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Shane Angle has been on periphery of Plains-Hot Springs high school wrestling for several years – now he is smack dab in the middle of it, and is seeming to love every minute of it.

Recently named the head coach for the high school team after several years as a coaching mainstay in the local youth program, Angle is also in the position of being a parent to a wrestler as his daughter Taylor Angle will be among the Savage Horsemen’s team leaders as a junior this winter.

And he had another daughter (Kenzie) wrestle for P-HS several years ago. He steps into the head coaching position which was filled by Jeff Kujala the past several years.

“I have what I feel is a very competitive team handed over to me this year,” Angle said, “and we have more kids in the room than Plains-Hot Springs has had in quite some time.”

Angle said he currently has 22 athletes – 18 boys and four girls – on his P-HS wrestling squad.

The Savage Horsemen’s five seniors are Jesse Uski, Stephen Yothers and Bert DeTienne of Hot Springs and Peter Carey and Mykenzie Blood of Plains, Taylor Angle is the only junior on the team, Brady Schrenk, Mason Elliott, Brody Black and Lillian McDonald are the sophomores, and Olivia Easter, Donny Nelson, Drew Carey, Jacob Schulze, Will James Courville, Brenden Vanderwall, William Dyson, Hunter Higereda and Denny Black are freshmen.

DeTienne, Schrenk and Elliott are P-HS’s returning State B-C tournament qualifiers from last year.

Taylor Angle and McDonald are P-HS’s two returning female wrestlers, Easter and Blood are in the mat game for the first time this season. Returning to assistant coach the entire team with a focus on the girls is Keaton Bannout, a former collegiate wrestler herself.

This season is the first for girls wrestling officially sanctioned by the MHSA.

Coach Angle said that Jesse Jermyn and Cal Courville have also agreed to assistant coach for P-HS this season.

Although they have been busy practicing since early December, the Savage Horsemen will not officially open the mat season until Jan. 15 in a triangular dual at Arlee also involving Thompson Falls.

No stranger to wrestling, Angle has deep roots in Iowa, the heartland of the sport in this country, where grappling at the high school and college levels is much more of the sports scene than it traditionally is in Montana.

Until moving to Montana from the U.S. heartland several years ago, Angle said he coached at all competitive levels of wrestling while living in the Midwest, where wrestling is a much bigger deal than it is most of the rest of the country.

“Wrestling in Iowa is a bit different,” he said, “as the kids start younger and the seasons are a lot longer.”

Hoping to impart some of his Iowa mat wisdom to his wrestlers, Angle is optimistic heading into his first season as coach.

“I plan on just taking things one step at a time on a weekly basis,” he said. “Keeping kids healthy and in shape is my main goal.”

Given the number of wrestlers he has, Angle feels confident that P-HS should be able to field a fairly complete lineup for any dual match or tournament later on this season.