Ben Przytula is Free Press Sports Awards’ Male Athlete of the Year
Ben Przytula had a simple philosophy when it comes to high school athletics.
“If I didn’t play a sport, it would feel wrong; it would feel weird,” he said. “I always have to be doing something.”
OK, but does he have to play every sport and does he have to be doing something at all times?
It seemed so because Przytula was a foursport at Gibraltar Carlson and is the Free Press’ Sports Awards Male Athlete of the Year. The Award was announced Tuesday at the Detroit High School Sports Awards show, presented by the Detroit Area Honda Dealers. The show was produced with the support of Children’s Hospital of Michigan.
Not only did Przytula compete in four sports, he earned all-state honors in three of them — football, wrestling and track. He was also a 6-foot-3, 270-pound starting center on the basketball team.
Przytula is a remarkable all-around athlete and it showed best in football, where he played running back, tight end, defensive end and offensive tackle.
In the fall he will be a freshman at defending Division II national champion Ferris State, where he is expected to be an offensive guard, but will play anywhere just to be a part of the team.
“I like the atmosphere that comes with football,” he said. “I like the mentality you have to have and all the hard work and grind it takes and it’s not just you like wrestling would be. It’s the whole team. The whole team has to come together. You’re with all your friends. It’s just different.”
Football is a sport than can rally an entire community and Przytula has been in love with that aspect of it since he began playing for the Monroe First Downers as a 6-year-old.
“That Friday night lights thing, the whole city is coming to watch us play,” he said. “We’ve got to put on for our whole city. They’re all cheering for us, rooting for us. That’s just a different feeling. I’m getting goose bumps right now.”
When the football season ended, Przytula finally gave into his buddies, who had been pestering him to wrestle.
He began wrestling at 7 and continued through eighth grade, but gave it up for basketball when he got to high school.
“Part of me still missed it from eighth grade,” he said. “And I had a lot of guys from the wrestling team wanting me to come out. They’d nag at me all the time. Finally, they got me to come in for them.”
Despite his amazing athletic ability, no one expected Przytula to have the sensational wrestling season he enjoyed.
Przytula didn’t lose a match until the Division 2 285-pound semifinals, 2-1. He then won a couple of more matches to finish third in the state with an amazing 44-1 record.
He was quick to point out the help he received from the legendary Dave Steffen, one of the greatest wrestlers in state history who also earned all-honors in football and baseball and pitched in the Detroit Tigers’ minor league system, for coming to practice and working with him as something of a personal coach.
“After the first wrestling tournament, I won it and my coaches thought I could be a whole lot better than I was,” Przytula said. “So they called in Steffen and he was only supposed to come for one day, but I guess we hooked him in and he kept coming.
“He came in and coached me. It was probably the funnest time I ever had.”
With the addition of wrestling, it would have been easy for Przytula to give up basketball, but that thought never occurred to him.
“I’ve done it all my life, I have always liked basketball,” he said. “I wasn’t going to quit it for wrestling. I was going to do both of them because that’s what I wanted to do.”
Immediately after school, Przytula attended wrestling practice and followed that with basketball practice.
Competing in wrestling and basketball meant few days off for Przytula from November through March. Actually, it meant no days off for the youngster, who also has a 3.85 gradepoint average.
“Nope, not even on the weekends,” he said. “Basketball, they practiced on Sundays, too, and that would be after a wrestling tournament on Saturday. There really was no day off.”
No one ever heard a word of complaining from Przytula because he was having the time of his life.
“I was having fun,” he said. “I love the winning aspect of wrestling.”
The winning aspect of track and field followed with Przytula setting the school record in the shot put three times and being named all-state after his seventh-place finish at the D-1 state meet.
It was a fitting end to a memorable school year from the best all-around athlete in the state. But that begs the question: How in the world is he going to be able to adjust to playing only a single sport in college?
“It’s going to be a lot of free time; it’s going to be different,” he said. “But I’m going to train and get better.”
Mick McCabe is a former longtime columnist for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at mick.mccabe11@gmail.com . Follow him on Twitter @mickmccabe1. Order his book, “Mick McCabe’s Golden Yearbook: 50 Great Years of Michigan’s Best High School Players, Teams & Memories,” now at McCabe.PictorialBook.com