By Nick Buglione
Penn State, as the outstretched cloth proclaimed in small capital letters, happens to be the East Meadow football star's next destination on a road that one day might lead him to the National Football League.
Though he still has one more year of high school, Ohrnberger has already committed to a scholarship with the Nittany Lions, one of the country's elite college football teams.
At 6 foot 3 inches, 275 pounds, Ohrnberger looks every bit of a football player. With tightly buzzed black hair, piercing blue eyes and a playful smile he sports from time to time, the kid has All American written all over him.
Off the field, Ohrnberger's smart, polite and perhaps even a little unsure of himself, as most kids his age tend to be.
Put him on the gridiron, though, and he's a monster.
You don't get judged for being too violent on the football field and that's a great feeling, said Ohrnberger, who has played offensive tackle and defensive end for East Meadow High School's varsity football team the last two years. For me, it's the only place I can absolutely let go and just go absolutely nuts.
Ohrnberger's junior year was by far his best. A brilliant ray of light on what was an otherwise dark and gloomy Jets season, he recorded an astounding 65 pancake blocks while playing offensive line. That means on 65 occasions the opponent he was blocking ended up leveled on the ground.
On the defensive side of the ball he logged 47 tackles, 14 of them for losses, three sacks, seven forced fumbles, and three fumble recoveries, not to mention a few batted down passes.
In the players I've coached at East Meadow, he's the best, said Vinny Mascia, Jets head coach for the past six years. He just goes 100 miles per hour every second he's out there."
Ohrnberger seems to have one philosophy while on the football field: Don't stop until the whistle blows. There's never a dull moment; there's never a time when I'm slowing down, he said. On defense, I feel that unless that guy is tackled, then I'm going to chase him until he goes down. On offense, if there's people still standing, then they're fair game.
Yet this past season seemed more to test Ohrnberger's skills as a leader than his prowess as a player.
As captain of the team, he had the dubious task of keeping teammates motivated through an abysmal 1-6-1 finish topped off by an unofficial loss to the cross-town rival W.T. Clarke Rams, which simply poured salt on an open wound.
He'll get in everybody's face and get them pumped before the games, said Matt DeLuca, who plays fullback for the Jets and is one of Ohrnberger's closest friends on the team. He's a great leader. I look up to him a lot.
His mammoth season caught the eye of college football scouts across the country. After Mascia sent out Ohrnberger's highlight reel, consisting of a whopping 65 plays, a lot of big time schools showed interest in both his offensive and defensive talents.
"I was completely floored by the names that showed up at the school," Ohrnberger said. "It was wild."
Coaches from a host of schools including Nebraska, Maryland, Miami, Boston College, West Virginia and, of course, Penn State all inquired about Ohrnberger.
Having bulked up to a husky 275, Ohrnberger's size raised a lot of eyebrows as well. While he started out his junior year around 245, he dropped down to 217 during the season and had to put on some big time pounds in order for colleges to take him serious.
"At first I thought it'd be a lot of fun, you get to eat whatever you want," he said. "It really was a battle.
"You have to eat five sandwiches before you go into the weight room, but manage to keep that down during a hard workout then go home and eat a huge dinner."
Though a number of colleges offered the East Meadow youth scholarships, Penn State seemed the obvious choice, Ohrnberger said.
"Penn State in the northeast seems to be the place for college football that everybody talks about," he said. "It was really one of the few college football teams I knew about until high school.
"When it came down to the wire, after hearing from a lot of schools and seeing a few, Penn State was just the biggest and the best. I felt most comfortable there."
So after next year Ohrnberger is headed into the Nittany Lions' den, where the legendary Joe Paterno has racked up a 336-100-3 record, one of the best among active NCAA coaches.
Ohrnberger chatted briefly with Paterno over the phone recently and admits the prospect of playing for a team so rich in football tradition is daunting. "It's a little intimidating," he said, noting whether he'll play defensive or offensive line there is still up in the air. "It's as nerve racking as it is exciting."
With a year left to play at East Meadow before heading off to Penn State, Ohrnberger has no intention of slacking off. He was hitting the gym five days a week before summer and is now working out with teammates every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Coach Mascia insists Ohrnberger's early commitment to Penn State won't change the way he uses him in games this coming football season.
"You really can't look at it that way because you have a job to do," the coach said. "You owe it to everybody else on the team."
Besides, Ohrnberger wouldn't have it any other way.
"In my opinion the only time you can get hurt or the only time you play bad is when you hesitate or when you're not completely in your game," he said.
