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Not just for boys anymore, Montana high school wrestling now has girls as part of the program, and the Montana High School Association will sponsor its first-ever Girls All-State Tournament in Billings this week.
Sanders County will be represented in the historic event as four Savage Horsemen Women wrestlers from Plains – namely Olivia Easter, Lily McDonald, Mykenzi Blood and Taylor Angle – will be in the historic event.
Plains-Hot Springs head coach Shane Angle will send female assistant coach Keaton Bannout and either one of assistants Jesse Jermyn or Kal Courville with the Savage Horsemen Women grapplers to Billings next week.
In the meantime, the rest of the P-HS grappling squad will host a triangular dual with Bigfork and Mission-Charlo in Plains Saturday.
“This is a great thing for these girls and they have earned the right to have their own tournament,” Angle said. “They are really looking forward to going to Billings and competing.”
The MHSA, which originally approved seven weight classes for girls, has now allowed for 11 different weight classes – 103, 113, 120, 126, 132, 138, 145, 152, 170, 205 and 285 – for the inaugural girls state championships. There are a total of 169 athletes competing in the first-ever girls meet.
Girls will be seeded into their weight classes based on a Zoom meeting of coaches early this week. This is a problem of sorts for two of Plains’ wrestlers (Easter and Blood, electing to wrestle only other girls) who had not wrestled any matches this season until last weekend, leaving them at a disadvantage to girls in other parts of the state that were able to get more matches.
Taylor Angle and McDonald both managed to wrestle quite a few times, against female and male wrestlers, this season. Coach Angle said that Taylor and Olivia will compete at 113 pounds, Mykenzi will go at 126 and Lily at 152.
Coach Angle said that McDonald was seeded No. 2 in her weight class based on her impressive body of work on the mat this season, but that the other P-HS girls will have to prove it at state.
“It’s like I was telling the girls, it is hard to seed a tournament like this, the rankings are really tough to do,” he said. “I told them that the meet itself will ultimately decide who belongs where, and it is up to you to do the best that you can.”
The team manager for Plains for three years until this, her senior season, Blood appreciates the part in history that she is playing for other girls now.
“I have always loved wrestling and always wanted to do it myself, ever since fourth grade when my brother was on the team and we would go to his matches,” she said. “I wanted to wrestle but my dad said no unless they had a separate girls team.”
Now that girls wrestling is an MHSA-sanctioned sport, Blood is taking the sport even more seriously in her first season as a playing member of the team. “It feels amazing to be part of something incredible like this,” she said. “to be paving the way for other girls in the future.”
Blood has been nursing an arm injury this season but feels she is ready for the rigors of the state tourney.
A junior, McDonald has been honing her grappling for a few years now and all the hard work she has put in is beginning to pay off, as evidenced by her high ranking heading into state.
“I am so excited, last year I wrestled mainly against boys and had some tough matches,” she said. “But this year is a lot better, I am feeling like I can control the action now.”
McDonald has a genuine love for the sport that was largely off-limits to girls until only recently. “I do love it, being aggressive, trying new moves, the competition… all of it,” she said.
Her goal going into Billings is simple and to the point. “My goal is to do the best I can, to not give up,” she said. “I am happy to have the chance to wrestle at this level.”
Taylor Angle and Easter were not available the day Blood and McDonald were interviewed, but likely hold similar views on the state of girls wrestling in Montana.
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