BILLINGS — There are nerves, of course, but Billings West senior Makael Aguayo figures he'll rest fairly easy Friday night. He's been down this road before.
Aguayo, in pursuit of a fourth consecutive individual wrestling title, pinned Kalispell Flathead's Jasper Bench quickly in their 150-pound Class AA semifinal match Friday at First Interstate Arena to advance to the championship round of what's been an intense state tournament.
On Saturday, Aguayo will have a chance to become the 43rd wrestler in Montana history to join the four-timers' club.
RESULTS THROUGH DAY 2: BOYS | GIRLS
"A little bit of nerves, a little bit of everything, but (I've) been doing it all season. I just stick to it," Aguayo said. "The experience having done it before makes it a whole lot easier. I think I'll sleep pretty good."
Aguayo will face Gallatin's John Jackson in the 150-pound finals. And though he chases the biggest chunk of history among his peers this weekend, Aguayo isn't the only one trying to add to an already robust medal count.
Photos: Semifinal round of the state wrestling tournaments
Great Falls High's Cael Floerchinger, a junior in pursuit of a third consecutive title, cruised into the 126-pound final. He'll face Helena Capital's Wyatt Shull on Saturday as he tries to keep his four-timer dream intact.
Likewise for the girls, Simms' Hayley Petersen at 110 pounds and Billings Senior's Meadow Mahlmeister at 140 each moved on to the title round. Both Petersen and Mahlmeister, like Floerchinger, are juniors in search of third individual championships.
Meanwhile, three senior boys trying to win their third career titles — 132 pounder Timothy Schmidt of Eureka, Lockwood 138 pounder Brody Ketterling, and Glasgow 157 pounder Khye Gamas — all successfully moved on to their respective final bouts.
Helena Capital's Taylor Lay, a senior in search of her third girls crown, also kept her goals intact by advancing to face Kalispell Flathead's Bella Downing in an anticipated 120-pound final. Downing won the 120-pound title in 2024 before finishing runner-up at 115 last year.
Gallatin boys continue push
Gallatin brought a program-record 16 boys wrestlers to state. The Raptors have never won a state wrestling team trophy, with last year’s ninth-place finish the best in program history.
They had a shot to crack the top three if things fell right this weekend, and lo and behold are sitting in third after two days with 143.5 points behind first-place Billings West and second-place Kalispell Flathead.
Ty Laslovich, the Eastern AA’s top seed at 165 pounds, came in as Gallatin’s best shot at an individual title, and he'll wrestle West's Jack Ryan in the championship round on Saturday. In addition to Jackson facing Aguayo in the 150-pound final, the Raptors also advanced Carson Shaw (175) and JD McWalter (285) to the final. Shaw will face Josh Garcia of West, while McWalter will match up against Woodrow Shirley of Billings Senior.
Laslovich is the son of head coach Nate Laslovich, who previously led Bozeman High to the 2019 Class AA state championship.
On that particular Hawks team was Leif Schroeder, who won four individual titles from 2017-20. Schroeder now coaches with Nate Laslovich at Gallatin and works with the Raptor girls, who brought five wrestlers to state, also the most in program history.
Objective: More girls growth
As the girls division continues to blossom with increased participation in its fifth year as a Montana High School Association-sanctioned sport, a question exists: How close are they to splitting into separate classifications?
"That's something that comes with the analysis of what each classification's growth is," MHSA associate director Scott Wilson said Friday. "The ultimate goal is to get to a AA, an A and a B/C just like the boys. But we're not there yet. The numbers just aren't there."
But they continue to climb.
According to Wilson, of the near 1,000 wrestlers here this weekend there were roughly 330 girls qualified for state and about 815 who participated in total this season. That's about 100 more than last year, he said.
Wilson said the MHSA's objective is to continue that growth, whether it's by extending to even larger state tournament brackets for girls — each weight class as it stands has spots for 24 wrestlers — or by adding divisions.
"With our numbers increasing, we'll have to take a strong look at figuring out a way to get more girls participating, or opportunities to participate in the state tournament. Those are things we'll have to work out," Wilson said. "But it's time to take another step. How big a step? We don't know yet. We'll have to analyze the numbers a little bit closer."
The girls aren't quite ready to be split into separate classifications yet, but that day may not be far off.
Miles City's decorated staff
At least 19 head wrestling coaches won multiple individual state championships when they were competing on the mats, but that doesn’t even get into the assistant coaches.
Miles City, for example, has a staff loaded with personal achievement beyond head coach Mike Etchemendy, who won three titles when he wrestled for the Cowboys in the 1980s. Assistant coach Jackson Currier was a four-time champion for Colstrip from 2016-19, and Emmett Willson, another assistant, was a two-time champion at Shepherd.
Willson went on to have a stellar college career and is widely considered one of the greatest wrestlers to ever come out of Montana.
He competed at MSU-Northern, where he became a four-time NAIA All-American, three-time national champion and the 2004 winner of the Dan Hodge Trophy, becoming the first and only Montanan (and NAIA wrestler) to win the award, which is college wrestling’s equivalent to the Heisman Trophy.
The Miles City girls, by the way, have three wrestlers in Saturday's finals — Graylee Fox at 145 pounds, Madilyn Juelke at 190 and Aniya Odei at 235. The Cowgirls won last year's Class A team title and have the second-most points of any girls team through two days.
Keeping up with Conrad's Joneses
Conrad senior Tegan Jones has wrestling in his blood. His dad, Aaron Jones, won three championships for the Cowboys in the early 2000s, and is now an assistant at Conrad under head coach Luke Schlosser, a past four-time champion.
Tegan Jones has lost in the semifinals each of the past two years (ultimately placing third in 2024 and fourth in 2025) but came in as the Western B/C’s No. 1 seed at 190 pounds this weekend. He will face Malta's Straud Sims in the 190-pound final on Saturday.
Jones' brothers Gracin (126 pounds) and Owen (175) also qualified for the state tournament.
