Hocking Hills retreat helps new Ohio State basketball team bond before season's start
Roddy Gayle watched his first-year teammates go into battle night after night in the Big Ten last season. Be it at Purdue, Michigan State, Indiana or even non-conference foe Duke, Gayle said fellow freshmen Bruce Thornton and Felix Okpara backed down from no one and showed no fear regardless of the matchup.
Put the now-sophomores on a zipline that flies through the trees of Hocking Hills State Park, however, and things can change rather quickly.
“I never seen Felix and Bruce that scared in my life,” Gayle said, laughing, during Ohio State’s men’s basketball media day Monday. “Felix was terrified. You should’ve seen the look in his eyes, man. I’ve never seen Felix so terrified in my life. I’ve never seen Bruce scared of anything.”
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As the 2023-24 Buckeyes prepared to open the preseason of what they hope to be a bounce-back year, the entire 15-man roster and the coaching staff went off-grid last weekend. Coach Chris Holtmann took the team down US-33 to the state park, where the Buckeyes put in a whole lot of bonding the old-fashioned way. There were hikes. There were games of Monopoly. Yes, there was ziplining.
But as terrifying as it was for some players to attach themselves to a line eight feet off the ground and hurl themselves through the air, the players also experienced a more modern challenge: no cell phones or personal electronics for 36 hours, save for a 30-minute window Saturday.
“We had a psychologist on call for the shakes that came out of the players when we took their cell phones away,” Holtmann said, jokingly.
What the Buckeyes hope they got out of it was a more tightly knit roster, one that is still primarily composed of new players despite bringing back six scholarship players. After going 16-19 and missing the NCAA Tournament last year for the first time since 2016-17, the outing was designed to foster deeper bonds and friendships among the players on the eve of the preseason.
Holtmann showed players a slide show featuring baby photos of players. One evening, there was a campfire. Ohio State’s players watched the football team’s game against Notre Dame on Saturday night, and at one point they held a video chat with program legend Clark Kellogg.
Freshman guard Taison Chatman said hiking and ziplining were his personal highlights. Classmate Devin Royal said he particularly enjoyed when he and some other players went golfing.
“At the end of the day, they appreciated the fact that they were doing something that was maybe a little bit challenging for them and a little out of their comfort zone,” Holtmann said. “We were not asking them to part from their phone for a week. It was the first time we had done that and I think it was beneficial. It was a great opportunity for us to talk about the upcoming season, for us to speak to them as well as for them to hear from other guys and then spend a lot of time together.”
Last season, Ohio State featured five freshmen and three transfers among its 13 scholarship players. Center Zed Key was the most experienced player on that roster, and now entering his fourth season at Ohio State, will be OSU's most veteran player again this year.
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By this point, he knows a thing or two about what it takes to bring a team together.
“Last year was a completely new team,” he said. “It can be tough at times because you’re all coming from different backgrounds and trying to jell, but that’s where trips like the Hocking Hills one we just had are for and spending a whole summer working out. We had no phones, so all we had to do was talk, bond, continue to get to know each other and a deeper connection.”
Even if that meant flying through the air and facing down fear.
“Bruce looked at me and was like, ‘You really wanna do this?’ ” Gayle, a likely candidate to join Thornton as a team captain, said of the ziplining. “It was an amazing experience. He probably won’t do it again. We probably can’t get him up them stairs again, but it was an amazing experience to jump, to take a leap of faith.”
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio State Buckeyes face fears, surrender cell phones in Hocking Hills retreat
