When Amber Downing was named head coach of Flathead’s girls wrestling program on June 1, it was a first for the high school.

It might be a first for the state of Montana. 

The still-fledgling sport enters its sixth season under the auspices of the Montana High School Association this week, and Downing more or less guided the program while Jeff Thompson had the title of head coach for both the boys and girls. 

“It’s really nice to have it official,” Downing said Tuesday. “Jeff has been a great help with the program. I think it really gives me a great opportunity to set the example for the girls and women out there that we belong in the sport of wrestling.” 

Downing is the matriarch of a wrestling family: son Aiden is wrestling at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn.; son Kellen is a senior leader on this year’s Brave Brawlers. 

And senior Bella Downing, for the millionth time, is no relation. 

“I just roll with it anymore,” Amber Downing said of Bella, a 2024 state champion and three-time state placer for the Bravettes. “I’ve known her since she was a baby.” 

Growing up in Helena, Downing was the only wrestler in her family and by her eighth-grade year she’d been on the mat for seven years. That it wouldn’t continue at Helena High wasn’t something she agreed with. 

Downing delved into gymnastics in her high school years and then followed an older sister onto the Montana State cheerleading team from 2003-05.  

Twenty years later you could call her a stay-at-home mom, if she wasn’t constantly heading to and from a wrestling mat. As it is, she’s stretched pretty thin. 

“I can’t imagine how an individual, unless they were teaching at the school or self-employed, would have time,” she said. 

Going back to 1997, Downing had a wrestling rival in Danny Green; now that guy’s son, also named Danny, is a rival of Kellen’s. Green finished second at 118 last year; the younger Downing took fifth. 

“In the summer tournaments I’ll coach his kid and he’ll coach my kid,” Amber Downing said. “Because sometimes they do better that way.” 

We note this to further advance Downing’s bonafides, but really it isn’t necessary. She jumped at the chance to get involved in girls wrestling when the MHSA first sanctioned it in 2021. Flathead then won the first two girls state championships ever contested. 

Now the Bravettes aim to keep a streak of five state trophies going. That’s one goal. Another is to keep a program that has five alumni wrestling in college on the upswing. 

“We’ve brought home a trophy every year since we’ve been sanctioned,” Downing said. “We obviously want to continue to do that.  But a big personal one for me is to continue to grow our participating numbers. We’re hitting that with a bigger roster each year.” 

Reach Fritz Neighbor at 758-4463 or at [email protected].