Edward Reinisch was hired by the Baldwin School District to teach physical education and coach boys athletics, beginning in the fall of 1941. There were fewer high schools on Long Island than today, and they competed in fewer sports. There were almost no interscholastic sports for girls.

George Craig, who was the Baldwin athletic director and head football coach, made Ed his assistant and said, “Oh yeah, you’re going to start a wrestling team.”

When Ed protested that he didn’t know how to wrestle and hadn’t even seen a high school wrestling match, Craig replied “Go over to Mepham and see Sprig Gardner. He didn’t wrestle either, but he seems to have figured it out.”

Thus was a program born and lifetime friendship forged.

The legend is that Frank “Sprig” Garner learned wrestling out of a book. Anyone interested in becoming a wrestling coach would do well to follow that book because Coach Gardner won his first 100 matches at Mepham and Ed, using the same book, was the first team to beat him. Any good coach would say neither Ed nor Sprig won any matches. Young men or, rather, boys on their way to becoming men wrestled and won or lost all the matches. Common sense tells us, however, that the efforts of a coach dictate the kind of success a program has over a period of time.

Recruiting is an essential part of scholastic coaching. After a few years of coaching, Ed had 40-50 wrestlers on his teams. A large squad today, it represented between one fourth and one third of all the boys in the high school.

When Ed began coaching, only a few schools in Nassau County wrestled. Ed began taking his boys across the state to find more competition, to learn more techniques, and to give the boys a taste of the responsibilities and rewards of travel. Ed took his teams to Ossining, Ithaca, and Watertown high schools, each with its own proud traditions of wrestling. He formed friendships with coaches and got the Cornell University coach to travel to Long Island and put on a clinic for the high school coaches here. Sprig and Ed understood that coaching was and should be recognized as a profession separate from teaching, and to further that end they formed the Nassau County Wrestling Coaches’ Association.

Ed and Coach Gardner remained friends for the rest of their lives, often fishing together. When he died, Coach Gardner left his boat to Ed.

Between 1941, when he began the wrestling program at Baldwin and 1958, when he gave up the varsity coaching position, Ed had a winning record, and his wrestlers won 17 individual Long Island titles for an average one per year for every year that Ed coached.

Ed’s association with wrestling did not end in 1958. He became a wrestling referee as well as the Baldwin elementary wrestling director.

People today don’t know but in the 50s and 60s wrestling was a unit of instruction in almost all schools on Long Island, and all boys from around third grade through senior high had wrestling as part of their curriculum for several weeks.

Ed made it his business to see that the physical education instructors in the district knew wrestling and how to teach it. He had a Saturday morning program for third through sixth graders and integrated them with the team by allowing them to stay after their practice to watch the older boys work out. The younger wrestlers got to help with the mats and be in the gym on Saturdays when the “Golden Wave” wrestled home matches.

Ed promoted the “family” concept of a wrestling team. He looked out for the “his boys,” of course, as any responsible educator should, but he also urged the wrestlers to look out for each other. Winning a varsity spot was an honor to be earned but humiliating an opponent, especially a teammate was not done. Moreover, wrestlers became wrestlers for life.

Alumni wrestlers were encouraged and looked forward to coming back to demonstrate and work out with the current team, showing the latest nuances and “secrets.”

Ed left Baldwin to accept the athletic directorship at East Meadow, a district that was young and expanding. This enabled Ed to encourage wrestling by hiring the people who would help the sport develop.

Ed lived in Baldwin for the rest of his life and was well known to the wrestling fans for generations. He handed out medals to winners of Christmas and qualifying tournaments many times.

Baldwin high school has recognized Ed in several notable ways. He was an early inductee into the Baldwin High School Football Hall of Fame as a coach. There is a plaque dedicated to him in the Commons of the high school, one of only four people so honored, and every year the Baldwin Bruins Booster Club awards the Ed Reinisch Award to the outstanding senior wrestler.

Ed is deserving of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame's Lifetime Service to Wrestling award, but it should be noted that he didn't just serve wrestling and all it stands for.

All his life, from the time he began coaching, his deeds live on through the many he coached.