Master of the MIAA mats
McDonogh crowns 6 champs, wins tournament team title
McDonogh coach Pete Welch feels he’s had teams capable of winning Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association titles the last few seasons, but something always seemed to dismantle the Eagles’ chances. Not this year.
McDonogh has put it all together this winter, and the train kept on rolling Friday and Saturday at Gilman School during the 100th annual MIAA Tournament as the Eagles scored 279 points to beat out rival and three-time defending champions Mount Saint Joseph (254) and Loyola Blakefield (242) for the team title.
It’s the undefeated Eagles’ first league championship since 2016.
McDonogh crowned a tournament-high six champions — junior Cooper Flynn (120 pounds), freshman Clayton Gabrielson (132) and seniors Dominic Solis (182), Jack Wimmer (195), Jackson Bonitz (220) and Garrett Kappes (285) — while the runnerup Gaels had four in freshman Coleman Nogle (106) and seniors Matthew Jun (145), Chris Roybal (152) and Connor Strong (160), who earned the Edward T. Russel Cup for scoring the most points for his team.
Archbishop Spalding, which finished in fourth place with 169.5 points, had a pair of champions in sophomores Brady Pruett (113) and Joe Fisk (138), the latter of whom earned the Charles R. Gamper Outstanding Wrestler Award for his come-from-behind victory over Clement Woods of Mount Saint Joseph.
Gilman senior Andy Weinstein (126) and John Carroll senior CJ Polesovsky (170) also won individual crowns.
“We’ve won this tournament with six champions before, but that usually takes an effort of everybody else coming back and taking third or fourth, and some of our younger guys even taking fifth and sixth was huge for us,” Welch said. “The event itself, everybody at this time of year has boo-boos and sickness, and everybody’s dealing with stuff.
“There’s a lot of luck involved to put it together a few weekends in a row. So I was pleased with the way our guys competed and just finished strong in the end.”
If there was any doubt the Eagles wouldn’t win the team title, their string of upper weights put that to rest. Solis, Wimmer, Bonitz and Kappes have carried the team from the start and it was no different here as three of them won their championship matches by fall to earn the extra team points.
Solis (34-6) pinned Loyola’s Jeremiah Aybar in 55 seconds to capture his third MIAA title; Wimmer (33-5) took out the Gaels’ Parker Warner 6-1 to win the event for the first time; Bonitz (12-2) body-locked and pinned Gilman’s Mattheus Carroll in the second period; and Kappes (27-2) stuck Curley’s Judah Conaway in 1 minute, 16 seconds to get his second league crown.
“I wanted to win my third MIAA championship, but I really wanted to win for the team,” Solis said. “That’s my main goal. Just to dominate so I can get the max points for my team … We have Cooper, Wimmer and all those guys, but it’s all about those other kids that put in all that extra work after practice. They’re doing 50 pullups with me after practice every day, so I think that little stuff just mentally gets you better.”
Flynn and Gabrielson are “fun to watch,” Welch said, because of their technical skills. Flynn (37-2) had six takedowns and cruised past Loyola’s Matty Walsh for his second straight conference championship, while Gabrielson (27-6) scored a slick third-period takedown to seal a 5-1 win over Mount Saint Joseph’s Nathan Porter, who was a two-time defending MIAA champion.
It’s the third time Gabrielson has defeated Porter this year.
“It’s hard to beat someone three times, especially someone like Porter — he’s a great competitor,” said the freshman, who added he didn’t want to let the lead nearly slip away like it did against Porter in the teams’ dual meet on Jan. 31.
“This week I really just worked on my conditioning and stuff, and in the third he got in and I didn’t give up the takedown and scrambled through it.”
The Gaels got a big boost with Strong, a senior captain, returning to his first competition since late December. Strong said he’s fully recovered from a knee injury, and he proved it by pinning Loyola’s Damon Nelson in the second period, his fourth fall of the tournament, to capture his third MIAA title.
“I’m just super grateful,” Strong said. “A lot of people helped me get back. This is my senior year, so I was thinking I might have to miss it, which would have been unfortunate. But so many people helped me come back and I’m just trying to enjoy it all.”
Jun (25-8) built a big lead and held on to defeat Severn’s Brad LaBella 14-10, and Roybal (31-6) followed with a commanding 5-1 win against Loyola’s Josh Aybar. Nogle (34-7) has proved to be a pinning machine in his first season with the Gaels, and his 26th fall of the year came in just 1:04 against Gilman’s William Bressner in the finals.
“Going into high school I had big goals, and just to come out on top at some of these big tournaments feels good,” Nogle said.
“I’m putting in the work, and seeing it [pay off ] out on the mat feels good.”
Fisk (23-1) and Woods have had several battles over the last two seasons, but Woods got his first head-to-head win and handed Fisk his only loss of the season in the finals at Mount Mat Madness in December. It looked as if Woods was going to win again Saturday as he scored two first-period takedowns and escaped early in the second to take a 5-1 lead.
That’s when Fisk turned it on. He cut the deficit to two with a late takedown in the second and then to one with an escape to start the third. He sealed the comeback with a blast double-leg takedown with about 30 seconds remaining and to win 6-5.
“I knew I had had to just create my shots and just set them up so I can break him down and go from there,” said Fisk, who lost in the MIAA and state finals last season. “In my mind, the whole time I was ready for that match. I wanted it.”
Pruett (22-3) continued his domination of the 113-pound weight class by beating McDonogh freshman Joel Brown for the second time this season. He cruised to a 9-2 victory in early January, and this time the score was 5-0 as he netted points in each period to win his first league title.
“It feels significantly different [than last year],” Pruett said. “All the work I put in in the offseason with different kids, I felt like I came in this season prepared with all I’ve been doing and all the hard work I’ve put in the room.”
Weinstein (26-10) took advantage of injuries that forced the top two seeds out of the competition and won his only MIAA championship. He cruised to a 6-0 victory over McDonogh’s Connor Bollinger to win it.