Ohio State Football continues to win big off of the field

The Ohio State football program has enjoyed a lot of victories on the football field, 953 of them to be exact. But there have been two recent victories that you won’t find in the win column. Everyone knows that when it comes to life, some things are indeed bigger than Ohio State football. For Buckeyes like Harry Miller and Avery Henry, their recent victories attest to that point.

Henry has the most recent victorious story that makes everyone feel good. Diagnosed with Osteosarcoma, which is a type of bone cancer that begins in the cells that form bones, his diagnosis was very rare.

Osteosarcoma is a cancer that has a diagnosis of less than 20,000 cases in the United States per year. It typically is discovered in teenagers and young adults. Henry began treatment for his cancer late last year at the James Cancer Hospital, which is a part of the Ohio State University and one of the top cancer research and treatment centers in the country.

Thursday, Buckeye nation received great news as Henry announced that his cancer is in remission via a tweet.

Henry’s coaches, teammates, and all of Buckeye Nation poured heaps of support, well wishes, and prayers upon the young man from Saint Clairsville, Ohio. The three-star 2022 recruit wasn’t the highest-ranked recruit but was able to gain that elusive Ohio State offer after dropping a massive amount of weight before his junior year of high school. He was progressing well his freshman year and now rejoins the team to pick up where he left off.

Henry hasn’t been the only off-field victory for Ohio State recently. It wasn’t that long ago we learned the sad but relieving news of why fellow offensive lineman Harry Miller hadn’t been playing during the 2021 season.

Miller, who had been dealing with mental health issues since he was 8 years old, approached Coach Ryan Day following the 2020 season. Day immediately got Miller in touch with mental health experts and Miller credits Coach Day and the experts who assisted him in saving his life. “If I had a gun, I probably wouldn’t be here,” Miller recalled when sharing his story on a national stage.

Day with his wife Nina started and announced back in June of 2019 the Ryan and Christina Day Fund for Pediatric and Adolescent Mental Wellness at Children’s Hospital. The initiative was coined, “On Our Sleeves,” and has helped to raise money, research, and treatment in the area of mental health for children and young adults.

Many stories don’t end up with positive outcomes like Miller’s. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, suicide rates have more than tripled over the past decade for children between the ages of 10-14 and is the second leading cause of death among children, adolescents, and young adults, ages 10-24 years.

Day has had to deal with mental health in various ways throughout his life, including the tragedy of losing his own father to suicide when he was just eight years old.

There were plenty of off-the-field wins before Henry and Miller. Haskell Garrett’s heroism that left him shot in the face before returning that fall to have his best year in an Ohio State football uniform comes to mind. Or Ryan Shazier dancing at his wedding after being paralyzed on a Monday night football game. All of these stories are victories.

They are “wins” that you won’t find in a record book, but they mean even more and what makes being a Buckeye one of the greatest titles anyone could claim.