The smackdown in St. Paul is back for another edition, with the state wrestling tournament again gracing the downtown scene — this time a day earlier.

Four days of grapples, reversals and takedowns are on deck at Grand Casino Arena. If you can’t make it in person, you can stream the action for a fee on prepspotlight.tv/MSHSL.

Here are answers to a few burning questions ahead of the state wrestling tournament:

It’s a four-day event now?

Yes, the Minnesota State High School League secured an extra day at Grand Casino Arena to better space out the state wrestling tournament. Here’s the new set up:

Wednesday: Team state quarterfinals, team consolation semifinals and team state semifinals.

Thursday: Round 1 of the individual tournaments, team consolation finals and third-place matches, team state championships.

Friday: Individual quarterfinals, Round 1 of wrestlebacks, individual semifinals and Round 2 of wrestlebacks.

Saturday: Round 3 of wrestlebacks, individual consolation semifinals, individual fifth-place matches, individual third-place matches, and individual state championship matches.

Note: The final session on Saturday is from 1-5 p.m., putting the individual state championship matches around 3 p.m. versus the traditional Saturday night conclusion. The Wild have an afternoon game on Sunday, creating a short turnaround for the St. Paul arena crew.

Was the Class 2A state championship 10 days ago?

Simley is the top seed in Class 2A as it searches for a seventh state title in eight years. The Spartans are also the top-ranked team in the class. The second-ranked team won’t be in St. Paul when the team competition opens Wednesday because the Spartans defeated it earlier this month.

Simley was placed back in Section 1 this year, meaning its showdown with Kasson-Mantorville took place in the section final. The Spartans won 33-24 in a hotly contested dual that wasn’t determined until the 215-pound match.

In fact, Simley is the only team ranked in the top seven of The Guillotine’s final team rankings released Feb. 5 to reach the state tournament. Yet there are a number of quality teams in the field, with a number of ranked wrestlers throughout their lineups such as undefeated New Ulm and fourth-seeded Scott West.

Each of the five seeded teams in the class could prove frisky come semifinal time. But, yes, the Spartans are the favorites.

Can anyone beat St. Michael-Albertville?

Maybe in the final. The Knights has beaten second-seeded Stillwater twice already this season. There’s a reason they’re undefeated: Everyone in their first seven weight classes is ranked No. 1 or No. 2 individually in Class 2A.

But Stillwater has a lot more talent up top, and the quality of their wrestlers in the lighter weights — traditionally dominated by the Knights — will at least make it interesting.

The path to an upset of the Knights is likely the same as the Hastings used in the 2023 title match, when the Raiders won the final five matches of the dual to eke out a one-point victory.

Third-seeded Shakopee also is a threat given their high-end guys in the heavier weights. The Sabers and Ponies figure to put on a show in the semifinal, and whoever advances could at least give St. Michael-Albertville a run for its money Thursday night.

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NEW YORK (AP) — New York City police are investigating after officers were pelted with snowballs while responding to a massive snowball fight at Washington Square Park in Manhattan, as a winter storm blanketed the Northeast in snow.

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A video of the fracas shows two uniformed officers pacing a walkway in the park Monday as snowballs fly at them from all directions, hitting the officers and covering them in snow.

The officers, growing visibly frustrated, shoved at least two people to the ground as snowballs continued to whizz by. At one point, a person runs up behind an officer and mushes some snow onto his head. One of the officers can be seen rubbing his eye toward the end of the video.

In a statement Tuesday, the New York Police Department said multiple uniformed officers were struck in the face with snowballs and were “removed by EMS in stable condition” to a nearby hospital, but did not disclose additional information on their injuries. No arrests have been made.

Jessica Tisch, the city’s police commissioner, called the behavior “disgraceful” and “criminal” and said the department is investigating.

Several political figures in the city were quick to denounce the dust up, with many of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s critics seizing on the incident as evidence that respect for law enforcement has declined under the new mayor, who faced attacks during his campaign over criticisms he made of the department in 2020. Mamdani has walked back those past remarks.

Mamdani, in a post on X on Tuesday, wrote “Officers, like all city workers, have been out in a historic blizzard, keeping New Yorkers safe and cars moving. Treat them with respect. If anyone’s catching a snowball, it’s me.”

At a news conference later in the day, Mamdani was asked whether he thought anyone should be criminally charged over the snowballs and appeared to downplay the situation.

“From the videos that I’ve seen, it looks like a snowball fight,” he said.

In the heat of their on-ice battle in Italy last week, Team Sweden forward Joel Eriksson Ek barely noticed that he had Minnesota Wild teammates wearing red, white and blue on the other side of the faceoff circles.

But when he saw and spoke with Matt Boldy, Brock Faber and Quinn Hughes during warmups before their game — eventually won by the Americans, 2-1, in overtime — it was a little bit of a strange feeling.

“I don’t think you really think about it once you start playing and once you get going, you’re just kind of so into the game,” Eriksson Ek said on Tuesday after the Wild’s practice at TRIA Rink. “But, yeah, seeing them before the game was a little bit weird.”

From the USA-Sweden clash at the Winter Games, optimistic Wild fans will remember Hughes’ overtime goal that propelled Team USA one step closer to their eventual gold medal. The more pessimistic Minnesota fans will recall a hard hit Eriksson Ek took in the third period of that game, which had him getting up slowly.

But on Tuesday, after flying home from Milan and getting a few days away from the rink, the Wild’s second-line center said he is physically fine heading into the re-start of the NHL season on Thursday at Colorado. While head coach John Hynes will be back at practice on Wednesday, the travel plans for Boldy, Faber and Hughes are more up in the air — although the trio is expected to re-join the team in Denver in time to face the Avalanche.

They were pictured celebrating with the rest of the men’s team at a Miami nightclub on Monday, and several were planning to attend the State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, after being invited by President Donald Trump in a postgame phone call.

“The (Americans) probably injured themselves partying more than on the ice,” Wild forward Marcus Foligno joked. “But I think it’s great. The first thing I did was went to Ekky and said, ‘How you feeling? Everything good?’ And he said everything’s great, so that’s a huge plus for us.”

Wild defenseman Jonas Brodin, who had surgery for a lower body injury last month and missed playing for Team Sweden in the Olympics as a result, skated on his own before practice on Tuesday but his timeline to return remains unclear.

“He’s still quite some time away, but at least he can get out there with us now,” said Wild assistant coach Jack Capuano, who has been running practices while Hynes has been away. “The surgery went well. Non-contact, then we’ll just assess it nice and slowly and move forward.”

Briefly

Offered congratulations on his home country, Norway, winning the medal count in Milan/Cortina, Wild forward Mats Zuccarello responded with a prideful smile.

“We do that every Olympics,” said Zuccarello, who skated for the Norwegians in the 2010 and 2014 Winter Games. “Then everyone forgets about it, and four years later everyone is surprised when we do it again.”

Indeed, a check of the year-by-year medal count shows the Norwegians with either the most medals overall or the most gold medals, or both, for every Winter Olympics dating back to 2014.

Norway, which has a national population that is slightly smaller than that of Minnesota, is a world power in skiing and sliding sports, but the nation failed to qualify for the 2022 and 2026 Olympic hockey tournaments.

In stark contrast to the on-ice success of Scandinavian neighbors Sweden and Finland, Norway lags behind in hockey. Zuccarello is one of just three Norwegians to play in the NHL this season.

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By SCOTT BAUER

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A coalition of Wisconsin school districts, teachers’ unions, advocacy groups, parents, students and others announced a lawsuit Tuesday against the state Legislature, alleging that it’s failing to adequately fund public schools.

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The lawsuit, filed Monday in Eau Claire County Circuit Court, argues that schools are in crisis, with high-needs students facing the greatest risk. It asks the court to adopt a new finance system that meets the needs of districts unless the Legislature and governor enact one first “in a timely fashion.”

School funding lawsuits have been brought for decades in states across the country with varying degrees of success.

Fights over how and whether to reshape Wisconsin’s complex school finance system have usually taken place in the Statehouse. Now it will move to the courthouse, where this challenge will almost certainly end up before the liberal-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court.

In 2000, the last time the state’s school funding formula was challenged, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the system as constitutional. But attorneys argue that so much has changed since then that a new challenge was warranted.

The lawsuit comes as Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and the Republican-controlled Legislature have been negotiating tapping the state’s $2.5 billion surplus to cut taxes and potentially increase funding for schools.

As recently as 2003, the state paid two-thirds of the cost of each student’s education. But now districts are paying about half the costs.

Evers, a former state schools superintendent, angered Republicans in 2023 when he used the governor’s extensive veto powers to ensure that districts can increase per-pupil spending annually for the next 400 years. However, without increased funding from the state, districts are forced to raise property taxes.

And when schools can’t raise enough under the allowable spending limits to meet expenses, they have been increasingly asking voters to increase property taxes to fund their local district.

In 2024, a record-high 241 referendums were put before voters for approval to fund schools, with 169 approved, according to the Wisconsin Policy Institute.

Anger over the most recent property tax bills, mailed in December, has motivated lawmakers and Evers to try and enact a property tax cut this year. They have yet to reach a deal.

The lawsuit also blames a drop in Wisconsin student testing scores over the past two decades with inadequate funding. Wisconsin has long been the state with the widest achievement gap between white and non-white students.

Leah Hover-Preiss, a teacher in the Adams-Friendship School District and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said that she has seen the impact of inadequate funding in the classroom through increased class sizes, reduced support for teachers, fewer opportunities for students and a lack of mental health services.

“In order to best support students and families, our schools need strong and stable funding from the state,” she said.

The lawsuit alleges that the state is violating the Wisconsin Constitution’s requirement that all children be provided with an equal opportunity for a sound, basic and uniform education.

It also argues that the constitutional rights of students with high needs is not being met and cannot be met unless the Legislature changes the public school finance system and increases funding for them. The lawsuit further contends that the current special education reimbursement rate is unconstitutionally deficient.

“When schools are underfunded, students lose opportunities and communities suffer,” said Jeff Mandell, president and general counsel at Law Forward that brought the lawsuit in partnership with the statewide teachers’ union. “Supporting public education isn’t just good policy – it’s a legal and moral obligation.”

The Wisconsin PTA is taking lead on the lawsuit and is joined by 18 others individuals and entities, including school districts in Beloit, Green Bay, Eau Claire, Adams-Friendship and Necedah. Other parties include teachers unions in Beloit, Eau Claire, Necedah and Green Bay and eight teachers, parents, students and community members.

The Legislature and its budget-writing committee are named as defendants. Republican legislative leaders did not immediately return messages seeking comment.