The No. 5 Owings Mills wrestling team knows how to erase bad memories. Just win and things feel a whole lot better.
The Eagles (4-0 overall, 3-0 Baltimore County 2A-1A league) took revenge on No. 10 Eastern Tech yesterday with a 45-22 dual meet victory on the Mavericks' home mat. Owings Mills also defeated Randallstown 66-12, and Eastern shut out the Rams, 78-0.
Even though the Eagles won the Baltimore County championship, the 2A-1A North regional and the 2A-1A state dual meet titles last season, it was the Mavericks that took down Owings Mills in the state tournament and finished second.
"We tend to play it down. The kids think of it as more of an important match then we do," said Owings Mills assistant coach Justin Ott. "Eastern has a great squad this year. There were a lot of matches that could've gone either way."
Eastern (3-1, 3-1) started strong as freshman John Mullinix (130 pounds) pinned Evan Lichter 5:15 into the match to push the Mavericks out to their only lead, 6-0. Owings Mills answered quickly with two pins from Sasha Binder (135) and Mike Kessler (145), who are both ranked third in the metro area.
The Eagles won nine of 14 bouts and got pins from second-ranked Eric Fishel (171), Jason Jacovsky (103) and Eric Vinores (112).
"It was a big match. It would have been nice to win it but they are awfully good," said Eastern Tech head coach Joe Gast. "You have to wrestle your best to beat them. There are no weaknesses in that lineup."
The turning point in the match was the heavyweight bout that Owings Mills' Jon Sparklin won, 6-0, in three rounds over Eastern's Kenny Berlett. Those three points raised the Eagles' lead to 27-18.
"The heavyweight match was very important," Ott said. "We knew going in that they had some good upper-weight kids and some of our kids had to step up and wrestle well."
Eastern senior Tony Scotto (215) had the only other pin for the Mavericks against Owings Mills while teammates Pat Reed (160) and Matt Balch (189) secured three points. Eastern Tech sophomore and defending county and state runner-up Chris Clark (125) defeated Ryan Nash, 8-0, to close out the scoring for the Mavericks.
An undermanned and overmatched Randallstown team (0-4, 0-4), which is still rebuilding, had to forfeit nine weight classes to Owings Mills and 10 classes to Eastern Tech after senior Andre Pilson (152) re-aggravated a left arm injury during his pin of Eagle Brad Wasserman.