Tavien St. Clair has dreamed of playing for Ohio State since he was a young child. As he took his first snap behind Ohio State’s offensive line at Monday’s first practice of the spring on Monday, he realized that dream had come true.
“I think the first time that I had taken a snap with my offense on the field, my group of offense on the field, it was like, ‘This is actually happening now, and it's not just a dream that I'm trying to make happen. It was a dream that I'm living now,’” the freshman quarterback said Wednesday.
So far, that dream is living up to St. Clair’s expectations.
“It's been everything I thought it would be coming to Ohio State,” St. Clair said. “I've had plenty of meetings with quarterback coaches, I've had great counsel and great leadership from the older guys in the room, and just other players on the team as well, just getting wisdom from them. It's been great, learning the culture and really trying to just enhance myself in it and just be a great part of this team and really just showcase what this team is all about.
“And so I just take every opportunity I can,” St. Clair said later. “I'm blessed to be here. I love it here. I wouldn't change it for the world.”
There weren’t any major surprises for St. Clair when he arrived at Ohio State. After all, the Bellefontaine native became a fixture around the football program as soon as he committed to Ohio State in June 2023, just one month after he received his offer from the Buckeyes. Having attended countless games and practices over the past two years, St. Clair was able to help many of the other midyear enrollees familiarize themselves with Ohio State when they arrived on campus.
“The relationships that I built with the people in this facility and that I built with the coaches being around them almost every day during the spring or just during camps or anything like that, I was around so often that I was familiar with this place and I was able to help other freshmen come in and kind of direct them into the role of where things are at and where they need to be and things like that,” St. Clair said. “So I definitely thought it was very vital for my development here and my transition here, it was really smooth because of it.
“I'm not really sure how other freshman quarterbacks have felt coming in here, but I know for me, I did feel a little bit more comfortable than talking to (redshirt freshman quarterback Julian Sayin) about his transition last year from Bama to here. Just how it was a little bit easier for me. Just the familiarity with the facility and the people and the coaches. So the relationships are already built and they kind of understand how I learn and how I operate in my mind. So they've been able to coach me and adapt to how I learn and teach me the right things.”
“It's been everything I thought it would be coming to Ohio State.”– Tavien St. Clair on his first two months as a Buckeye
St. Clair enrolled at Ohio State in the middle of the Buckeyes’ College Football Playoff run, giving him a firsthand look at what it takes to win a national championship as he joined the team in practices and watched from the sidelines as they beat Tennessee, Oregon, Texas and Notre Dame on their way to a title. The veterans of last season’s team explained to St. Clair and the other freshmen that it wasn’t easy to get to where they did, and he took that message to heart.
“A lot of them were like, it's going to be hard. Ohio State is not for everybody. It's not easy mentally or physically, but once you persevere through that and you push through it and you lean on your brothers next to you, you feel like you can accomplish anything and you'll come out a better person because of it,” St. Clair said.
St. Clair particularly tried to learn from watching last year’s starting quarterback Will Howard, especially in terms of how to be a leader for Ohio State.
“The better leadership that you have for your team and the closer relationships that you have, the longer it'll take you,” St. Clair said. “Everybody loved Will. He was comfortable talking to anybody. And that's something I'm going to carry with me, just trying to be familiar with everybody, know everybody, know everything about them. And that's really been the main focus, just building relationships with people that I don't normally talk to, and really just trying to build that chemistry around the team has been the main focus.”
Even though St. Clair spent plenty of time around Ohio State the last two years, there have still been plenty of eye-opening moments for the five-star recruit in his first couple of practices as a Buckeye, such as learning how to take snaps under center after not doing so at Bellefontaine High School. But his goal as he begins his Ohio State career is simply to learn as much as he can and get better every day.
“I just wanted to come here and learn and soak up everything that I could from these coaches and these players,” St. Clair said. “They execute at the highest level and that's the main thing that I wanted to come in and do and that's what I'm focusing on right now. Just each day, getting better, continuing to better myself and become a better person and a better player. Everything else will fall into place.”
Ohio State quarterbacks coach Billy Fessler says St. Clair still has a lot to learn despite the amount of time he’s already spent around the program, but Fessler is pleased with the way St. Clair has acclimated to the learning process.
“At the end of the day, he's still a guy that should be in high school,” Fessler said. “Does it help that he was around all spring last spring and in a bunch of meetings? Yeah, I think so. But at the end of the day, he's sitting there in those meetings, but he still has his own offense to go run in the following fall. So his mind is more on that probably than it is on really studying all the details of different concepts and the scheme that we're running here.
“So is it the first time that he's hearing a lot of things? Yes. Are there a couple things that are a little bit familiar? Yes. So I think somewhat there it can give you a little bit of an advantage, but at the end of the day, it's just trying to find a way that he can continue to learn and grow and get better every single day. And I think he knows the amount of work that has to be put in to get to the point where he wants to be. And what I'm excited about Tavien is he's committed to putting that work in.”
Because of all the learning he still has to do, St. Clair is likely a long shot to win this year’s starting quarterback competition. While Julian Sayin and Lincoln Kienholz are similarly inexperienced in terms of game reps at the collegiate level, they’ve both been practicing at Ohio State for at least one year (two years in Kienholz’s case). The five-star prospect ranked as the No. 3 quarterback in the 2025 class has both the talent and intangibles needed to become a star quarterback for the Buckeyes in due time, but he’ll need to develop rapidly over the next five months to be fully ready to lead Ohio State’s offense.
Just two practices into his Ohio State career, though, St. Clair says he isn’t focused on where he stands on the depth chart. He’s trusting the developmental process and is confident it will lead to success in the end if he puts in the work.
“The guys in the room, we're the best in the country, so you just gotta compete every day,” St. Clair said. “At Ohio State, that's what it breeds. Competition's what we talk, and that's what we do. So really just getting better every day, that's been all of our focuses, and we’re just ready to work.”
