From February 19 to 21, dozens of wrestlers competed in Billings, Montana for the  high school state wrestling tournament.  

 By the end of the weekend, five Big Sky athletes came home with top 10 honors. . This group included junior Quincy King (3rd), senior Riley Youngblood (5th), senior Chuck Gehl (6th), junior Addison Clixby (6th), and senior Lizzie Henkins (7th.)

Each athlete had a different journey to get to this point. Quincy King wrestled through the tournament all the way up until the quarterfinals, where he fell to Brandon Schoenen, a wrestler from Great Falls. With that, King was sent to the “blood rounds,”which is a loser’s bracket where every match is “win or out.” If you win all of your matches through the bracket, you can wrestle your way to third place. King proceeded to do so, and defeated Schoenen for the third place medal. 

When asked how King felt about the year and  his results, he said, “I think my wrestling resulted good. I should have gotten first place at state. I know I could have, because I beat the guy 2 times this year that got number one. So I don’t think he deserves that.”

Rafer King, Quincy’s father, described the match King lost in the quarterfinals similarly.  In a  Facebook post following the tournament, he said the loss was “ a fluke,” because he believed his son should not have lost the first match against Schoenen. 

When it came to preparation for this tournament, and this season, King has been getting ready for a long time. From a young age, he has been involved in combat sports due to his father’s connection as a coach for the Dog Pound Fight Team, a local MMA team in Missoula. 

According to a feature story by NBC Montana, King “ began sparring with adults by eighth grade.” Within the same story, Rafer described his home in a very certain way. 

“My house is like a boot camp,” he says in NBC’s video, giving the viewers a better understanding of Quincy’s training program. During this clip, Quincy is seen running up Mount Sentinel.

King  recently committed to the University of Montana for football on March 14th,  announcing his commitment on his social media.. King, a junior,  still plans to wrestle next year for Big Sky and to remain in the heavyweight bracket. 

When asked about wrestling next year, King said, “Yes, I’m gonna wrestle 285, and I’m gonna just run through everybody.”

Another Big Sky wrestler who found success at state this year was Addison Clixby,  Big Sky’s highest finishing female wrestler.  This year, Clixby competed at 140 lbs and  ended the season with a 26-3 record.  

Clixby started the state weekend in Billings off with a bang, hitting a double leg and taking her opponent straight to their back. 

However, following this win, she faced off against the number one seed in her bracket, Meadow Mahlmeister, who pinned her in the 2nd period. From there, she reevaluated her mindset for the rest of the tournament. 

“I just…took it match by match and just needed to focus on…the basics. And yeah, I didn’t really want to worry too much about placing or not,” Clixby said in a recent interview. 

After fighting through three blood rounds,  Clixby found her way to the 5th-6th place match. Although she lost that match, she still was able to find her place at the podium. 

Similarly to King, Clixby has always been involved in combat sports, but she hasn’t always lived in Montana. She is originally from Georgia and didn’t even start wrestling until she moved to Montana in 2019. Karate and boxing were the sports she competed in first and foremost, and when she moved here, “They didn’t have that here. They just had more of like technique rather than actual action. And so I tried wrestling because I was like, okay, this is like a contact sport. And so, in 6th grade…I started,” Clixby explained.  

 When moving, Clixby wasn’t particularly concerned about the social aspect because her parents were from Montana and they’d visited the Treasure State consistently throughout her life. However, she was concerned about one thing: “finding a new karate place…which led to wrestling.” Now, she no longer practices those other martial arts and is, “completely focused on wrestling,” she said.  

For Clixby, wrestling is a year-round sport and doesn’t end when the high school season does. She recently  participated in Junior Nationals in Des Moines, Iowa, which took place March 14-16, and she  entered the meet in all three forms of wrestling:  greco, freestyle, and folkstyle. 

When asked what advice she would give other girls who are up and coming in the wrestling world,  Clixby said, “When you think you’re not doing well or you feel like you don’t have the support…don’t quit, it will get better. It’s really hard mentally, but just don’t quit.” 

She continued. 

“It really has changed me as a person and just how I see life.”