History in sports… as it does in life… has an funny way of echoing itself. Montana Grizzlies fans are hoping that it does again in 2026. Fresh off a 13-2 season and a trip the national semifinals last fall, the Griz are entering this season as one of the top teams in the FCS and, as always, the expectations are high around the program. Come September 19 next month, Montana will face one of its more challenging tests when it squares off against Oregon State in Corvallis and a young man with the last name Ah Yat will be leading the charge as they do. Interestingly enough, it will practically be the exact same scenario that the team found itself in 30 years ago and, if it pans for UM the way it did back in 1996, they’ll will be very happy.
This year it will be redshirt junior quarterback Keali’i Ah Yat taking the FCS powerhouse into their battle with the Beavers. Oregon State fans of a certain age will surely get a sense of deja vu when he does because they probably remember when Ah Yat’s father, Brian, did the same in 1996. That Montana squad was coming off its first national championship, having just beaten Marshall in a close one eight months earlier. Brian Ah Yat, however, was the fresh face at quarterback as superstar and Walter Payton Award winner Dave Dickenson graduated and moved on.
Ah Yat was a sophomore that year and was getting baptized by fire at the start of the season as he prepared to be the successor to greatest quarterback in Griz history. His first test pitted him against a DI-A opponent in OSU. Oregon State, however, had had a very different 1995 than UM did. The Beavers won just one game the season prior and it had come against Montana’s league rival Idaho. Head coach Jerry Pettibone was firmly on the hot seat and not much of anything was going right. Still, even with all of that working against Oregon State, punching a level up is never easy and for Ah Yat’s team the challenge was still a tall one to begin their title defense, especially among the slew of uncertainties they faced.
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It didn’t take Montana long at all to begin to push those uncertainties aside. In fact on the Grizzlies’ first drive against OSU… their first drive of the season… Ah Yat and the offense showed the prowess that would be there all year. He completed five of his first seven throws on the day and coolly shook off OSU’s several, relentless pressure attempts. It was clear early on that the Beavers game plan was to fluster the young sophomore into mistakes. Those plans, however, would never come to fruition and Ah Yat was about as collected as he could be as he marched UM down to the four-yard line, setting up running back Josh Branen to punch it in.
Up 7-0, the Griz defense, perhaps invigorated by the play of their new signal caller on the other side… quickly got the ball back into Ah Yat’s hands and once again he kept his head about him to lead a scoring excursion. Aided by a handful of Oregon State penalties, Montana found the end zone again with a different running back in sophomore Brian Gales. The Beavers were shellshocked as the second quarter came around, trailing by two scores at home to their I-AA counterparts. It was a feeling that would only be made worse just moments after.
Ah Yat was starting to really feel his groove by this point and, up 14-0, he was able to take a few more chances. He and the offense strung together their best series of the afternoon early in the second quarter. Montana sliced its way 83 yards down the field and converted all four of its third down attempts while chewing up another good chunk of clock. Ah Yat was masterful, completing 13 passes on the 15-play drive and keeping the chains moving. He would get his first TD pass to cap it, a five-yard dart to receiver Joe Douglass. To the pleasant surprise of Montana fans… and to the stunned disappointment of the OSU faithful… the Grizzlies were pitching a shutout as they went into halftime.
Momentum began to swing back the way of the home team when they needed it most, though. Oregon State signal caller Tim Alexander rallied the troops out of the halftime locker room and led a scoring drive of his own to kick off the second half. Alexander called his own number from the three-yard line and got the Beavers on the board, cutting the deficit to 21-7. The defense rode that momentum and stopped Ah Yat and company to get the ball back and it looked like OSU was about to make the comeback.
Alexander, however, fumbled on his next possession and it squashed any hope of that. UM cornerback Justin Hazel fell on the ball that was jarred out on a vicious hit by safety Sean Goicoechea. On the very next snap, Brenan did it again, rumbling 28 yards for the touchdown and all but silencing the Oregon State crowd.
The rout was officially on and whatever jitters Ah Yat was feeling had to have flown away by that point. He would tack on one more to stamp his day, again to Douglass. The 19-yard throw-and-catch from the pair not only cemented a resounding Montana win in one of the unlikeliest of places , it also helped put to the bed the questions that Griz fans near and far were surely having of their QB outlook after a guy like Dickenson had left. Ah Yat was the real deal and no one knew it more in that moment more than Oregon State.
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Lots of folks involved in that game had things to say about what they say of Ah Yat’s performance in his first start but it was Pettibone that gave him perhaps the highest praise of anyone following the 35-14 beatdown, saying candidly, “We thought he would act like a rookie. But he acted like a veteran. You can’t ask a quarterback to handle our pressure any better than he did.”
Ah Yat sang a different tune of his own showing, admitting “I was very nervous. My stomach was churning for a while. But I started to settle down during our third drive.” He credited his receivers and offensive line for his calm and collected outing.
No matter what side of it you were on, it was an impressive spectacle. It was Montana’s largest margin of victory over a Pac-10 team up to that point in its history. Ah Yat’s career began with about as smashing of a start as one could imagine. Against the blitz-heavy Beavers he laced the ball for 177 yards, a pair of touchdowns and no picks. It set the stage for what would end up being a heck of a season and career for #10.
That year Ah Yat would take Montana all the way back to the I-AA championship game before eventually falling to Marshall in the rematch of the 1995 title game. A man by the name of Randy Moss would torch the defense on a day that not even the young star QB could save them. Ah Yat ended up starting in Missoula for three seasons before his college career ended after the 1998 season. Before it was over he had taken home two Big Sky Offensive MVPs and is currently one of just a select few that finds himself in the Grizzly Hall of Fame.
Three decades have passed and on September 19 Montana will once again line up across Oregon State in Corvallis. Now it will be Keali’i who will have the keys to the offense this time around and the storylines heading in will be uncannily similar. A very good Grizzlies team will try and slay an FBS opponent that is in the midst of their own struggles. Per ESPN’s matchup predictor, the Beavers have a 68.9% chance of winning and, with new head coach Bobby Kennedy taking over… just as Mick Dennehy was for the Griz back then… the first season could be more of a battle than anticipated.
There just might be a hint of Ah Yat magic still lingering around Reser Stadium from all those seasons ago, though, and that’s exactly what Montana is hoping for.