Holland Hall’s Owen Ostroski overcame adversity to become a standout football player
TULSA, Okla. (BVM) — Life offers everyone challenges, but Owen Ostroski was faced with a health battle before he had a chance to fight back.
Three months into his mother’s pregnancy, Ostroski was diagnosed with Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome — a common overgrowth and cancer predisposition disorder his father also had. When Ostroski was born, he weighed in at 10.5 pounds — five weeks premature. Just seven months after being born, he’d faced another obstacle.
Ostroski was diagnosed with kidney cancer. Thankfully, doctors were able to shrink the tumor and perform successful surgery, and he only lost one-third of his kidney instead of the whole thing.
Cancer free from the age of 8, Ostroski hasn’t let the health problems that plagued him at an earlier age hold him back today.
“Most of what happened, happened when I was really young,” Ostroski said. “I had to go get ultrasounds on my kidneys and liver every two, three months to make sure nothing came back. But once I turned 8, I did not have to go back for any visits.”
Now he is a 6-foot-2, 245-pound football and track star at Tulsa’s Holland Hall. Ostroski has been a force on the varsity football team since his freshman year and he continues to throw for the track team.
The Dutch will make the jump from 2A to 3A this season after finishing 9-3 last year, and head football coach Tag Gross believes Ostroski could have a big senior season.
“I think he’ll be better,” Gross said. “He’s 25 pounds heavier than last year. He’s the strongest kid I’ve been around.”
During his junior year, Ostroski had 119 tackles, 9½ sacks, and 40 tackles for loss. He stands out with his fiery playing style on the field. Although Ostroski mainly plays on the defensive line, he has also played on the offensive line and manned the linebacker and tight end positions. If he needs to, he can impact the game in a variety of ways. This has led Division I colleges like Army, Hawaii, and Navy to offer him scholarships.
“I think he might be on the defensive line for somebody,” Gross said. “I think he’ll play early in college. He’s the hardest-working guy in the room.”
Football has always been a mainstay in the Ostroski household. Owen’s older brother, Jackson, is a tight end at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.
“He’s gone through a lot of adversities himself,” Owen said. “I’ve seen how he powers through those adversities. I’m really proud of my brother and I’m glad to see how far he’s grown and how much he’s accomplished.”
Their dad, Jerry, was a first-team All-American offensive lineman at the University of Tulsa and played for the Buffalo Bills.
Spending nearly a decade with the franchise, Jerry played in 106 total games and he was a rookie on the Bills’ 1993-94 team that reached the Super Bowl. After recovering from a broken leg in the 2001 preseason, he would suffer a knee injury later in that same season. Jerry was awarded the Ed Block Courage award in 2001 and he would retire the following year.
“My dad actually broke his leg the same way J.J. Watt did,” Owen said. “J.J. Watt was out the rest of the season, but my dad was back playing in eight weeks.”
Jerry was hired by Holland Hall as an assistant football coach in 2005 and would later coach both of his sons during the Dutch 2017 season before leaving for a position at the University of Tulsa in 2019.
Owen knows his family members have been through a lot and he looks up to each one of them. With his senior season around the corner, Owen is looking forward to the challenges that lie ahead.
“Being an Ostroski is about being tough,” Owen said. “Everyone has overcome something in our family. You have to be tough to be an Ostroski.”
