Homan caps Monroeville career with fourth state medal

COLUMBUS — Ashton Homan's historic Monroeville career had 33 seconds left, win or lose. Time was stopped after the senior re-aggravated an injury to his right shoulder. He led 3-1 against a district champion, Barnesville's Dakota King. For Homan, though, there was no option to how his Eagles tenure would end. He had to go out a winner. And he did. "That last match meant a lot," Homan said. "I knew that I wanted to come out on top for the end of my high school career. I worked too hard to not be victorious." Homan parried every shot in the final half-minute to hold on to that 3-1 victory. It was for fifth place at 138 pounds, maybe not the match the defending state champion would've envisioned. But after offseason surgery on his left shoulder and an ongoing injury to his right one that never went away, Homan finding his way to one more win was the way it was meant to end. "It's just something I've been battling through all year," Homan said. "It set me back a lot more than I wanted it to. But in the end, I just had to push through it. Sometimes, you've just got to battle through adversity." Homan finishes his career as a four-time All-Ohioan – third as both a freshman and sophomore, champion as a junior and now fifth-place as a senior. He's also one of 16 wrestlers in the history of the Firelands Conference to win four league championships. "He's an absolutely great kid," Monroeville coach Tylor Nester said. "Can't act for a better kid in the room. The career itself is just astounding … His career was special, special for Monroeville and this community and these kids around him." Homan entered last week's district tournament with just one loss on the season, despite essentially never being at full health this winter. He fell in the final there, to Tinora's Anden Ankney, by a 2-0 score. That meant Homan faced another district champion, Norwood's Wyatt Hinton, in the state quarterfinal. Homan lost by 3-0 decision to fall into the consolation bracket. He picked up a 13-0 major decision, then a second-period pin, before Ankney knocked Homan off again (4-0). That meant the best Homan could do was fifth, and he snagged that final victory to finish his senior season 35-4. "That's what wrestling is all about," Nester said. "That's what's great about wrestling is that if you've got that willpower and that dedication, you can do whatever you want to outside of wrestling. That's gonna set him up for the future." In Sunday's fifth-place match, Homan earned an escape point to start the second period to take the lead on King, someone he's been wrestling against at big tourneys for most of his life. Homan added a takedown for a 3-0 lead, then never allowed an attack to land after they got back to neutral. He took his time after the match, taking one last look around at the Jerome Schottenstein Center, a place in which he'd won a lot more matches than he'd lost. "The lessons I've learned from wrestling, I truly think it's built my character," Homan said. "That's just something I'm forever thankful for." Last season, Homan became Monroeville's first state champion since the quartet of four-time state champs more than a decade ago. "That's a moment I'll never forget," Homan said. "That's probably been the most exciting moment in my entire life." This season, Homan continued to grow as a leader of the rest of Monroeville's talented room. Four other Eagles made it to state, all with more time left in their high school careers. Three, like Homan, won their placement matches to end the season with a win — Landen Roeder for third at 144, Owen Patchen for seventh at 106 and Brycen Dunlap for seventh at 285. "I feel like we've built a path to success for the future kids coming up and for the guys looking to come back and make a run for a state title next year," Homan said. It may not have ended with state champion glory for Homan, but he'd already had that. On this final Sunday of his career at the Schott, the best Homan could do was give it his absolute best. And, like he did his entire career, that's exactly what he did. "The success goes away, but the one thing that doesn't is the work you put in to get there," Homan said. "The one thing that the state title taught me is you get what you earn. You have to work as hard as humanly possible for what you want."