The recruitment of Dexter Larimore called for Ohio State to get a little creative and even a smidgen artsy.
Like most elite athletes being wooed by the Buckeyes, Larimore was shown the posh football training facilities, the stadium so steeped in history, and all the trophies and photos of Ohio State icons.
But closing the deal with Larimore, the Buckeyes had to sculpt an approach rarely used when 300-pound defensive tackles are considering a wardrobe of scarlet and gray.
"Have you seen our art department?"
the Buckeyes asked.
OSU coach Jim Tressel and his brother, Dick, an assistant on the staff who was in charge of recruiting the northern Indiana area where Larimore lived, visited Merrillville High School and talked to the football coach about Dexter Larimore, the all-state lineman.
They also spoke with the wrestling coach about Dexter Larimore, the state champion heavyweight who was ranked No. 1 in the nation as a senior. And they no doubt talked to the track coach about the two-time state qualifier in the shot put.
But when the Tressels walked into the ceramics class one day, that's where they found their guy.
"I was working on a big project when they came in to talk with the art teacher,"
Larimore said. "It was neat, but I don't think art class is somewhere they have to go very often when they are out recruiting."
The OSU coaches came armed with literature on what Ohio State had to offer in art - a fourth area where Larimore excelled. If Dexter needed a pottery wheel, the Buckeyes had those. And they had a gas-fired kiln and some fine throwing tools.
Larimore could feed his passion for creating delicate works in ceramics during the week, while he crushed quarterbacks on Saturdays.
"When they came here, they had quite a bit of information on the art programs at Ohio State with them, and that meant a lot,"
Larimore's mother, Theresia, said. "We didn't know much about Ohio State at that point."
Recently, Larimore the three-sport high school athlete and Larimore the Buckeyes' beast in the middle of the defensive line and Larimore the Big Ten all-academic team member were just along for the ride as Larimore the artist represented Ohio State at the NCAA convention in Washington.
He was one of 20 athletes from around the country who were invited to attend the event and display their art works.
"It was phenomenal - a great opportunity for me to kind of show off a little bit of my talent - what I do outside the football field,"
Larimore said. "It's something that I love to do. I love to create things with my hands."
It was the talent in those hands that first made Larimore attractive to the Ohio State coaching staff. Even at 6-2 and 275 pounds as a senior in high school, Larimore was smaller than many of his opponents on the wrestling mat, but those mitts, along with his strength and athleticism, were the great equalizers, and then some.
"Dexter knows how to use his hands,"
Merrillville wrestling coach David Maldonado said. "Dexter's opponents just never knew what to do with him."
Those same hands that can delicately trace the fine detail in his ceramic works also give opposing offensive linemen fits. They don't have time to notice there might be pottery clay on those paws.
"We think Dexter Larimore is going to be a heck of a force along that defensive line for us,"
Jim Tressel said.
Larimore will be a junior in the upcoming 2009 season.
At the NCAA convention, Larimore got a lot of the same inquiries he has fielded throughout his art/athletics career. Is his future in the NFL, or at the Art Institute of Chicago, or The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York ?
"That's what I have been through my whole life,"
Larimore said. "People say, 'Who is this big guy sitting on this pottery wheel making these things?' My hands are so big, a lot of times I cannot fit them in the pot."
Larimore's mother, who operated a studio and taught classes in pottery and ceramics when Larimore was young, said he took a serious approach to his art, even as a toddler.
"There was clay and other raw materials all around, but instead of just playing in it, Dexter starting making things, even as a pre-schooler,"
she said.
"He kept at it, and when he got to high school, his room was always a mess because he'd be working with clay in there. After being in class all day, and then three or four hours of sports practice and workouts, he'd come home at eight at night and that's how he'd unwind."
Larimore's mother was a bit unnerved when she attended the first parent-teacher conferences his freshman year at Merrillville, and the art instructor asked to speak to her in private, away from her son.
"I didn't know what to expect, and then he told me Dexter was the best student he had ever had, but he didn't want Dexter to hear that and become complacent,"
Theresia Larimore said. "We'd always heard great things from his coaches, but that was the art teacher talking."
Terry Pratt is the head of the art department at Merrillville High, and he had Larimore in his class each semester, for four years.
"He had a definite passion for ceramics coming through the door, and by the time he was done here, he was already doing graduate level work,"
Pratt said. "He created some exceptional pieces, but in Dexter's case, I can't take a lot of the credit. He started to develop those skills at his mother's knee."
Larimore has created both prize-winning art show pieces, and a 400-pound, life-sized cement pirate mascot for his high school to display outside its athletic fields.
"I have my own style,"
Larimore said. "I like the abstract stuff. I think of things in a three-dimensional way, and I can just create it."
Larimore also is credited with creating something of a spike in the enrollment in the art classes at Merrillville.
He encouraged others to explore that realm.
"A lot of people thought art classes were kind of soft, but when they saw a football and wrestling guy like me in them, a lot of other people tried them out,"
Larimore said.
His mother said somewhere along the way, that little kid who molded figures in clay while she taught ceramics class - that kid became an accomplished artist.
"Now when I watch Dexter work, there's no doubt that he has passed me by, and the student has become the teacher,"
she said.
"I think it's wonderful, and I also think it's real important for people to see that these guys are not just great football players. Ohio State looked at the whole person when they recruited Dexter, and they got a lot more than a football player."
