COLUMBUS A day on the farm bonded Buckeyes

Coach Jim Tressel used the trip to Ben Hartsock's family farm as a way to bring the players closer together.
By RUSTY MILLER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
COLUMBUS -- Take 100 college kids from the suburbs, inner cities, small towns and the country. Have them get their own transportation to a farm near Chillicothe. Add animals, farm equipment and loaded shotguns.
What have you got?
"It was hillbillies on holiday," Ohio State free safety Donnie Nickey cracked.
Last June, tight end Ben Hartsock invited his teammates and coaches out to the family's large farm for a cookout. Almost all of them made the trip, loading into vans, the backs of trucks and cramming themselves into the back seats of overloaded cars.
Coach Jim Tressel was looking for ways to draw his team closer together. He has been known to issue quizzes to players, asking them to list the hometown and even the high school nicknames of their teammates. In his way of thinking, if you know something more about the guy at the locker next to you, you'll better understand what he's trying to do and how he goes about playing the game.
So when Hartsock offered to host the team, Tressel and his staff thought it was a terrific idea.
Interesting experience
"It was a great experience for everyone," said Hartsock, a twang in his voice. "For those who had never been there before, it was the lifestyle I grew up with. It was interesting to me to see how guys responded to it. We had a trap-shoot range set up with clay pigeons, with guys walking around with loaded shotguns. We had a guy who works for us teaching guys how to arc weld. I want to tell you, we had some interesting metal art put together that day."
Players could drive a tractor, feel the rubbery snout of a pig, see how grain is harvested, take a hayride, shoot arrows into some bales of straw. Afterward, there was a huge picnic with hamburgers and hot dogs. The coaches' wives brought dozens of cookies.
"It was weird," said Nickey, who grew up in the country near Plain City.
It was also rewarding.
"It was different, seeing that mix of people in a setting that I'm used to," Nickey said.
Want to build trust in your teammates? Then hand a loaded shotgun to one of them at the skeet range.
Still, there was one near disaster the whole day.
"I was on a tractor teaching coach Tressel how to drive," Hartsock said. "You look at him and you know he's a guy who knows a lot and who's been around. But if I wouldn't have helped him to steer he might have run it into our house."
Twice this season, Kevin Smith has enjoyed the highest honor for an Ohio State marching band member: dotting the "i" in the "Script Ohio."
Now he'll do it one more time in the national championship game against Miami at the Fiesta Bowl, Jan. 3 in Tempe, Ariz.
Smith won a competition among other senior sousaphone players for the job. He's from Norwalk in north-central Ohio and has been in the band since freshman year.
To become eligible to dot the "i" in a regular season game, a sousaphone player must be at least a fourth-year band member.