BILLINGS — It's no secret that the landscape of girls high school sports in Montana is shifting.
While traditional staples like basketball face declining participation, emerging sports such as wrestling and flag football are exploding in popularity — and forcing decision-makers to rethink how opportunities are structured across the state.
Brian Michelotti, executive director of the Montana High School Association, told MTN Sports that the organization is thrilled with the growth of wrestling and flag football, calling it a landmark achievement for girls athletics in the state.
Yet behind that success is a sense of unease: Girls basketball participation has dropped by roughly 800 players since the earlier part of the 2000s, Michelotti said, leaving some schools without enough numbers to field full sub‑varsity or even varsity teams.
"I think across our state there's a big concern about the declining numbers in girls basketball," he said. "I looked back at some numbers dating to the 2003-04 school year, and there were 3,469 girls playing basketball by our participation reports. We haven't gathered our numbers for this year, but last year in basketball (2024-25) there were 2,655 girls playing.
"So a total of about 800 fewer girls playing basketball. That's a pretty significant number."
According to a chart Michelotti provided to MTN Sports, girls basketball participation hasn't climbed over 3,000 players since the 2016-17 season. The average participation between the years 2003-08, meanwhile, was 3,280. (Boys basketball, for what it's worth had roughly 1,000 fewer players in 2024-25 than it did in 2003-04 but was still well over the 3,000 threshold.)
Girls wrestling, which like basketball is a winter sport, has boomed since being introduced for the 2020-21 school year. According to the MHSA, roughly 330 girls qualified for the state tournament last February in Billings, and about 824 girls participated in wrestling in total this past season — about 100 more than the previous year.
But Michelotti said wrestling isn’t a factor in girls basketball’s decline. He believes the bigger issue is the gravitational pull of year‑round volleyball — a working theory among MHSA members.
"Is the problem girls wrestling? Every one of our administrators says no," Michelotti said. "We’re not losing girls from basketball to wrestling. We’re losing girls to club volleyball from basketball. The club side of volleyball has become very big. Many basketball coaches focus their concern on the club volleyball world — how many girls are playing, and the amount of money going into it.
"Volleyball is a great sport, and we’ve seen really good growth in volleyball, but I think some of that has been to the demise of basketball a little bit, too."
Another factor, Michelotti noted, could be the rise in competitive basketball at younger levels and the number of middle-school players cut from travel teams who then give up the sport entirely.
“A lot of times kids are getting cut basically at the fourth-, fifth‑ and sixth‑grade levels,” he said. “Maybe they’re not sticking around long enough to become athletes who could contribute to their high school basketball team.”
Michelotti views Montana’s girls basketball decline as part of a broader national pattern, not an isolated in‑state issue. National governing bodies like the NFHS have raised alarms about shrinking girls basketball participation across the country, he said, and Montana’s numbers fit that trend.
The top‑level girls basketball talent in the state isn’t disappearing, but sheer numbers are. Michelotti pointed to a couple examples.
"In the Western C there were a couple of years where two or three different schools fielded a boys team but didn’t field a girls team at all," he said. "And even at the AA level, some schools can no longer field all four (varsity and sub‑varsity) levels, so they’ve had to drop to three. A lot of that is obviously attributed to the decline in basketball participation.
"We’re promoting it, we’re talking to our schools about it, and we’re doing everything we can — walking the halls, encouraging coaches to walk the halls — because it becomes a local issue. Coaches have to encourage girls to be involved in education‑based athletics, and basketball especially."
Demographics compound the problem, Michelotti said. While Montana’s population is growing, much of that growth is concentrated in urban areas where roster spots are limited.
The MHSA has tried to give schools more flexibility. Michelotti pointed to changes in the eighth‑grade participation rule as one example, noting the association broadened the ability for schools, particularly in rural areas, to bring eighth‑graders into high school programs when numbers are thin.
"It used to be where if you had under a certain number — let’s call it 15 — you could bring up a certain amount of eighth graders," Michelotti said. "That’s changed. Our membership voted that eighth graders are allowed, and each school has different policies on what they can do with that, but for a lot of our rural schools that struggle to field a team, it’s been really important."
If basketball is losing ground, wrestling is charging into the space.
The more than 800 girls who wrestled in 2025-26 is a massive jump from the mere 180 who participated when it was first offered six years ago.
Girls flag football, still in its pilot phase, is showing a similar upward trajectory as it moves toward MHSA sanctioning as a varsity sport.
"We’ve seen good growth in flag football," Michelotti said. "We’ve done some different things over the past year to ensure that as the sport grows, that it fits the classifications, the systems, the officials, everything of the MHSA, so that as we continue to align this sport with our rules and regulations it will help in the transition as it becomes a sanctioned sport."
When that happens, the MHSA and its member schools will add another boys sport for Title IX compliance. Michelotti said options being discussed include boys volleyball, boys flag football, pickleball and even bowling.
For Michelotti, the numbers are important, but they’re not the whole story. What worries him most is what those numbers say about the connection between kids and their school communities.
"This is what we do," he said. "It’s our job as the MHSA to balance participation and competitiveness. When one of those two factors gets out of line, we lean towards the club side, or we lean towards, let’s call it the YMCA side of it. It’s the MHSA’s job to find a balance between those in education‑based athletics."
He’s seen how powerful that model can be. Baseball, which the MHSA sanctioned in recent years, has thrived because it’s tied to local schools, Michelotti said.
His hope is that girls basketball — even as it fights declining participation — can still tap into that same pride.
"The reason that baseball has become big in Montana is because it’s a big deal to play for your school," Michelotti said. "Whether it be in Great Falls, Billings, Missoula, Thompson Falls or Troy, it’s a big deal to play for your high school baseball team. That’s why it’s been refreshing to see the growth of baseball."
"We know we’re there for a purpose, to become educated, and the other side of education is what happens at 3 o'clock out on the athletic or activity field," he added. "I hope we can continue to show the importance of playing for your girls basketball team, your golf team, your tennis team. Playing for that name across your chest is still awfully important in Montana."
