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Ex-Centerville star, Ohio State walk-on can?t pass up challenge
Tom Ingham transferred from UD to follow his dream of playing for the Buckeyes. Now he wants to shed 50 pounds and become a Navy SEAL.
By Tom Archdeacon, Staff Writer
Thursday, October 8, 2009
COLUMBUS ? His family was driving down to Cincinnati from their Centerville home almost four years ago when Tom Ingham shared his against-all-odds plan with his parents.
He was a University of Dayton football player then ? a redshirt freshman who was sure to get plenty of playing time in the coming years ? but he told his folks he wanted more. He said he was going to try to transfer to Ohio State and walk onto the football team.
Never mind that no Division I college had recruited him out of Centerville High School, that OSU likely didn?t even know he existed or that at 6 feet and 225 pounds, he was woefully undersized to play on the Buckeyes offensive line.
Joyce Ingham remembers her husband, John, then a U.S. Air Force colonel, giving their son support: ?He told Tommy, ?You don?t ever want to end up some 40-year-old guy looking back with regret.? ?
And while Tom Ingham has ended up with a lot of things ? bruises, disappointing setbacks, some recent football seasons spent in the shadows ? one thing he won?t have is regret.
?I?ve always wanted to do something that?s really hard so afterward you can be proud that you accomplished it,? he said.
So what tops his hard-to-do list?
? Is it, after just one previous season of organized football, becoming the starting center at Centerville as a sophomore and ending up, as Elks coach Ron Ullery puts it, being ?the best center we?ve ever had in my 33 years at the school??
Nope.
? How about showing up for walk-on tryouts at OSU three years ago and becoming one of just three guys from a pool of 100 to be kept? Or enduring a serious foot injury that required surgery, then facing another tryout, switching from offensive to defensive line ? a position he knew little about ? and going against Alex Boone and Kirk Barton, who outweighed him by 80 and 70 pounds, respectively, every day in practice?
Aaah, nope.
? Maybe it?s handling the rigors of big-time football while maintaining a 3.0 grade-point average in mechanical engineering.
Once again, no.
His most ambitious plan is a little less than a year off.
Immediately after graduation this spring ? and the shedding of some 50 pounds from the 250 at which he now plays ? the fifth-year senior defensive end hopes to grind his way through a year of intensive physical and mental training so he can become a Navy SEAL and be proficient in everything from hand-to-hand combat to high-altitude parachuting and underwater demolition.
?I feel like I owe it to do something like that for my family, my friends and my teammates,? he said as he sat in the Woody Hayes Athletic Complex after football practice.
?For everybody to enjoy the kind of life we have here in this country, somebody has to be willing to do some of these jobs. You can?t always just look to somebody else to do it for you.?
Ex-Centerville star, Ohio State walk-on can’t pass up challenge
