After an arduous rehab from being shot in a car-jacking near the Ohio State campus, two-time Big Ten champion and four-time All-American Sammy Sasso is back on the mat again for the Buckeyes. (PressProsMagazine.com file photo).
The ovation will be thunderous, as it always is, when Sammy Sasso runs into the spotlight and takes center stage tonight at the Covelli Center. His road back has been long and challenging, testifying to an inner strength even greater than displayed previously during his accomplished OSU career.
Columbus, OH — Almost every great comeback is results-driven.
After all, there’s typically no redemption without a landmark achievement to validate it.
Sammy Sasso’s return to the mat tonight for sixth-ranked Ohio State is different, although some day there may be an against-all-odds triumph that will punctuate his already-remarkable recovery.
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“Looking back to where I was last year at this time, to be here now,” I feel really lucky,” said Sasso, a four-time All-American and NCAA runner-up in his weight class in 2023.
Lucky is a strange word for Sasso to use in the victimhood culture that’s often glorified today, even though he more than has the right to play the oh-woe-is-me card after being shot by two teenagers in a car-jacking near campus in August of 2023.
“No, no, no…I’m not a victim,” Sasso said. “I don’t look at it like that. All that’s happened to me just showed me how much I had inside me. And it’s a compliment to the people around me – my coaches, my teammates, my family – because I couldn’t have done it without them.”
Sasso enters the season with a 94-12 overall record, including 12-4 in the four NCAA championships he has reached.
If there’s any recompense out there, any appropriate reward for perseverance or payoff for unjust suffering, Sasso will celebrate the first NCAA wrestling title of his Ohio State career at the NCAA championships in March.
The journey toward that hoped-for ending doesn’t begin tonight, it simply takes another step – a step Sasso couldn’t have taken five months after finishing second in his weight class at the 2023 NCAA championships.
On Aug. 18 that summer, he nearly died as he laid on the street after his attackers accosted him without reason, fired a single gunshot into his midsection and left him to die as they went on a joyride across town.
And lest you think jealousy over Sasso’s tricked-out ride inspired the attack, remember that he’s an Ohio State wrestler, not a quarterback. He wasn’t driving a Benz or BMW. He was driving his 12-year-old Chevy Malibu.
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“So many emotions hit you when you first find out,” OSU coach Tom Ryan said. “Just the randomness of it. The unfairness of it. It makes you so angry that this elite young man who’s worked so hard and dedicated himself to excellence is lying there, and you don’t know if he’s ever going to walk again.”
A 16-year-old boy – who had been released from a youth detention center five days earlier – still has not been tried or sentenced for the shooting. Neither has a 15-year-old female accomplice, who on that night had 11 outstanding warrants for her arrest.
A familiar site: Sammy Sasso with his arm raised in victory.
The bullet that nearly killed Sasso ripped through his colon and lodged near his spine, confining him to a wheelchair and then to walking haltingly with a cane.
His desire to return seemed a fantasy last year as he sat and watched sophomore Jesse Mendez win the national championship at 141 pounds, and watched freshmen Rocco Welsh finish second at 174 and freshman Nick Feldman make All-American with a fifth-place finish at heavyweight.
“If Sammy stopped right now, he would have already done more than anybody in the world could do,” Feldman said. “That’s his thing, though. He’s not going to stop.
“I’ve seen him when he’s his most elite, when he was fighting for the top spot in the country, and I’ve seen him down in a very bad spot. To see him come out of that hole is a testament to God’s love and God’s grace. He’s living it every day.”
Sasso agrees that the experience deepened his faith, and also credits the energy of his younger teammates with sustaining his hunger to get back.
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“I got to see things from a different perspective last year, doing a little coaching,” Sasso said. “I got really close with some of our young guys like Rocco and Jesse. The guys who already knew me, I don’t think any of them doubted me. They believed in me. They believed I could do this.”
Sixth-year senior Dylan D’Emilio has known Sasso the longest of any Buckeye.
“When I first found out, all I was worried about was, ‘Is he OK?’ “ D’Emilio said. “You forget about the wrestling. And then you see how serious he is about wanting to compete again.
“He’s been deliberate. Extremely deliberate, just taking things day-by-day, just to get a bit closer to what he was before. It’s been a long time coming for him, and I’m sure there’s some mental warfare going on that’s deeper than we know with how much patience he’s had to have.”
“But Sammy is a tough dude. He’s just an incredibly tough dude. Not a lot of people could recover in the way that he has. He’s had a pretty determined mindset, which has been remarkable to watch.”
Though he will run out of the tunnel tonight at the Covelli Center for around the 50th time, Sasso knows this ovation from the home crowd will feel different.
And he acknowledges that he will be a different wrestler, at least for a time. He’s climbed two weight classes to 165 pounds because of an inability to train for nearly a year.
Due to a medical redshirt while recovering from his gunshot wound, and an extra season of eligibility due to COVID, Sasso could become OSU’s first five-time All-American.
A freak injury in practice and subsequent ankle surgery one month ago also took valuable time on the mat away. So it’s a race against the NCAA clock, ticking toward March, for Sasso’s nerves to regenerate in time for his reflexes and flexibility to return to championship caliber.
“He could sit out until he’s closer to being the old Sammy,” Ryan said. “But he doesn’t want to do that. He wants to wrestle to figure out ways to manage it. It’s real. He can’t do everything he used to do.
“He’s improving every day. He will absolutely be better and stronger in March. It’s just that those nerves regenerating takes time. The question is whether it will get better fast enough.”
Mendez seems more certain of his teammate’s capabilities.
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“Sammy is the same person he was two years ago in the national finals,” the Buckeyes’ reigning national champion at 141 said. “His mentality? He’s a killer, regardless. He has some limitations, but he’s going to figure it out by the time March comes and be right back where he was before. If anyone wants to count him out, that’s their own fault.”
Sasso’s reception tonight may lift the roof off OSU’s sparkling home venue, playing out just as he’s pictured it, with one important footnote.
“I definitely have visualized it in my head a lot,” he said. “That’s one of the things that motivated me to get here, so the run-out is going to be fun. It’ll be cool for the fans and it will be fun for me, as well. I’ll take it in and be thankful for it.
“But at the same time, there’s still a match to be wrestled.”
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