OSU freshman Rocco Welsh lost his NCAA championship match to four-time champion Carter Starocci by a 2-0 margin (photo courtesy of Ohio State).
Columbus, OH – The scars that you can see on Tom Ryan’s legs are grim and menacing.
They’re the attractive ones, though, compared to those that threatened much more than Ryan’s return for a 20th season as Ohio State’s head wrestling coach.
Just over six months after suffering horrific injuries in an early-morning car accident, Ryan now has his mind on the typical things he weighs at this time of year as his No. 6 Buckeyes prepare to debut Sunday in the Clarion Open.
It’s a welcome respite to fret over how to best arrange his lineup, which elite recruits to redshirt and how to best guide his team through a Big Ten minefield that includes No. 1 Penn State, No. 2 Iowa, No. 3 Nebraska and No. 9 Michigan.
First responders used the jaws of life to cut Ryan out of his car after his early-morning accident in April.
Ryan was on his way to OSU on I-71 South in late-April when he merged onto the I-270 West ramp toward campus as the sun was rising. A semi, towing a flatbed trailer, was inexplicably parked in the right lane of the two-lane exit with its lights off, apparently believing the right lane was the highway berm.
“I don’t remember impact,” Ryan said after practice this week. “The next thing I knew, they were cutting me out of my car.”
After nearly losing his left leg, after enduring a 12-hour surgery to knit layers of skin from his right quadricep to his left knee, after a second surgery to replace the original rod installed to stabilize his femur, after dodging doctors’ worst fears that he would suffer catastrophic staph infections, Ryan is walking again.
More importantly, he’s back on his feet emotionally.
“I was suicidal for awhile,” Ryan said. “My brain disconnected from reality. I never expected to feel that way, but a bunch of things just piled up on me and I found myself in a place mentally that I never thought I would be. In some respects, it’s been the hardest experience of my life.”
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Those who know Ryan, or who know his story, might find that assessment an overstatement.
After all, this is a man who administered CPR to his five-year-old son on the family’s dinner table after the boy collapsed without warning.
“Losing Teague inflicted this steady flow of pure heartbreak,” said Ryan, who lost his son that day in February of 2004, two years before coming to OSU. “That was an emotional pain no one is ever prepared for. But I think of myself as a mentally-tough person, right? And I’m a man of faith, so when something like this happens, I expected to push through it and lean on God and eventually everything would be OK. Except, it wasn’t.”
Several dark months followed, with more medical complications, more surgery and a mounting desperation that never relented.
“I lost my joy,” Ryan said. “And then I beat myself up for that. My mind just became my worst enemy. I was very open with people about it. I didn’t view it as a cowardly thing. I needed help and I knew that. I told people, ‘My brain is not functioning. Something is wrong with me. I’ve never felt like this in my life.’ “
OSU junior Jesse Mendez is the reigning NCAA champion at 141 pounds. (PressPros file photo).
In many respects, what makes Ryan elite as a coach – a 2015 national championship with the Buckeyes, five NCAA runner-up finishes and 13 Top 8 showings over the last 14 years – proved an impediment to his recovery.
Wrestling is a sport where champions obsess over the slightest nuance in technique. Superiority over comparably-talented opponents comes incrementally, practice-by-practice, day-by-day, in season and out of season, over years and years.
The foundations of that success aren’t poured, they are built by drips of progress measured in decimals, not just physically, but mentally.
In the moment on which outcomes hinge, there is no time to think, only to react. And those reactions, which ordain triumph or inflict heartbreak, come only via numbing repetition that never reveals its worth until summoned by reflex.
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That’s exactly how OSU’s reigning national champion at 141 pounds, junior Jesse Mendez, turned what appeared a looming defeat in the final seconds of the final period into a stunning flip-and-spin winning takedown last March in the NCAA finals.
Mendez’s return, and that of fellow All-Americans Rocco Welsh and Nick Feldman, along with the possible return of 2023 NCAA runner-up Sammy Sasso, have put some of the spring back in Ryan’s step.
Doctors took layers of skin from Ryan’s right leg to save his left, where the wound and the scars are even uglier.
There’s also high hopes for redshirt freshman Vinny Kilkeary at 125 pounds, freshman Ben Davino or sophomore Nic Bouzakis at 133, sixth-year senior Dylan D’Emilio at 149 and a robust roster of highly-ranked recruits capable of delivering on their potential.
D’Emilio, an All-American in 2023, is taking his additional COVID eligibility year in large part because of the culture in the team room and the esteem in which he holds Ryan.
“He’s just an awesome leader and an awesome man,” D’Emilio said. “I know I’ll never be part of an organization like this again and I’ll never be around a leader as great as him ever again.”
Already in possession of his degree in psychology, and on the cusp of receiving his master’s in clinical behavioral counseling at the end of this semester, D’Emilio is in a unique position to assess his head coach’s recovery.
“I’ve talked with him quite a bit about it,” D’Emilio said. “Knowing the kind of guy he is, he’s incredibly busy in his mind. When he couldn’t do the things he was used to doing physically, his mind was racing a million miles an hour.
“That’s the opposite of who he is and what he wants to do, so he had to learn to be patient with himself. I think he’s gained a perspective with it, but to me he’s the same guy he’s always been.”
OSU’s Nick Feldman made All-American as a freshman, losing his NCAA semi-final match to eventual champion Greg Kerkvleit. (photo courtesy of Ohio State).
Which means, Ryan is again honing in on how to elevate OSU wrestling back to the top of the NCAA podium.
Three-time defending national champion Penn State has a ridiculously-stacked roster of three returning champions and two national runner-ups, which explains why the Lions are a unanimous No. 1 and favored to win a fourth straight title, seventh in eight seasons and 12th in 14 years.
The Buckeyes are young and building, probably a year away from seriously challenging for the team title given Penn State’s clear superiority over the rest of Division I.
But Ryan is armed with a three-year contract extension and a renewed vigor to chase down his second NCAA title with the Buckeyes down the road.
“I’d like to do this another 10 years,” he said. “I was bad, really bad, for awhile, but I’m in a great place now. Something that really helped was the advice someone gave me to stop assessing everything everything single day.
“I started spending more time around my grandchildren, and they took my mind off me. They required so much attention and they were so much fun, I didn’t have time to think about my misery. Then I got busy again with the season starting, so the focus was off me. And that’s been good.”
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