Spalding heavyweight White rose to the top
After 54-4 junior season, coach foresees unbeaten run next year
A little piece of Archbishop Spalding coach Mike Laidley’s heart broke in 2013 when his star heavyweight, Zach Abey, told him he intended to hang up his wrestling shoes to focus on football.
In the decade since, the coach carried some heavyweights, but “no one of significance.” Some years, the weight class gathered dust. It didn’t matter what kind of star-power Laidley pieced together in the lower weights, when the upper portion remained a black hole, sucking down latematch points and churning them out for opponents’ victories.
Then in December 2021, he spotted Delmar White, Chesapeake’s freshman starting heavyweight, rumble onto the mat. Laidley asked his own freshman, Luke Emmons, who that was.
“My best friend,” Emmons replied.
In two years, White quickly became more than a public school star with friends at a private school. In his first season with Spalding, White, now a junior, garnered the kind of season that convinces his coach he’ll go unbeaten next year: Claiming the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference title, the Maryland Independent Schools State Championships title, and bronze at the National Prep Wrestling Championships.
He finished the season with a 54-4 record, Legacy Wrestling’s No. 1 ranking among Maryland high school heavyweights, and the Capital Gazette 2023-24 Wrestler of the Year honor.
“From where we graded him at the beginning of the year to his growth at the end was just amazing,” Laidley said. “He put in the work in the room. And we’re just excited to see what he does next
year.”
White’s connections to Spalding stretched long before he first stepped onto a Cavaliers mat. He wanted to begin his football career at Spalding as a freshman, but it didn’t work out. He instead donned Chesapeake blues in the fall. Before long, a Cougars assistant coach asked if White had any interest in wrestling.
Though never enough to steal his heart away from football, White’s infatuation with wrestling came immediately. He loved being able to unload all his strength at once, to stretch it beyond the kinds of bounds football offered. He captured modest success: the 2023 county wrestling heavyweight title, made All-County second team as a freshman and sophomore. But he wanted to elevate his careers, football and otherwise, at Spalding, and left Chesapeake behind.
White does not resemble the typical high school heavyweight anymore. Football carved his body into a 6-foot-1 quarry of boulders, concentrated in his arms that aid him in his pursuits to quickly overpower his opponents. But when it came to his winter sport, Spalding wrestling sharpened his mind.
“He was very raw,” Laidley said. “When he came to us, he had a great work ethic — a very strong young man — but his knowledge of wrestling was very limited.”
Spalding’s coaches drilled new moves with him and tinkered his old set. White never felt embarrassed or frustrated for what he didn’t know. He absorbed the new information like hot food on an empty stomach. His footwork grew lighter. His strength rechanneled into aggression.
But he still feared to shoot.
At the Beast of the East tournament in mid-December, White dropped his first match to Pennsylvanian Shepard Turk, won three straight consolation bracket bouts but eventually fell to Cael DeNigris and failed to place.
The losses sat uncomfortably in his mind, balanced with acceptance. “They were just better,” he said.
“It humbled me,” White said, “to work harder.”
So, he got better. Knowing he should’ve shot earlier in some periods, he shot. Coaches gave him lessons; he applied them. He had more than moves, but counter moves. He could flow with a match. Laidley estimates 80-85% of White’s matches ended by pin.
“If he doesn’t pin you on his feet, he’s going to turn you,” Laidley said.
Save a tournament match, White collected nonstop wins through the regular season, with a spotlight in his mind shining on his 48-second pin over his old rival, Old Mill’s RJ Duncan on Jan. 23. He rose from his unexpectedly brief triumph and faced worn wooden bleachers packed with Spalding students like a gladiator. The cheers washed over him and he couldn’t stop smiling.
“I think he realized how hard he’d worked in the room and the kind of techniques he was given, so that when he went into the matches, he felt comfortable,” Laidley said. “Delmar would tell you he was nervous before each match, but I think he had a level of confidence which was the difference.”
White wasn’t sure he’d experience a win like that over a top-three opponent again. He climbed to No. 2 in the rankings behind Loyola Blakefield’s Luke Randazzo. When White finished off his MIAA A Conference semifinal in 47 seconds, his reckoning had arrived. Randazzo awaited.
“I knew I had to be really aggressive, smart and confident with the shots, and everything I did,” White said.
White “dominated” Randazzo, Laidley said after a second-period pin. He didn’t expect the aggressive shot so early, per White. A week later, in the Maryland Independent Schools State Championships first-place match, the Dons junior — a smaller specimen, but clever — kept distance with White, but dropped a 1-0 decision.
“I think that shocked Delmar a little bit, and he was nervous going into the National Prep match against him,” Laidley said.
Nerves gripped White through the first period of the third-place match. But in the second frame, White remembered his training. Confidence, adrenaline rushed him. He pinned Randazzo at 4:24, and retained the No. 1 heavyweight ranking for good.