Football and basketball usually get to be the center of any Ohio State fan's attention, so we take a look at all the other Buckeyes that have been dominating the NCAA.
5. Women's Rowing
This team earned a fifth-place finish at the 2017 NCAA championships, but that seems to have been a lower finish than what the program has done in the recent past. In fact, the squad earned its fifth straight Big Ten championship right before heading the NCAA Regatta and won three in a row from 2013-2015 under the direction of coach Andy Teitelbaum.
Senior Stephanie Williams was named a Pocock Second Team All-American after her performance during her final season, but the Bucks will be returning rising junior Ida Kruse, who was named a first teamer as a Pocock All-American and by the Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association as well as rising senior Rachel Engel, who accompanied Kruse on the CRCA first team.
It doesn't look like this squad is rowing slowing down anytime (I'm sorry that was in no way a good pun).
4. Tennis (Men's and Women's)
This may or may not be a cop out, but these two squads are out of this world and continue to fly under the radar. Maybe it's because they don't play on Saturdays in front of tens of thousands of fans, but they deserve a shoutout here. For much of the 2016-2017 season, the program boasted the No. 1 men's player in rising senior Mikael Torpegaard and the No. 1 women's player in rising junior Francesca Di Lorenzo.
While it may be fun to imagine the havoc that Ohio State tennis would wreak if there was a combo men's/women's doubles where Di Lorenzo and Torpegaard could be on the court at the same time, it may not actually look much different than what the teams do already. The men's team has had a share of the Big Ten championship for each of the last 12 seasons and has won 16 overall while the women's team captured its second straight this past season and won the program's first-ever national championship in doubles.
3. Wrestling
For anybody familiar with Ohio State's wrestling program, it may come as a surprise that they clocked in at No. 3 for this list. The team has been hugely successful under coach Tom Ryan and are consistently competitors for the NCAA and Big Ten titles. The team won the 2014-2015 national championship — the first in program history — and has had some unbelievable individuals.
So, when it comes to parsing out how great this program has been, you can take your pick of whichever you like best: Logan Stieber's four consecutive national championships (only four wrestlers in history have accomplished that) from 2011-2015, Kyle Snyder's two consecutive national championships heading into his senior season, Snyder's claim as the youngest U.S. Olympic champion, Myles Martin's national title win in 2016 that made him the first Buckeye true freshman to accomplish that... I could go on. Not to mention that Snyder consistently wrestles against people who outweigh him because he stays near his Olympic weight rather than the top of the NCAA Heavyweight division limit of 285 pounds.
2. Men's Volleyball
You would think that the team that has the longest win streak in school history — and with that streak happening just last season — would be ranked higher on this list, but Ohio State athletics programs know no bound to their greatness. This squad may have burst onto the scene for casual Ohio State fans last season with their dominant 32-2 regular season that ended in a sweep of BYU in the NCAA Championship game, but the team's greatness extends awhile beyond that.
The team won its first 19 games of the season that ended up being the longest win streak in Ohio State history at 42 games. Since winning the program's first national title in 2011, Pete Hanson has continued to guide the team toward greater and greater peaks, and the squad has now won two consecutive national titles and will likely be in the discussion for the 2018 title.
Much like wrestling, individual success for volleyball players is worth noting, too. Rising senior Nicolas Szerszen is widely regarded as the best player in college volleyball, having won the AVCA Player of the Year award in each of the last two years as well as Volleyball Magazine's player of the year for 2017, most outstanding player at the 2017 NCAA tournament, and has been an All-American First Teamer for each of the last two years while making the MIVA conference First Team in each of his three years in Columbus.
Graduating seniors Christy Blough won the Big Ten Medal of Honor (along with Emma Baranski from the synchronized swimming team) in his final season and Miles Johnson is in the program's top 20 all time in aces (third), attempts (15th), points (15th) and kills (16th). In addition to the individual greatness from the players, Hanson's guidance for those players has been noted as he is part of the Ohio State Athletics Hall of Fame class of 2017.
As it stands, it seems only one program at Ohio State is more likely to win a national championship in 2018, and that program is...
1. Synchronized Swimming
If football is good at Ohio State, then synchronized swimming is indescribably great. In fact, and we mention this just about any time the team is in an article, the team wins national championships at a higher clip (.750) than the football team wins individual games (.724). Not bowl games, not non-conference games. All games.
The program won its 30th national title to conclude its 2017 season and had two seniors nominated for the Big Ten Medal of Honor, one of which (Emma Baranski) won the award. While having two seniors nominated is great for the program, it's often difficult to replace star athletes like that. That doesn't seem to be the case for this program though, as each of the four incoming freshmen for 2017 were on the U.S. National junior or senior squads already.
Head coach Holly Vargo-Brown may have a long path ahead of her if she plans on rivaling Linda Lichter-Witter's otherworldly 584-18-1 record from 1996-2010, but if the current state of the program is a sign of the future, then it will only take time before Vargo-Brown etches herself into program history alongside Lichter-Witter.
Aside from women's rowing, all of the programs on this list won either a team or individual national title in 2017, so it would be hard to bet against a few of them returning to the top of the NCAA world in 2018. Only a fool would pick against Kyle Snyder in the NCAA heavyweight championship or Nicolas Szerszen in the final season of his Buckeye career.
