Private School Coach of the Year... Congrats to Mike Laidley!

In the late 90s and early 2000s Archbishop Spalding head coach Mike Laidley was coaching the Rebels Junior League team alongside current Mt. St. Joseph head coach Harry Barnabae. The Rebels used the wrestling room at Spalding as their practice facility.

Laidley’s sons, Chris and Mike, were the catalyst for joining the coaching ranks in wrestling. Laidley is a self-confessed football guy who only had a few years of personal wrestling experience. The administration at Spalding reached out to Barnabae and Laidley about assuming the reigns of the wrestling program.

In 2001, the program was on the brink of being dropped if a coach could not be found. After much deliberation and with the hope that Barnabae would chip in, Laidley stepped into unfamiliar territory as a first-time head coach. Eric DeCosmo would be his first assistant and from there they began the difficult task of making something out of nothing. Barnabae stayed in the junior ranks before moving to St. Joe.

Spalding started out as a MIAA B Conference team. That first year, they only had ten kids in the room. Eventually three “B” Titles were won, and they moved up to the “A” Conference. During the early years, Laidley’s sons came through the room with Mike graduating in 2004 after placing fourth at states and Chris finishing up in 2006 as a state runner-up after winning it all as a junior. In 2011, everything came together for Laidley as his squad won MIAAs, states, and placed third at National Preps. Charlie Lynch was on that 2011 team and won a National Prep title.

Since that time, Spalding has remained competitive and always finished in the top ten, if not the top five of the state rankings, but holes in the lineup kept them from repeating 2011’s success. The outlook for this year was very promising. Laidley was excited because this was going to be the first year in a while the Cavaliers would be putting 14 guys on the mat.

The back end of the lineup was going to be anchored by returning state champion, National Prep placer, and nationally ranked Delmar White at heavyweight. Man makes plans, and God laughs. White would end up not even stepping a foot on the mat after a football injury took him off the table.

“That was crushing when we found out (about Delmar being out),” Laidley remembered. “It was the last game of the regular season against St. Joe of all teams. And he wasn’t even playing defense. They put him on offense for, I guess a special play, and somebody rolled up on his knee. He went to the doctors, nobody was saying they think he tore this, they didn’t know. He went for an MRI and sent me a text and said, “Coach, I tore my ACL.”

“To be honest with you, I was just like done. We were so excited for him. He finished the season off so dominantly. Took third at the National Preps. He was just learning the sport. We just knew, having that one season (with us) under his belt and coming back next year, that he would be the guy to beat. We were just looking forward to it. And all the sudden, one offensive play, he’s gone. I’m happy for the young man, he got a full ride at Maryland. Just to not have his senior year of wrestling was very disappointing. "

“We knew we had a really good team. But after that happened with Del, we knew we might need some help. On paper, Gilman was still the team to beat. They’d only graduated, I think, one really tough wrestler. They kinda had their lineup coming back. His backup didn’t do a bad job, Big Mike (Byrne), being a second-year wrestler, we knew he would be solid. He scored a lot of points for us at the MIAAs, he took fifth. But he got a bad seed and went 0-2 at states and didn’t score one point for us.

“In years past, we never filled the lineup. We typically would have three or four holes but coming into this year we were solid. We filled it up. We knew what the lightweights were going to do, but what we didn’t know, that black hole we had at 190, 215, and heavyweight, were all brand new kids. Two sophomores and a freshman. But they delivered.”

Delivered they and the rest of the Cavaliers did, as Spalding came close to knocking off No. 1 Gilman in a dual and pulled it off at the MIAA Tournament. Going into states as the No. 1 team in the state they got off to a promising start and were holding a large lead, only to watch Gilman claw their way back in it and tie them for the state crown.

Despite that outcome and finishing behind the Greyhounds at National Preps, this year will go down as one of Laidley’s best at the helm of the Cavaliers. His steady hand in the face of adversity was the difference between sitting around saying, what if? about White, and moving on with a new plan. Laidley’s handling of a difficult situation and the resulting success led to him being named Legacy Wrestling’s Coach of the Year.

“It’s an honor,” said Laidley. “I really appreciate it. I sometimes feel a little guilty, I’m not going to lie. Because my name is behind the head coach, but I realize how important the assistants are to our program. I always give them the credit. Like today, we already started club, we’re three days a week. I stopped in the room today and my assistants are in there working hard with the kids. The kids are buying into what they’re teaching, and I know they are the heartbeat of this program. Always have been. I’ve been very blessed. I’m not going to lie; I’m a football guy. I played football in junior college and semi-pro. I wrestled two years of my life. I wasn’t a wrestler. I only got involved in it because my kids started in first grade, and I’ve been a dad coach for years and then became a junior league coach and then became a high school coach."

"I did coach two years of Spalding football. But it was too much doing two sports and obviously the program was mine in wrestling and I took a little pride in that. So, I’ve been blessed. I’ve always had great assistants. It was just a matter of getting the kids in the room and getting kids to buy into what we’re doing and not feel like they gotta go to St. Joe or McDonogh to win a state title. It took a lot of work. Everybody thought you had to go there because they had the big programs and all the mystic and history and stuff. I’m like, you can do it here too, and now it’s happening, so we’re excited about it.”

The season kicked off at the Ray Oliver Tournament in December, where Spalding placed fourth. They went into that one unconcerned with the team race aspect and were looking to get mat time for the young guys before things ramped up. The Ray Oliver Tournament is a no-joke affair, and this would be the only tournament, outside of the Beast and National Preps, the Cavaliers competed in where they didn’t have a champion and only seven wrestlers reached the podium.

“We put them all on JV matches,” Laidley said. “We knew they just needed to cut their teeth a little bit and get some matches in, so we weren’t even going to try to win that one. We said, it’s early in the season, we’ll be better off if they get some wins under their belt and get some confidence. Just to throw them out there in varsity matches to begin the year, which the Ray Oliver Tournament is a very tough tournament, wouldn’t benefit the team.”

The Beast of the East was next, and No. 1 Zane Leitzel was their only guy to bring home an award, landing eighth at 138. No. 1 Sean Garretson reached the blood round at 132 before exiting the brackets.

Spalding took it easy over the Holidays and came back fresh for the new year with another big test right out of 2025’s gate, Stephen Decatur’s War on the Shore. Like Pete Welch at McDonogh with Ray Oliver, Todd Martinek has built War on the Shore into a serious endeavor. War on the Shore is considered by many to be the most difficult gauntlet in Maryland. Up there with the heydays of Mount Mat Madness.

The Cavaliers came into War on the Shore as the No. 4 team in Legacy Wrestling’s team polls. Two teams ahead of them on that list were in attendance, No. 2 South Carroll and No. 3 Loyola-Blakefield. Also, in the field was eventual 2A state dual meet champions, No. 12 Huntingtown, who would finish behind Loyola in fifth.

Spalding was able to take the crown in the battle of Cavaliers, 225.5-217. Xavier from Connecticut was third with Loyola in fourth. No. 3 Eli Chesla (113), Garretson (126), and Leitzel (138) were champions for Spalding with five others making their way to the podium.

“We were pretty excited,” said Laidley. “We had a couple of head to heads with them, but we beat them straight up, Chesla’s match was a big match, Zane had a head-to-head. We felt pretty good about it. It was the first time our young guys, our upper weights were being tested. They didn’t score a lot, but my lower weights delivered. We knew South Carroll was a solid team. They had Gabrielson on the team, they had the returning state champ at 113 (Grayson Barnhill) that Eli beat in the finals. We knew it was going to be tough. We knew their upper weights were pretty strong. The coaching staff looked at each other and said, “Hey, we got a ways to go but this team could definitely compete at the end of the year.”

Next on the docket for Spalding was a southward voyage to the John Kelly Memorial Tournament hosted by Ocean Lakes High School in Virginia Beach. The Cavaliers have been a fixture at this event in recent seasons but have never brought the title back to Maryland until this year when they outpaced Grassfield, VA 270-260. Perennial Virgina power Great Bridge was third with 202 points.

Thirteen of their guys stood on the podium in some form with four of them doing so as champions, No. 4 Charlie Mutschler (106), Chesla (113), Garretson (126), and Leitzel (138). Chesla defeated teammate Isaac Cicchetti in his finals match. Similar to Ray Oliver, this one also allows multiple entries per team, per weight.

“We’ve been going there for like seven years and we were always finishing second or third because for many years we would go down there with ten guys,” Laidley reflected. “We wouldn’t have a full lineup. It wasn’t like the teams were beating us. It was like, we just didn’t have enough weight classes to score points. I think the last two years we had taken second. The year before, we lost to Great Bridge by a couple of points. It came down to the wire. But we were missing two or three weight classes. This year, we went down there with all fourteen weights, and we felt like we had a pretty good shot. Our kids wrestled well.

“Even when we lost because we didn’t have enough weight classes filled, the Virginia coaches, who we don’t see a lot, they don’t know much about us, when they come up to us and ask us about our kids, and say, man, you guys are really tough. The acknowledgement of our kids and how they compete, how tough they are on top, you know, as a head coach, that just made me, with my chest out, feeling the pride, knowing what kind of job my assistant coaches do. It’s just nice to get that acknowledgement especially from people that you don’t really compete with all year.”

MIAA Dual meets are a rare happening in December. The conference tends to run the majority of their dual season over the last few weeks of January into early February. The string of matches can be dizzying with multiple duals happening in a week, sometimes on back-to-back days.

Spalding and St. Joe converged on Saint Frances in mid-January to tangle with the Panthers, but not each other. Both squads picked up wins over Saint Frances and then for Spalding it was on to hosting Gilman the following week. The match with Gilman had everyone in the gym hooting and hollering as the heavyweights engaged in a back-and-forth showdown with each having the other on their backs and close to a fall. Eventually, Gilman’s Noah Lawrence was able to settle Byrne down enough to plant his shoulders for the fall and a 39-33 Gilman win.

On successive nights the following week, the Cavaliers dominated No. 5 Loyola, 59-14, and took out the No. 4 Gaels, 46-30, on senior night at their place. All that was left was a make-up date from early December with No. 6 McDonogh on the road on a Monday night, where the Eagles surprised the visitors with a 40-30 victory.

“The dual meet season kinda went the way we thought,” offered Laidley. “Gilman came down to the heavyweight match, and he had our guy on his back, then our guy rerolled him through, put him on his back on the edge of the mat. It was a matter of second or two, it could have gone either way. We both had opportunities. Their guy was too strong and athletic, he put our guy back on his back and pinned him and that was the difference in the match. Nobody was cheated out of seeing a good competition, that’s for sure.”

“We spanked Loyola. That was actually fun. It was nice going up there. The guys wrestled well. The St. Joe match, I guess went as expected. It was pretty exciting. It was fun beating them again. It’s always fun beating Harry. It was on senior night so a nice way to send off the parents.”

“The McDonogh match at the end of the year was a reschedule thing. We had a couple kids out of the lineup. We didn’t really take them too serious. At the scales we saw our 190lber, who would have won, had a worm on the side of his face, so we didn’t even put him on the scale. Then I have a 160lber, who wrestled 175 for me, and he barely makes it to 160 and because we got an extra pound because it was a Monday, I should have known better (but) didn’t even think about it, he was too light for that weight. So, he weighed in and it came to 175, we put him out there, he’s winning the match, and then Pete goes to the table, talks to (Bruce) Malinowski, they call me over, talk, they say, “Hey Mike, this kid only weighed 160. He should have weighed 160.1 We got three pounds tonight so he’s 157, he can’t wrestle 175.” And I’m like, ?$%@ me. Pete got us on that man. That was a nine-point swing.”

The MIAA tournament afforded Spalding another opportunity to topple Gilman, and this time they seized it, outpacing Gilman by 44.5 points, 239-194.5. In fact, Gilman was third behind St. Joe’s 207.5 points. Winning titles were Garretson and Leitzel, securing silver were Chesla, Cicchetti, and Henry Gessford (144), with seven others securing medals.

“Obviously it worked out for us,” remarked Laidley. “We did well. So, Taina (Fernandez), right before Virginia Beach, she went and wrestled at a college open, and she tweaked a muscle. So, she started getting physical therapy, she literally was off the mat for three weeks and we’re trying to get her healed up. We know going into the final push of the season, we’re going to need everybody in our lineup if we’re going to make a push for MIAA and states.

“We bumped Sean up to 32. We knew he would win that as well. Then we put Quentin (Bailey) at 26 and we got Cicchetti in the lineup at 20. Cicchetti has been a backup all year, but he’s a top-notch kid and he got to the finals and lost to Jayden Jackson from Loyola.

“It was very exciting to win it. I didn’t think we’d win by that much. But it just seemed all our kids were placing in the top three. Our big boys were placing in the top three, which made a huge difference. My 215lber (Luke Barulli) pulled off a couple big wins with pins. He had a big overtime win against the McDonogh guy (Max Stanziale) to take third place. All those points mattered. I think having upper weights filled, we didn’t have that gap we typically do and that made all the difference in the world.”

At states, Spalding built an advantage that was as high as 64.5 over Gilman midway through Saturday’s semi-finals with St. Joe sitting in second 48 behind the Cavs. All three kept adding points, but none of them matched the furious clip of the Greyhounds, who were throwing points up at a ridiculous pace, cutting the deficit down, and down, and down, ending the tournament in a tie with Spalding as both tallied 231.5 points. St. Joe was next with 199.5 points.

Garretson claimed his second state gold and Leitzel his first. Mutschler, Chesla, and Bailey (120) were runners-up in the first three weights and seven more Cavaliers secured state hardware with Gessford (144) and Josh Taylor (165) placing fourth, Rock Zang (132) and Winkler (190) being sixth, Ryder Kolat (150) and Dylan Briles (157) finishing seventh, and Barulli coming in eighth at 215.

“We didn’t know what we were going to do at the states,” Laidley revealed. “Sean wanted 126 at the states. So, we knew we had a hole, and Taina was supposed to be there (132). She had beaten Zach Glory in the dual meet, and we knew she had a good shot at getting to the finals if not winning it. We thought she would be healthy enough for the states, but she wasn’t. That could have made a difference in that damn tie with Gilman. We put little Rock Zang in there and he placed sixth.

“There wasn’t really anybody coming in from the other side, a couple Bullis kids we knew were tough, but you know that St. Mary’s Ryken team had been decimated, so we didn’t have any fear of any team on the other side knocking us out. So, we knew it was pretty much the same competition as the MIAAs. But the difference is, it waters down a little bit.

“I didn’t think it’d be that close truthfully. I guess maybe part of us felt like we won the MIAAs by 30 points, we should win this tournament. I don’t want to say we were overconfident. We wrestled as well as we could. We lost our 175lber, 0-2. My heavyweight, who took fifth at the MIAAs, he went 0-2 at states. So, losing two guys right off the bat and not getting any points there, it was like, OK, this might be a little closer than we think.

“I got to give credit to Dylan Briles. We had five kids certified at 138. Obviously, that’s Leitzel’s weight class and nobody was beating Leitzel. Henry Gessford at 144 and Ryder Kolat at 150, both certified at 138. Dylan walked around the room everyday at 142, wrestling 157. So, my guys were giving up serious size. They were good wrestlers. Every one of them would have done well at 138. Top four.

“Dylan had a torn labrum. He wore a shoulder brace all year. We were just hoping he was going to get through the season. He got hurt in the MIAAS and we really considered pulling Dylan from the states. We had a backup freshman, Rudolph Berry, who’s just an incredible athlete with two years junior league experience. We said we can’t go into this tournament and have you DQ out and not score any points.

“It was his senior year, he really wanted to do it, so we stuck with him, and he took seventh. He got hurt in the Consi-quarters I believe, wrestling the Calvert Hall kid (Aidan Kammar) who he lost to earlier, was in a lot of pain and we thought he would forfeit his last match, and he said, “No coach, I can wrestle.” He wrestled it and pinned the kid and those placement points, and the bonus points were what made the difference in us tying Gilman. He gutted it out and he was the difference.”

Unfortunately for the Cavlaiers, their time as the top team in the state only lasted a few weeks as Legacy Wrestling used the National Prep Tournament standings to break the tie. Gilman won the Dual. Spalding won MIAAs. They tied at states, so Gilman’s higher finish at preps allowed them to end the season back where they started it as the No. 1 squad in Maryland.

The preps were still good to the Cavaliers as they watched their team leader, Garretson, become a four-time National Prep All-American with his fifth-place finish. Leitzel also placed fifth to become a two-time All-American and Chesla reached the prep podium for the first time in the eighth position.

From wondering what they would do now, to competing for a state title, the 2024-2025 season showed the resiliency and determination of the Spalding collective. At almost every turn, the Cavaliers gave us another surprise. While they may not have ended in the top spot, their number two ranking was earned through their hard work and their refusal to allow an unfortunate incident, define their season.

“I’m very satisfied,” Laidley said proudly. “I’m excited for the kids. I’m graduating five kids this year, but out of the five, only two of them were big varsity starters, the other ones were backups or fill-ins. Garretson will be a loss, and Gessford. Those were two guys who placed high in the states each year. But I have backups sitting behind them and we’re reloaded and we’re pretty excited about it. Next year will probably be our best team and the year after that we’re pretty loaded as well.”

Spalding Wrestlers Ranked at the end of the season:

Number Ones:

126-Sean Garretson

138-Zane Leitzel

Six others in the top 10:

106-Charlie Mutschler (4th)

113-Eli Chesla (3rd)

120-Quentin Bailey (5th)

144-Henry Gessford (10th)

150-Ryder Kolat (9th)

190-Luke Winkler (10th)

The others in the rankings:

132-Rock Zang (19th)

157-Dylan Briles (11th)

165-Josh Taylor (21st)

215-Luke Barulli (17th)

Spalding also has two girls who are number one in Maryland with both being nationally ranked by USA Wrestling, Summer Mutschler (26th at 105 in the country) and No. 1 Taina Fernandez (135).