Catonsville’s Mason Ritter selected as one of two Catonsville-Arbutus Times Male Athletes of the Year

Whether he was wearing down opponents on the wrestling mat, preparing to tackle opposing running backs on the football field or harassing midfielders on the lacrosse field, Catonsville High’s Mason Ritter utilized his superior strength and high athletic IQ to win most of his battles.

The three-sport athlete capped his senior year by being named Catonsville-Arbutus Times Male Athlete of the Year along with junior Will Roberson.

It was on the wrestling mat where Ritter shined the most, earning a Baltimore County championship at 170 pounds and finishing sixth in the state after placing third at regionals.

“That was unbelievable, for him to come back and place (top six), he had to beat a guy that beat him at the regional finals in overtime,” Catonsville wrestling coach George Dunn said. “Not only did he beat him, he pinned him and then he beat another guy that was ranked high in the state when he was losing in the second period.”

Ritter used that loss to Bel Air’s Sevion Ricketts in regional as motivation for the state tournament.

“It was a tight match in regionals, it went into like four overtimes, so I was pretty disappointed when I lost that match, but it [states] was my last tournament, so I knew I had to go out with a bang, so I just left it all on the mat,” said Ritter, who pinned Ricketts five seconds into the second period. “I just did my own thing and plugged away at him.”

While placing at states was a goal, so was finishing the job at the county tournament at Dundalk High.

“I feel like winning counties was big because my junior year I lost in the finals, so I felt like I just had to get that back,” Ritter said.

The final at counties was one of the highlight matches of the championship round.

After a scoreless first period, Ritter took a 1-0 lead on Randallstown’s Kasim Bahar with an escape 15 seconds into the second. With one second left in the second period and nearly out of bounds, Ritter got a takedown and 3-0 advantage and he went on to win, 5-2.

“That was really exciting,” Dunn said. “He definitely had the two before the towel came in and I heard the buzzer.”

“I felt like I had control of the match pretty good, but once I got that takedown in the second period I think I had it on a lock,” Ritter said.

Ritter finished 32-13 in a tough weight class that featured several quality matches. He also wrestled alongside his younger brother, Drew, who was 27-13.

“It was fun having him on the team,” he said. “I had wrestled with him when I was younger and having him on the team was really fun. We liked to motivate each other and just mess around.”

Ritter was all business on the mat and his patience often led to victories.

“I felt like I was good at wearing people down and I was good enough to where they would just eventually tank and I could just nail it in the coffin,” Ritter said.

“His perseverance and his never-give-up attitude carried him a long way,” Dunn said. “So many matches he won in the third period just by being in better shape because he worked so hard for us in practice and he was a captain for us, a leader in the wrestling room and that hard work paid off at the right time, he was peaking at the right time.”

He also did it while dealing with diabetes.

“Dieting with it was certainly hard, you know there were some days I had to follow obviously what my blood sugar was doing, so it was really tough sometimes controlling when to eat because I always had to monitor my blood sugar and then cut weight so it was definitely a challenge,” Ritter said.

Next year, he will attend the University of Maryland, but he is unsure what he will do athletically.

“I might do some club wrestling, I might do some other clubs, like jujitsu or something,” said Ritter, who is spending his summer as a beach lifeguard in New Jersey.

Ritter’s football career got off to a slow start because of COVID and his sophomore year consisted of a shortened season in the spring when he battled an injury.

“It was the weirdest injury I’ve ever seen,” Coach Jaren Maybin said. “It was like a lower back injury and it wasn’t from getting hit and it wasn’t anything crazy, he was just running and he landed a little bit weird and I didn’t think that he was going to continue to play football after that injury.”

Ritter came back for his final two years and made a huge impact.

“He came back his junior and senior year and he was really another coach on the field for us,” Maybin said. “He started every game for us and then he went on to have a great wrestling season and have a great lacrosse season.”

The linebacker was fifth in tackles (33) and had one fumble recovery.

Ritter started club wrestling when he was 4 or 5 at Mount Saint Joseph, but he didn’t play competitive football until his sophomore year.

“It was similar to wrestling, just like tackling people and I played in the backyard for some years, so I had some technique,” he said.

He was also strong at dissecting the game and was Catonsville’s nominee for the National Football Foundation scholarship.

“He didn’t win the scholarship, but just to be in that company is very, very elite company, Maybin said. ”A lot of those guys are going on to play college sports. They have great grades, they do a lot in the community and it wasn’t even a question of who we were going to nominate this year. He is another one of those kids who are doing the right things and is very smart and is a really good athlete.”

His physicality in all three sports gave him an edge and that was enhanced by his weightlifting.

“When I was younger in middle school I did Olympic weightlifting during some spare time because I wanted to just weight lift,” he said. “I went to nationals before I was a freshman and I placed third there.”

Although he didn’t play lacrosse his junior year, he joined his brother on the squad in his final campaign.

“This year, I wanted to play because I played my freshman year and I didn’t play COVID season or junior season, so I decided why not play one last season and have some fun because I had a lot of friends on the team so it was like, play some lacrosse,” he said.

“Mason was great for us, as far as stats go, he didn’t have as many stats as some of the other guys, but when we put him in, he always made an impact,” Coach KR Schultz said. “Sometimes we need a little physicality and he was able to bring that for us, one on ground balls and he made a huge play against Hereford in the Baltimore County championship game for us.”

“[Physicality] was probably one of my only strong points in lacrosse,” he said. “I could pass and catch the ball, but along with that I’d say that helped me out in practice and in games.”

Although the Comets lost to Hereford, 11-10, in the county championship game they went on to win a regional title and finish 10-5 after losing to Mount Hebron in the state quarterfinals.

“He was a guy who came out every day just ready to work and had a smile on his face and he brought the experience from the other sports to kind of just like help us out,” Schultz said. “You would trust him to do whatever. I could tell him, he’s got to play defense, tell him he’s got to play offense and he was good, he would do it, he’s just an athlete, he’s awesome.”