Katelyn Sphuler comes from a bit of a wrestling family, with her dad Calvin wrestling in high school in Clarkston, Wash., and being involved in coaching younger brother Jonah in the Glacier Wrestling Club youth program. 

But she didn’t find the desire until after her eighth grade year: By then girls wrestling had been a Montana High School Association-sanctioned sport for one season, in 2021-22. Now she carries on in the sport instead of Jonah. 

“My son wrestled for a couple years,” said Calvin Sphuler, father to Katelyn and Jonah. “When Covid hit we decided that there were other sports he’d be more well-suited for.  

“So I thought I was done with wrestling, and then my daughter got to high school, and girls wrestling had just fired up.”  

“Then I got to high school and it was an option,” Katelyn Sphuler said. “And I thought it was interesting. I went to open mat and met just the most amazing team of girls. I joined, and now here I am.” 

Sphuler is 32-7 with 24 pins this season, wrestling at 100 pounds as a senior. She’s coming off another banner flag football campaign in which the Wolfpack made it four straight state titles. She is a 4.0 student. 

“She is a quiet leader; she is a great student,” first-year Glacier girls wrestling coach Chris Leck said. “She has over 600 hours of community service and she’s going to end her high school career with over 90 wins — as a girl that came in when girls wrestling just started. 

”And wrestling is just a part of her life; it’s not her whole life.” 

Calvin Sphuler met the former Hillary Buettner while both were running cross country at Lewis-Clark State in Idaho; the moved to Kalispell, where his wife has roots going back generations, in 2008.  

Asked for background on his daughter, Calvin is certain he’s going to forget something. 

“Katelyn is a very busy kid,” he said. “Always has been. She loves life, loves trying new things. Very outdoorsy. Shooting sports — bows, air rifle, muzzle loading; every discipline shooting sports has to offer. I think she likes muzzle loading the best because she gets to dress up like a mountain woman. 

“She loves her dogs, Fern and Oakley. She loves her 1992 Land Cruiser. Rusty as all get out.” 

She loves flag football enough that she’s going to be on the inaugural team at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, a Baptist school in in Belton, Texas. She loves wrestling enough to stick it out through the early difficult years. 

“It was definitely a struggle at first,” she said. “There was a lot to learn. But it’s been good.” 

Thinking back, she notes: “We always did have a wrestling mat downstairs when I was growing up.” 

“We don’t have it anymore,” Calvin said. “We had a mat we inherited from some local legends, David and Shawn Lau. The kids played on it more than they wrestled on it.” 

The Lau boys combined for four State AA titles. It will be difficult for Sphuler to garner one; she’s No. 7 in the latest rankings assembled by Travis Carpenter. 

She is 2-1 against Butte’s Peyton Liva, who is ranked No. 6; she’s split two matches with No. 5 Victoria Tenney of Billings Skyview. 

Complicating things are a quartet of really good wrestlers from Class A and B/C schools. The girls still wrestle all one class — split them up, and the All-Class State Tournament would spill out of the Billings Metra to other sites — and Ashlyn McCann, a freshman at Billings Central, is unbeaten. 

“What’s happening is you see these girls that have been wrestling year-around for four or five years, starting in middle school, coming in and beating these girls that are seniors who started their freshman years,” Leck said. 

Leck noted he has six freshmen and only one had wrestled before this season. 

“One of our wrestlers brought a bunch of friends to the first practice,” he said, smiling. “That’s kind where we’re at. We’re fighting an uphill battle against those year-round wrestlers and those kids who have done youth wrestling. But it’s fun. It’s a great challenge. I mean, if we don’t get to the top of the mountain, it’s OK, because we’re going to have fun.” 

Katelyn Sphuler — pronounced SPOOL-er, like a spool of thread, she says — is having fun, taking full advantage of her remaining time on the mat. Soon enough she’ll be chasing a degree in physical therapy. Leck marvels at how she takes instruction, including mid-mat during matches, and wishes there were more time. 

“A pleasure to coach, always will do whatever is asked,” he said. “One of those kids that if you had 10 of them in the room, coaching would be really easy.”