The Cavalier Duals at Archbishop Spalding attracted public and private school wrestling teams from Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia and all corners of Maryland. Spalding emerged from a competitive and diverse field to take second place at the 12-team tournament waged Friday and Saturday.

Calvert County powerhouse Huntingtown won the overall title and Salesianum from Delaware placed third.

Despite finishing on opposite ends of the championship pool, Anne Arundel representatives Broadneck and Spalding faced many of the same issues — namely, injuries causing forfeits despite stellar presence on the mat — and both teams’ coaches are using the tournament to look forward.

“Because we had so many forfeits, I’m looking at, ‘Did we win the matches we wrestled, where we actually sent kids out there?’?” Broadneck coach Reid Bloomfield said. “Because we’re sometimes giving up three weight classes and 18 points, so that team score is not indicative of the way we wrestled.”

Minutes later, Spalding assistant coach Jeffrey Yeatman independently offered a similar takeaway.

“With our forfeits, we always look at the individual matchups and we want to try to win on the mat,” Yeatman said. “So we can’t control if we have a couple forfeits and kids can’t fill those weight classes, so we always try to take away the positive first which is that we won the matchups.”

Spalding went 4-1 in its first five matches Friday and Saturday, with wins over Bishop McNamara, St. Joseph’s (Pennsylvania), Forest Park (Virginia) and Loyola Blakefield. The Cavs lost 48-24 to Huntingtown to start Saturday morning, but their record was still plenty to advance to the championship bracket.

PJ Truntich (120) recorded his 100th career win with a pin against Huntingtown, on his way to finishing the tournament 8-0.

“No matter what it was gonna be cool to do, but since it was close some of my family got to come see it that usually wouldn’t be able to, so that was pretty cool,” Truntich said.

In addition to Truntich, Rick Couch (132), Ryan Garretson (145/152) and Garrett Fisk (152/160) finished 8-0 for Spalding. Mack Groah (152/160) went 8-0 for Broadneck and Zach Doyle (170) was 7-0.

In the first match of the championship bracket, Spalding led then-unbeaten Salesianum 32-6 early, but a string of Cavalier forfeits brought the Delaware school back into it. Then Salesianum overtook the host school thanks to a 3-2 overtime decision in the heavyweight class and pins at 106 and 113, and Spalding ultimately lost.

Meanwhile, Broadneck snuck into the championship bracket at 2-3. The Bruins defeated Oxford (Pennsylvania) and DeMatha but lost by three points to Northeast of Cecil County and also fell to Salesianum and Middletown.

Broadneck and Spalding squared off in the penultimate round of the day. The Cavs used pins by Sam Smirnoff (132), Ryan Garretson (152) and Garrett Fisk (160) to jump ahead 24-0. Zach Doyle (170) got Broadneck on the board with a pin after missing the Bruins’ previous match to rest a sore shoulder.

Several forfeits later, Broadneck’s coaches chose to have their normal 220-pounder, Noah Genovese, wrestle Spalding freshman Chase Lusk at 285. Genovese snagged a 3-1 decision with a last-second takedown in what he later said was his second time ever competing in the heavyweight class.

“I made a lot of strides here, beat some good opponents. Took one tough loss, but I’m making strides,” Genovese said.

After that, Spalding regained control. Mitchell Garretson won by tech fall and Truntich and Dean Laumann scored quick pins as the Cavs topped the Bruins 47-15.

Bloomfield had his 220-pounder wrestle up a class because the dual match was out of reach and Genovese had missed three weeks with a concussion before returning to the mat Wednesday.

“He’s missed a good part of the season, (and I) just wanted to get him more time on the mat,” the coach said. “It’s that simple. We want to wrestle as much as possible.”

azielonka@baltsun.com