ST. LOUIS, Mo- Two weeks into the Ohio State Buckeye football season, the players you would expect to hear about making a difference have generally been the players you would expect. Quarterback Justin Fields. Wide Receiver Chris Olave, among others. But ask yourself if you had Chris Booker on your list?
Booker is a senior walk-on wide receiver from St. Louis who played locally at John Burroughs before graduating and going to Dayton out of high school. He later transferred to Ohio State where he played on a club football team before he was ultimately discovered by the Buckeyes last summer. He didn’t play a down in 2019.
Fast forward to the season opener for Ohio State versus Nebraska.
Booker’s work earned him Special Teams Player of the week for one of the best programs in the country.
In the days after the Nebraska win, it was Booker who found himself requested on the interview circuit.
“I missed it. Once I got back up at the Varsity level I really started falling in love” with it again,” Eleven Warriors reported.
“I asked him in the team meeting, how many stars were you?” Head Coach Ryan Day said after the Nebraska win. “He said zero… It just goes to show you when somebody wants something enough and they have a big enough heart, anything’s possible. What an inspirational story, and that was really, really cool to see.”
The opening weeks of the Ohio State season have offered another bit of inspiration from St. Louis. Kamryn Babb, the CBC grad who hasn’t played football since his junior year of high school due to knee injuries, saw the field for the first time in college on special teams against Nebraska, and again against Penn State.
