Owings Mills wrestling coach Guy Pritzker acknowledged the Baltimore County school?s long-time dominance in the sport could be coming to an end after the season.
The strength of Pritzker?s program the past 26 years had been the local junior league, which he has been involved with for 35 years. He is still churning out future champions, but many of themare winning for area private schools, where they can get more exposure and travel to tournaments across the region ? something Owings Mills, a public school, is prohibited from doing.
“The private schools are taking away a lot of the best wrestlers and it?s becoming harder and harder to get them to stay with me,” Pritzker said. “We?ve always been able to look down the pipeline and see the next group of wrestlers coming after the current team graduates. But for the first time, I just don?t see that after my current seniors graduate.”
If the Owings Mills? dynasty, which includes seven state tournament titles, three dual meet state titles and plenty of individual champions, is coming to an end, then the Eagles are going out with a bang. Owings Mills (14-0) is the top seed in the Class 2A-1A North region and hosts Sparrows Point (11-3) on Wednesday afternoon at 5:30 in the region semifinals.
The Owings Mills-Sparrows Point winner will take on the winner of Lansdowne (11-3) and City (12-1) at 7:30 p.m. in the finals, with the winner advancing to the state dual semifinals at North Carroll on Saturday.
Pritzker said winning the dual meet title would be nice, but his ultimate goal every year is to place as many wrestlers as possible in the state tournament, set for March 7-8 at the University of Maryland?s Cole Field House.
“We have a good bunch of kids who work in the wrestling room everyday, pushing each other in order to get ready for the state tournament,” he said. “Some kids here want to just make states, while others want to place and others want to win. Every wrestler on this team helps them reach those goals.”
For Owings Mills to win another state title, it will rely heavily on a core of five wrestlers who have been nearly flawless this season. Returning state champion Tony Mack (160) leads this group at 24-0. Junior Avi Friedman (103) is 23-0, senior Cody Rosen-Stone (140) is 23-2, Kevin Dufour (112) is 24-1 and heavyweight Julio Trujillo is 21-4.
Rosen-Stone, who started wrestling with Pritzker as a 7-year-old, said the wrestling education he has received at Owings Mills is as good as he could get anywhere in the state. Rosen-Stone has more than 100 career wins and placed sixth at state tournament last season.
“Coach Pritzker is such a great teacher,” Rosen-Stone said. “He makes wrestling fun and finds a way to get the most out of every wrestler.”
Friedman didn?t think he would like wrestling when his father took him to his first practice with Pritzker. But much like Rosen-Stone, he was hooked quickly. Friedman won county and region titles before placing fifth at the state tournament last season.
“You just make so many friends wrestling here,” Friedman said, “because we all came up together.”
