Dispatch needs to do a better job covering Ohio State non-revenue sports. Mailbox

Have more comments, questions? Reach out to me at bwhite1@dispatch.com. Letters are lightly edited for clarity.

To the editor: I recently read The Dispatch‘s multi-day series on Brutus Buckeye — the people behind the costume. Warm. Entertaining. And perfectly representative of a pattern this paper has settled into: devoting column inches and airtime to football’s periphery while the coaches and student-athletes who compete with equal intensity across 20-plus other sports go largely unrecognized.

I’ve had the privilege of doing color commentary work for BTN+, which has given me a seat at the table for a number of Ohio State’s non-revenue programs. What I’ve witnessed — and what I believe Columbus deserves to read about — is a collection of coaches and athletes whose stories rival anything happening on the Horseshoe’s turf, or the Schott’s hardwood. These are people whose passion for their student-athletes, relentless pursuit of excellence, and sheer force of personality would have anyone running through a wall for them. They are building things. This city should know their names.

Let’s start with men’s hockey coach Steve Rohlik, who has been quietly building one of the most underappreciated programs in Columbus for more than a decade. A national champion as a player at Wisconsin, Rohlik is a three-time Big Ten Coach of the Year who has guided the Buckeyes to five NCAA Tournament appearances and coached or recruited more than 20 players who have gone on to the NHL. Columbus is a hockey city, and Rohlik is building a program worthy of that identity every winter. He deserves space in this paper.

Then there is Nadine Muzerall, who I once described on air as Gene Smith‘s best hire — a statement I stand behind without qualification. In 10 seasons, Muzerall has built Ohio State women’s ice hockey into a two-time national champion and led the program to six consecutive Frozen Fours. Just this past week, six more Buckeyes were selected in the PWHL Draft — including two first-round picks — bringing the total drafted under her watch to 28. When Minnesota recently moved on from its longtime coach, speculation immediately turned to Muzerall. Instead, athletic director Ross Bjork locked her up with a new five-year deal, calling her someone who “hasn’t just coached a team — she’s built a powerhouse.” Columbus finally started mentioning her name this spring. It should have started years ago. And while we’re at it: Columbus is pursuing a professional women’s sports franchise, and the conversation is focused on women’s soccer. But at the start of this past PWHL season, 22 Ohio State alumnae were rostered across seven of the league’s eight teams. The professional women’s hockey fan base in this city already exists. Muzerall built it.

Jarred Martin has led the field hockey program for nearly a decade with the quiet intensity of someone who has competed at the highest level and carries that standard into every practice. Martin spent 12 years as a starting forward on the U.S. Men’s National Field Hockey Team, accumulated 104 international caps and competed in three Pan American Games and two Olympic Qualifiers before turning his full attention to coaching. His assistant, Patrick Cota, may be the most underreported coaching hire in this department’s history. A 14-year national team member with 119 international caps, Cota was among the first American male athletes to reach 100 international appearances in the sport. He was inducted into the USA Field Hockey Hall of Fame in 2024 and is currently serving as an assistant coach in the U.S. men’s national program as it builds toward the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. A Hall of Famer. An Olympic pipeline coach. On the bench at Buckeye Varsity Field. The Dispatch has never introduced him to Columbus.

Nick Myers has led men’s lacrosse since 2009 with the kind of sustained excellence that deserves its own profile. He guided the Buckeyes to the national championship game in 2017, has twice been named Big Ten Coach of the Year and was instrumental in raising over $20 million for a new lacrosse-only stadium. Beyond the results, his program has logged more than 2,500 hours of community service over the last six seasons. He has also led Team USA’s U19 squad to a gold medal at the FIL World Championships. He is building men and champions simultaneously as respectful warriors.

Amanda Moore returned to Ohio State women’s lacrosse in 2023 for what she herself called a full-circle moment — she had started her coaching career as an assistant with the Buckeyes, built East Carolina’s program from the ground up over seven seasons, and came back as the fourth head coach in program history. I had the opportunity to speak with coach Moore directly, and she told Brendan Gulick and I about the phone call she took in the middle of an anniversary dinner with her husband — because landing the right student-athlete in the transfer portal era doesn’t wait for a convenient moment. She picked up the phone. That story tells you everything about who she is and the culture she is building. Columbus hasn’t heard it yet.

Kirin Kumar walked into Ohio State softball in 2024 and immediately made national noise. In her first season, she led the Buckeyes to 45 wins, a 16-6 Big Ten record, a national-best 147 home runs, and an NCAA Tournament appearance — earning her staff the Softball America National Coaching Staff of the Year award. If she has the same success as Muzerall does The Dispatch plan to be along for the ride?

Kevin Burch is men’s volleyball, and he is Columbus through and through. Burch built his coaching career across seven national championship staffs before being named head coach in 2019. His vision extends far beyond the court: academic programming, an alumni job placement database, an endowment fund honoring his legendary predecessor Pete Hanson. He recruits players that soon could be representing the US, Poland and Puerto Rico in international competition. He is all-in on Columbus not just as a coach, but as a citizen and a neighbor.

And then there is Ty Tucker — a legend in plain sight. The winningest men’s tennis coach in Big Ten history and the third winningest coach in any sport in the conference, Tucker has guided the program to 19 consecutive Big Ten regular-season titles and 15 conference tournament championships over 26 seasons. Ohio State named its tennis facility after him while he is still actively coaching. That alone should be a feature story.

Justin Haire took over a baseball program that went 13-37 just last season and has been methodically rebuilding it with an approach he calls “hard to kill.” He has brought in talent already drawing MLB draft attention — including players who left for the SEC and chose to come home because they believed in what he is building. That is a story about leadership, trust, and program culture. We were lucky to see the transformation from the press box as it took hold in the middle of this spring season.

Now let us talk about something larger — the road to Los Angeles. Columbus is an official host city for the 2028 Olympic Games, selected to host soccer group stage and knockout matches. That fact alone should be prompting this newspaper to regularly and substantively cover Ohio State’s extraordinary contributions to Olympic development. The pipeline is not new. It is generational.

Ohio State has produced more than 200 Olympic athletes. In all, 48 Buckeyes have combined for 77 Olympic medals — 33 gold, 28 silver and 16 bronze. Behind those numbers are programs with histories that would fill a library. The artistic swimming program — Ohio State’s winningest team in any sport — has claimed 34 national championships since the NCAA sanctioned the sport in 1977. From that program came Karen and Sarah Josephson, who won silver at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and returned in 1992 to win gold with four perfect 10s in synchronized duet competition. Track and field gave the world Jesse Owens, whose four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics remain one of the defining moments in sports history. Add in great names like Reynolds, Hightower, and Smith from basketball. Men’s gymnastics produced Blaine Wilson, a Columbus native and five-time national champion who competed in three consecutive Olympics and earned a team silver medal in 2004. The program is now led by Rustam Sharipov, himself a three-time Olympic medalist — including individual gold on parallel bars at the 1996 Atlanta Games — and a recent inductee into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame. An Olympic gold medalist is coaching Buckeyes in Columbus. Has The Dispatch introduced him to this city?

And then there is the diving legacy — perhaps the deepest thread of all. Mike Peppe, Ohio State’s first swimming and diving coach, sent 19 student-athletes to Olympic teams during his tenure and coached the U.S. Olympic diving team at the 1948 London and 1952 Helsinki Games. He was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame and is considered among the 100 greatest coaches in the sport’s history. His successor on the diving deck, Ron O’Brien — himself an NCAA champion diver at Ohio State — served as coach of the U.S. Olympic diving team at five consecutive Olympics from 1968 to 1988. His most celebrated pupil was Greg Louganis, the greatest diver in Olympic history, who won gold on both springboard and platform at back-to-back Games in 1984 and 1988. O’Brien was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame. His successor, Vince Panzano, coached at Ohio State for over 40 years and produced two Olympic medalists, 23 U.S. diving champions, 13 NCAA champions, and 92 All-Americans. Three consecutive Ohio State diving coaches. Decades of Olympic presence. A lineage that traces directly from this campus to the medal stand. When was the last time The Dispatch reminded us of that story?

Looking forward, the pipeline to LA28 runs directly through this campus right now. Makenna Webster — the two-sport athlete who played both field hockey and ice hockey simultaneously, was named Ohio State’s 2025 Female Athlete of the Year, and was drafted by a PWHL franchise — has the 2028 Olympic field hockey team in her sights. Patrick Cota is actively coaching the U.S. men’s field hockey program building toward those same Games. At the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan alone, five current and seven former Buckeye women’s ice hockey players competed on five different national teams. Columbus is not just hosting the Olympics in 2028. Columbus has been producing them for nearly a century.

In any given season, Ohio State has nearly a double-digit count of programs ranked in their sport’s national top 20. There have been recent stretches where half the Buckeye seasonal sports programs simultaneously sat in the national top 10. This is not a footnote to football. This is one of the premier athletic departments in the country. The athletes and coaches deserve coverage.

Brutus is beloved. But Brutus doesn’t win national championships, interrupt anniversary dinners to land recruits, coach Olympic gold medalists, or represent the United States on the international stage.

The coaches and athletes who do are worth knowing.

Constantine Soteriade, Hilliard

To the editor: I occasionally drop an email to a Columbus Dispatch journalist about a significant grammatical error or a nonsensical sentence with misplaced modifiers and confusing clauses, so I feel duty-bound to send thanks and congratulations for one that was delightful and faultless. Such was “From trapped bucks to costly tickets” in Sunday’s edition. I enjoyed it greatly.

Ron Miller, Worthington 

To Ron: Thanks for this. It’s nice to know we occasionally get something right.

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Dispatch needs to do a better job covering Ohio State non-revenue sports. Mailbox