’t quite sure what to expect from the sophomore shot stopper from Minnesota. Because of Dvorak’s stranglehold on the starting lineup, she had never played a minute in an official game for the Griz, which raised troubling questions. Was she athletic enough to make up for her height, officially listed at 5-foot-5? How would she mesh with the back line? Did she have the innate confidence that every goalkeeper needs?
They felt good about the answers, but there was no way to know for sure until Flynn stepped on the pitch for the first time.
Starting with Howard, then Xu and Dvorak, Landham had shaped three straight ‘keepers, all with wildly different styles and personalities, into stars. Now he had to do the same in the middle of a season, with conference-title hopes riding on the outcome.
It could have been disastrous. Instead, Flynn and Landham’s partnership – Bay and J – has flourished, revealing yet another goalkeeping gem for the Grizzlies.
“As soon as Ashlyn was hurt, I told her, this is it,” Landham said. “I was like, Bayliss, time to work. … And then I think after that was just this gradual building of a belief system in Bayliss, by myself and by the back line and by the whole team, you know? Being really honest, there were multiple surprises in the Bayliss story. But now it’s just like, hell yeah, this is who Bayliss is. She’s our number one right now, and she’s crushing it.”
***
If the goal was building confidence, Flynn’s debut might well have been picked off the rack by Landham himself.
At home on September 1 against an IU Indy team that had no shot at measuring up to Montana, Flynn faced just two shots, neither of which were on target, and collected her first shutout in a 1-0 win.
Her second game was the complete opposite. In Colorado Springs on September 5, Air Force completely overran the Griz, taking 28 shots and putting nine on target – a performance so dominating it was one of the inciting events for Montana completely overhauling its formation just a few days later.
But the Falcons couldn’t put one past the diminutive figure in the Montana goal. As the Falcons tested her with shots from distance, Flynn flew around to make nine saves, including several incredible stops, and earn a 0-0 draw.
“I think it was the Air Force game that really flipped a switch,” Flynn said. “It was confidence in knowing what I have to do to make the saves, and that’s what’s been carrying me through.”
It was just the start of a jaw dropping run. In 13 games as the starter, Flynn has kept 10 shutouts, allowing just five goals in total. The Griz have won nine of those games, drawn four and lost none.
When Mississippi State’s Maddy Anderson gave up a goal in a 2-1 win over South Carolina last Wednesday, it became official – Flynn, who wasn’t even supposed to see time this season, had the top save percentage in the country, at .919 to Anderson’s .907.
Earlier this week, she was named the Big Sky’s Goalkeeper of the Year, making it three Grizzlies to win the award in five years under Landham.
“She’s benefitting the whole team with the way that she’s done this,” Landham said. “There have definitely been some really awesome surprises along the way, and all of them have had to do with Bayliss stepping up and saying, ‘Yes, I can do that,’ when the odds have been against her.”
The out-of-nowhere run was a collaboration between an exceptional coach and a goalkeeper who’s sneered at expectations her entire life.
At 10 years old, Flynn told her parents that she wanted to be a goalkeeper instead of a midfielder, where her quickness and touch made her a star and her small frame was a bonus, not a potentially ruinous setback.
“You cannot get in her way on anything,” said Mary Lahammer, Flynn’s mother. “She was the driver of this bus from Day 1. When I was kind of against it, she sat me down, probably at about 10 years old, and said, ‘I know you don’t like that I’m playing goalkeeper, but Mom, I’m good at it. I love it, and you’re going to support me.’”
To be fair, Flynn came by her determination and fire honestly. Lahammer’s father Gene – Bayliss’s grandfather – went from growing up on a Depression-era farm in South Dakota to a long and legendary career as a political reporter in Minnesota.
Lahammer is a decorated political reporter herself, an anchor and producer at Twin Cities PBS, and also an accomplished marathon runner. That’s how she met Bayliss’s dad Chad Flynn, a financial underwriter and pro pickleball player who’s reached as high as third on the senior tour.
Oh, and the two also flip houses in their spare time.
“You know, my husband and I are kind of busy,” Lahammer said, setting a record for understatement. “We’re busy, intense people.”
Their only child seemed intent on eclipsing both of her parents’ accomplishments, preferably by the time she turned 10 or, failing that, 12 at the latest.
Bayliss was a star point guard, a record-breaking runner. The high school football coach watched her in basketball practice and suggested that she might want to give wide receiver a try – when she got a little older, of course. She was in second grade at the time.
“In elementary school, she’d come home and say, ‘I got the highest score in the entire school on a test,’” Lahammer said. “And I would say, how do you know that? ‘Because I asked.’ Everything’s a competition for her, every test was a competition. Every race was a competition. … She really loves to prove people wrong. That’s kind of her mode, and she’s been successful at it. She pretty much achieved everything that she’s attacked – academically, athletically, everything.”
As Bayliss got older, the pace increased. When she was a sophomore in high school, the family moved about 30 minutes north of the Twin Cities to Edina (also the hometown of legendary Griz coach Betsy Duerksen) – not because of work, or family.
Instead, Bayliss pushed for the move, wanting to challenge herself at one of the top athletic and academic high schools in the state.
At Edina, her teammates included players like Maddie Dahlien, who made the ACC All-Freshman team in 2022 for North Carolina and scored two goals last summer for the US at the U-20 World Cup, and Izzy Engle, a top-60 overall recruit who went to Notre Dame and has been called in to the U-19 national team.
At various points in Bayliss’s high school career, her high school team was ranked No. 1 in the country. Her club team was ranked No. 1 in the country. She signed for Minnesota Aurora, a pre-professional team that also reached No. 1 in the country. She was a four-time all-state selection, and an All-American. She started her own goalkeeping training business, and became the first-ever Minnesota high school student to have a Name, Image and Likeness deal.
And yet, schools were reluctant to recruit her at the level that her resume demanded. When Bayliss first told her that she wanted to be a goalkeeper, Lahammer worried that her height would limit her, keep her from opportunities. Seven years later, despite all of Bayliss’s accomplishments, she was being proven right.
One major-conference coach even asked if her growth plates had closed yet, hoping against hope for the extra inch or two of height that would make her a major-conference prospect.
In the end, the majority of her interest came from the Ivy League…and from Montana.
Citowicki, who coached in the Midwest before he came to Missoula, had seen Bayliss play at multiple events and camps, and had a connection with the family.
“We just always remembered Chris’s energy and his positivity and how much his players respected that,” Lahammer said. “He stood out in that really intense, negative world of high-level soccer, his energy and positivity. All of it impressed us, and he stayed on our radar.”
Landham, meanwhile, was not the kind of coach to overlook a potential recruit because of…well, any reason at all.
A Nashville native, he was a two-time team captain and three-time all-conference goalkeeper at Union University, a NAIA program (at that time – Union is now D-II) in Jackson, Tennessee.
From that underdog background, he secured a tryout with the Colorado Rapids, played for multiple teams in the NPSL, and then embarked on an idiosyncratic coaching career that included stops at Union, Northern Colorado and Vanderbilt before Montana.
On his initial interview visit to Missoula, Citowicki was considering how to get Landham, his prospective hire, to demonstrate his hands-on coaching skills.
“We’re walking through Campus Rec, and I’m like, I need to know if this guy can actually coach,” Citowicki said. “We walk by the rock climbing wall, and he’s like, ‘Oh, I love rock climbing.’”
Wait a minute. Oh, you know what, J, I know nothing about rock climbing. Like, how would I get up this thing right here?
“And he whips off his leather shoes, and he’s got his tie on, and his suit. The way he went mad-scientist mode on that rock wall, explaining things, OK, he knows what he’s talking about,” Citowicki said. “I’m like, OK, I like this dude.”
Watching the Griz goalkeepers practice – and talking with Landham afterwards – makes it clear that the coach hasn’t toned down what Citowicki calls “mad-scientist mode” in the intervening half-decade.
For more than an hour, as the sun dips behind Mount Sentinel, he talks about the smallest details of goalkeeping. He explains the theory of guided discovery, breaks down the five phases of the game, extrapolates from there to talk about the seven game moments that a goalkeeper can possibly face, laments that he doesn’t have time during the season to track training sessions to the granular level of detail he’d prefer.
“He studies almost too much, and he’s really obsessive over things, and he loves to explain the details of stuff,” Citowicki said. “It’s what makes him, him, and that’s what makes him a great goalkeeper coach. … The things that he reads on the plane, he’s like, Chris, look, I got this cool book. I’ll be reading a book by Pep (Guardiola) about Man City, and it’s really cool. And he shows me, like, this academic journal that he’s reading. I’m like, oh, snore. But that’s his thing, right? His brain takes in all that data and can somehow create something that makes people better.”
All of that makes Landham a coach who isn’t afraid to try things, or to go against conventional wisdom.
In his own career, he made the unorthodox call to return to Montana in 2023 after just one year at Villanova, turning down a move up the career ladder for the situation that suited him best.
“This is a special place. I learned at Villanova that climbing the ladder for a name and for a paycheck really has nothing to do with being happy, and being happy is really important,” Landham said. “(When) Chris called me and offered me the job again, it was a very quick answer of yes, and it’s been so good to come back to working with people who support me and believe in me. … I think I came back to love coaching again.”
It’s no surprise, then, that someone with that background would be willing to look past a goalkeeper’s height. In fact, Landham was exactly the kind of coach who wanted to recruit Bayliss Flynn.
“You have your cookie-cutter goalkeepers in the women’s side of the game – about 5-9 to 5-11, good at catching, good at punching crosses, good at diving. That’s great, and I love that,” Landham said. “But there are also other goalkeepers who don’t fit the cookie-cutter mold and are just so freaking dynamic, and they protect the goal in multiple other ways that are actually maybe more effective at times. Bayliss shows a ton of skill organizing the field in front of her. She shows a ton of skill in protecting the space behind the back line, and then also, as we got to know her as a person, it was like, yeah, she fits here.”
A year into her career at Montana, he was also exactly the kind of coach who already had a plan for what to work on when Flynn was forced into action, a mental picture of her strengths and weaknesses and how to turn the latter into the former.
As a smaller goalkeeper, he wanted her to work on back-setting – that is, retreating to the goal line when she anticipated a shot coming in from distance to limit the space over her head. He wanted her to work on one-on-one saves, the opposite of back-setting, quickly closing down the space in front of her when an opposing player broke through the back line. And he wanted her to work on punching crosses, because even at 5-5, being able to control the area is a requirement for a Montana goalkeeper.
Flynn, clear-eyed and determined as ever, agreed with the assessment, and so the work began: practices spent shuffling and diving, repping her back-set over and over again, fighting through crowds of mannequins to punch the ball away as Dvorak sent crosses in from the wing, Landham constantly monitoring and encouraging, mentoring and questioning.
“In coaching sessions, I try to create a very specific game picture for them to make decisions in,” Landham said. “Bayliss just sees what we’re working on, focuses on what we’re working on, asks one or two questions. I can ask one or two questions about what she thinks, and then the picture is built out pretty clearly. She doesn’t add anything to it or take anything away from it. She just does the work. And it’s really, really good work.”
Flynn gave up three goals in her third-ever start against Wyoming – still, 10 games later, 60% of the collegiate goals that she’s ever surrendered.
Then she kept four straight shutouts to lead the Griz into conference play.
After giving up an early goal against Idaho in a crucial conference matchup when she failed to claim a set piece, she fought back, keeping the Vandals off the board for the next 80-plus minutes to earn a 2-1 win.
Before every game, she wrote on her water bottle, simply, “confidence” – a mantra that’s become more and more real with every success, every save, every shutout.
Heading into the conference tournament, she’s kept four more shutouts in a row. And with Landham in her corner, Montana’s latest goalkeeping superstar might just have more in store.
“At this point, it’s just like, we don’t know the limit to Bayliss,” Landham said. “A lot of players, you see their ceiling – their athletic ceiling, their developmental ceiling, their tactical skill ceiling. You see it approach at some point. A lot of it just has to do with how hungry they are, because you can always push that ceiling. But Bayliss has crashed through what would be perceived as her ceiling at a very competitive DI program. Now she’s just taking flight, you know, and just looks borderline limitless.”
