Sports

When he was growing up in Bexley, the décor to Ross Friedman’s room had a central theme. His walls and shelves were covered with Columbus Crew posters and memorabilia. Eighteen years after he first started following the team, Friedman also wants his business attire to reflect the Columbus soccer team. The defender became the seventh “Homegrown” player on the Crew’s current roster when he signed on with the team on Jan. 8, his 22nd birthday. “It’s been a lifelong goal for me to not only play professional soccer but to play for the Crew,” says Friedman, who was a member of the Crew Juniors Super-20 squad that captured the 2011 national title. “I’ve been following this team all my life. My dad (Tod) got tickets through his work so I saw almost all of the home games. I knew every single player on the field. “I’m so grateful they invested in me when I was in high school with the (Crew Soccer) Academy system (a youth development program sponsored by the Crew).

After being part of the Otterbein University’s athletic department for over 40 years, women’s track & field coach Dave Lehman announced in December that he’s stepping down at the end of the track & field season this year. But don’t expect the veteran coach to go very far away from the Cardinals. “When people ask me ‘What are you going to do now that you’ve retired?’ my wife (Claudia) likes to say ‘Probably the same thing he does now but he won’t have the responsibility,’” says Lehman who coached the men’s and women’s cross country team from 1970-2000 and the women’s team for the 2011-12 season and was the head coach of track program from 2009-14. “I’d love to continue to be involved in some way and help out with events here. If they want some volunteer help, I’ll be around.” “Dave has coached decades of athletes at Otterbein,” Otterbein athletic director Dawn Stewart adds. “In a lot of ways his retirement is an end of an era.” LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION Whoever the university hires as the new track & field coach won’t have to look very far to find Lehman for advice.

The Ohio State men’s basketball team came through its non-conference schedule with a 13-0 record and climbed to third in the AP national polls before entering Big Ten play. Senior guard Aaron Craft says that means less than nothing as the Buckeyes enter league competition. “It’s definitely exciting to jump into Big Ten play,” says Craft whose team started league play 2-1 after falling 72-68 in overtime at No. 5 Michigan State on Jan. 7. “It’s like a new season. Everyone is 0-0.” Ohio State coach Thad Matta divides the season into three sections: the non-conference season, the league schedule and the Big Ten and post-season tournaments. The middle phase, the run through the Big Ten conference, proves to be the most difficult. “It’s going to be a war. That’s for sure,” Matta says. “In today’s college basketball society, there are no givens. Winning a conference championship is the hardest thing to do in college basketball. There aren’t a lot of secrets as the season wears on. Each game has a huge stake.” “You can lose any Big Ten game if you don’t bring your ‘A’ game,” junior guard Shannon Scott adds. “We have to practice hard every day and prepare for every game.

On mornings like Dec. 12, when the temperature dips into the teens and his breath comes out in tiny white puffs, Mike Green often thinks about where he was a year ago. The 6-foot-6 wing for the Capital University men’s basketball team spent last season playing for Chaminade University in sunny Honolulu. Fortunately for the Crusaders, those feelings come and go very quickly. “I definitely miss Hawaii every now and then when it gets cold like this but overall I’m enjoying myself so much being back home in Columbus,” the Dublin Coffman High School graduate says with a chuckle. “I don’t miss it too often.” Green has made his presence felt in his first seven games with the Crusaders. He has averaged 10.9 points, 4.8 rebounds and 1.6 assists for Capital, 3- 5 overall and 1-2 in the Ohio Athletic Conference after losing to John Carroll University 81-67 on Dec. 14. Green scored 12 points on 5-for-9 shooting and had four rebounds while coming off the bench in the loss to the Blue Streaks. Coach Damon Goodwin, the winningest coach in the program’s history, expects the junior to fill the role of being a tall wing for the Crusaders.

Mary Corbett discovered something she hates more than losing this season. And that’s waiting on the sidelines. After breaking her wrist in a preseason practice, the 5-foot-7 guard had to watch from the bench as the Otterbein women’s basketball team started the season 0-2 overall. Corbett responded by averaging 9.6 points a game in her first five games since being cleared to play. She had double digit performances against Wittenberg (11 points in a 72-62 win Nov. 25), Catholic University (11 in a 71-59 win Nov. 29) and Colorado College (15 in an 88-80 win Nov. 30). “Mary’s very competitive,” says Otterbein coach Connie Richardson, whose team is 3-4 overall after losing to Muskingum 74-62 on Dec. 7. “She loves the game of basketball. She doesn’t like to lose. She’s not going to accept losing.” “Sitting on the bench was definitely difficult for me,” says the Upper Arlington High School graduate who transferred to Otterbein from Ohio Wesleyan University in the offseason. “I wanted to be out there with my team but I knew I might mess up my wrist even more.

Coach Chris Kouns didn’t have far to look when he was trying to put together the roster for the Capital University women’s soccer team. Nine of the Crusaders’ 35 players came from the team’s backyard in Columbus. That local contingent has helped the Crusaders make their first run to a NCAA Division III national semifinal. Capital, 19-4-2 overall, faces William Smith College, (21-1) 12 noon Dec. 6 in San Antonio. The winner of that game meets either Trinity University (24-0-2) or Middlebury College (17-1-3) in the national championship game 2:30 p.m. Dec. 7 in San Antonio. “We’ve been fortunate. There have been some great soccer players who have come through central Ohio who wanted to combine education with a great soccer experience (at Capital),” Kouns says. “What’s kind of cool is our (nine out-of-state) kids learn from the central Ohio kids and the central Ohio kids are learning from them as well.” Two of the other NCAA soccer tournaments are getting a little taste of central Ohio as well. Also in San Antonio, sophomore midfielder Noah Grumman (Upper Arlington) and Williams College (15-6) will meet Messiah College in a semifinal 8:30 p.m. on Dec.

The path to Pasadena and the BCS National Championship Game on Jan. 6 has been fraught with potholes and pitfalls. No one knows that better than sophomore linebacker Joshua Perry and the Ohio State football team. After being ranked fourth in the first BCS poll, the Buckeyes have been chasing the heels of Alabama, Florida State and Oregon for most of the year. Ohio State avoided slipping right before the finish line with freshman defensive back Tyvis Powell picking off a Devin Gardner two-point conversion attempt with 32 seconds left to preserve a 42-41 victory over Michigan on Nov. 30. Hours later, the Crimson Tide, the lead thoroughbred in the race, tumbled with a 34-28 loss to rival Auburn. “The Chase is On. The Chase is Real,” says Perry, quoting one of the many placards hung around the Woody Hayes Athletic Center. “(Being 12-0) really shows the body of work we’ve put in but it also shows that it is never over. We have to keep going.” On the bus ride home from Ann Arbor, the Buckeyes watched as they went from chasing to being the ones being chased.

When he first started practicing with the Ohio Dominican University’s football team in the fall of 2010, senior Justin Bell had a hard time attracting the coaching staff’s attention. After transferring from the University of Toledo, the defensive back didn’t go through the spring practices and sat on the bench during a 2-8 season in 2010. Bell isn’t overlooked any more. He was selected as the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletics Conference’s defensive back of the year on Nov. 22. “I went from being someone who wasn’t noticed at all to being a primary player,” Bell says. “After spring ball, the coaches kind of know what route they’re going to take into the fall. The coaches weren’t able to see me play and I wasn’t able to show what I had. I had to climb up from there.” Bell made the climb and then some. He has been a first team all-conference selection in both 2012 and 2013.

The image of Hilary Ells scoring the final goal in the Capital University women’s soccer team’s 4-2 victory over John Carroll University in the 2011 Ohio Athletic Conference championship is forever etched in the mind of Crusaders coach Chris Kouns. “After she scored, she raised her index finger in a Joe Namath style. For me, that’s just Ells,” Kouns says. “That’s the type of mentality you have to have: ‘I just did this to you. I put the ball in your net and now you have to watch me walk away.’ “I always joke with her ‘I’m constantly looking to see that kid with the finger up in there again. Where is she?’” After missing last season with a stress fracture in her right hip, Ells has returned with a flourish. The red-shirt senior forward was selected as the OAC Forward of the Year after scoring 14 goals in the regular season. Ells broke out of a four-game scoring slump, fittingly enough, in a 4-0 win over John Carroll in the OAC championship game on Nov. 10. Ells, who hadn’t scored since powering in four goals in a 5-0 win over Marietta on Oct.

Life on Planet High Street is like life on the shores of an ocean on a far-distant earth-like orb: freaks and geeks rolling by like driftwood; human reptiles and upright dudes and dudettes crawling forth from the primal liquid, the good with the bad; and as always, the interminably ugly with the remarkably beautiful as well as the forgettable in-betweens. Circus time! Working on the city's endlessly fascinating main north-south thoroughfare in the campus area in an ossifying profession known as 'record store,' there have been one or two lethargic days in the last 20 years. But I don't remember them. There is simply too much non-stop action. Like the aging retired American army colonel who owns an antique store in Old San Juan said in Yankee-fied Spanish of his environs, "Nunca un momento aburrido" ("Never a dull moment"). And sometimes these creatures make a sharp left- or right-turn and enter my world. Everyone's greeted with a detached hello but a greeting nonetheless. Their response helps clarify my involuntary survival-instinct gathering of impressions which started the moment they entered my eyesight.