The Ronan wrestling program will be hosting the Western Montana Duels that start Thursday, Jan. 5-7 at Ronan High School’s gymnasium.

Chiefs’ Coach James Muir said the tournament, which is set to include 21 teams this season, has grown in size from last year’s tournament.

“Right now, we have a bunch of JV Double-A teams coming in and as far as we know, we don’t have any Double-A varsity teams,” Muir said. “We have quite a few Class-A teams coming in and four Class-AA JV teams have entered. They usually bring a pretty good squad and do a pretty good job of wrestling on the JV side of it. You always have teams that prevail from Class-A, B, and C getting into the finals of the Montana Western Duels.”

Muir said he anticipates his Chiefs will get plenty of mat time and experience wrestling against some top-notch competition.

“It’s always a battle for the top-3 duel tournament teams in the Western Montana duel and there is always some stiff competition,” Muir said. “We will have teams from Polson, Columbia Falls, and Frenchtown that are pretty heavy hitting. Thompson Falls also is decent as well as us. We are going to be knocking at the door for some hardware at state this year, and we have the depth to have a quality team coming into the Montana duels this year.”

Muir said he felt his team having the “home-court advantage” will be advantageous headed into the duels.

“Everyone is going to be looking to make a run in the championship and we have home-court advantage,” Muir said. “We should prevail with the home court advantage.”

Muir said he felt his team really made some strides in their individual meet with Hamilton.

“The last couple of meets we’ve had some good days,” Muir said. “We have beat Hamilton in a head-to-head duel and were pretty dominant on our side. We really gained some momentum and hopefully that momentum starts to swing. I feel pretty good headed into the Montana duels. It looks pretty good for us practicing hard. There will be a break in the action in the tournament and we will have some technique sessions. This will be a rebuilding stage for us. We will let the guys recover as we head into the harder swing of things towards the end of this week.”

Muir said there is a “method to the madness” with his approach to conditioning and preparation.

“They have been working hard, and they are getting rest and recovery in the weight room,” Muir said. “They get a chance to rebuild their bodies and have a little rest and recovery towards the end of the week. If we push the pace against these guys and get into a better conditioning level, we will peak at the right time in divisionals.”