Homan’s feats might never be duplicated

Editors note: In more than six years, Chris Schanz has seen his fair share of individual performances, whether in a single contest or over the course of a career. In this “Exceptional Efforts” series, he will take a look back at some of those standout games or careers.

••••••••••

All he needed was his shot to play.

Then all he did was run wild.

Listed at just 5 feet, 8 inches tall and 180 pounds, Will Homan looked much shorter and lighter than the official roster suggested.

But he was every bit as shifty and speedy as his small frame — no matter what it happened to be officially — would allow.

There are few rushing records at Fort Recovery High School that don’t belong to Homan.

As a sophomore in 2015, Homan didn’t play much. The starting running back role belonged to senior Kyle Schroer, who was also the holder on extra point and field goal attempts.

On a freak play, Schroer got hit as the holder on an extra point and broke his ankle early in the Tribe’s playoff run to the state championship.

Homan, as the cliche goes, rose to the occasion, rushing for 171 yards in the regional semifinal after Schroer got hurt. He then totaled 242 yards in the regional championship game, then followed with games of 89 and 82 yards in the state semifinal and championship game respectively.

He finished that year with 1,174 yards, which was the third-most in school history at the time. More than half of those yards (692) came in the five postseason games.

Just as the state championship game was the breakout performance for teammate Caleb Martin as a quarterback, Homan’s rushing through the playoffs was a precursor to his yearlong coming out party his junior year.

The 2015 state championship team proved the Indians had both a rushing and a passing threat, and coach Brent Niekamp adapted the gameplan to whichever was working the most efficiently at the time.

In 2016, it turned out to be all Homan all the time. He finished with 1,128 yards in 10 regular season games. He racked up 275 yards — then a career high — in scoring six total touchdowns in the playoff opener, while also surpassing 1997 graduate Greg Bretz’s 2,480 yards to become the school’s all-time leading rusher.

A 3-yard carry in the regional semifinal that year made him surpass 2014 graduate Cole Hull for most rushing yards in a season (he ended the year with 1,805 — more on that later).

That year he also added to his records the most points in a season (166), most points in a career (244), most rushing touchdowns in a season (24) and career (24). His five-TD performance in a playoff game that season matched the school record.

Homan’s rushing in 2016 was a byproduct of a veteran offensive line. Anytime Homan was asked about his personal performances that season, he was quick to give praise to the five guys in front of him who made his job easy.

“I looked up and saw nothing but holes to the safety,” he said after he accounted for a half dozen TDs in a playoff win against Ada.

Following the same game, Niekamp had said the offensive line took pride in Homan’s accomplishments because they knew it was theirs as well.

What made Homan, who now plays for University of Saint Francis, so special during his time as an Indian, is his legs never stopped churning. As long as he was off the ground his legs were moving, and it didn’t matter if he had to push forward through the offensive line or drive backpedal through a pile.

Just when he seemed to be bottled up at the line of scrimmage or in the backfield, he often found ways to slither out of trouble and into space.

During his senior season, with most of that veteran line gone, Homan had to rely more on his downfield vision and elusiveness to be successful. It helped he bulked up a bit too, strengthening the most important tools of the trade; his legs.

It worked, too. That year he obliterated his own season rushing record with a new total of 2,400 yards. He also increased his single-game record by amassing 405 yards.

Both of those are Mercer County records as well.

Bretz’s former career rushing record is just an afterthought now. Homan doubled it, putting the mark almost impossible to reach. The next Indian running back who wants to be as great as Homan has quite a total for which to aim: 5,384.

All Homan ever wanted to do was have his team win games. If it meant he had to carry the ball 25 times a game, rush for 200, or 300, or even 400 yards, so be it. Or in the case of the state championship game, less than 100 yards was all he needed to do for the team to come out on top.

He’d do whatever necessary to get the victory.

He just happened to become the best kid to carry a football the school may ever see.