Boardman’s O’Horo prepares for 1st trip to states | News, Sports, Jobs

Correspondent photo / Robert Hayes
Boardman senior Sean O’Horo (left) learns a defensive move from instructor Tom Tomeo in a training room in the Southland Crossings Plaza in Boardman. The Spartans senior will compete in the state tournament for the first time this weekend.

BOARDMAN — It’s 10 p.m. on a Tuesday night and while most high schoolers are leaving work or getting ready to drift off to sleep, there’s a select few who are putting in a little extra time to perfect their craft.

Wrestling is all about technique, which is vital in other sports too, but wrestling is just different. It’s a physical chess match unlike any other game, where one wrong move could be the difference between scoring a pin or walking off the mat in defeat.

Point being, there’s always something to learn, even more so when the largest tournament of your life is this weekend.

Situated within the Southland Crossings shopping plaza, is a wrestling room where Boardman’s Sean O’Horo and instructor Tom Tomeo get to work, prepping the Spartan senior for his first-ever state tournament appearance.

O’Horo has missed the past three years by the skin of his teeth.

It isn’t glamorous, just four walls and two wrestling mats, but the room holds the most important key ingredient — teaching — which separates the good wrestlers from the great.

“You just have to have the mindset that when you’re going on the mat, that you’re better than everyone else in the gym, you’re better than anyone you face, that you’re the best guy in the state,” O’Horo said. “You bring that mindset into practice every day, then you just go out there and try to annihilate your guy, but when you get off the mat to still be a good dude.

“Once you get on the mat you have to flip a switch, if that takes time off the mat, then you have to critique that and get it down.”

O’Horo already owns several commendations in the Spartans record book, including career pins (102), single-season wins (50), and career wins (167), along with having the second-most pins in a season with 32. He’s also posted a record of 43-1 heading into the state tournament this weekend at Ohio State University.

His career record of 167-25 is something that O’Horo prides himself on, especially when he’s followed in the footsteps of older brother Michael O’Horo, who made the state tournament in 2019 during Sean’s freshman season.

Having wrestlers coming from the same household is more common than most people may think. The O’Horo brothers are one of the many duos that Spartans coach Dom Mancini has worked with over his 21 years in coaching.

It’s easy to see why success easily follows from one brother to another.

“We’ve had a lot of brothers that have been successful over the years, and I think the sibling rivalry, they get into fights amongst themselves, and so on,” said Mancini. “So they kinda get that toughness that maybe a lot of other kids are missing or don’t have the opportunity to get with the O’Horo brothers, I see that.

“(State) has eluded him the first three years in high school, it’s not like he wasn’t good enough, it’s just that circumstances and weight classes and draws just never went his way, but this year he’s just so good that it didn’t really matter.”

O’Horo and Tomeo take a seat and analyze film from the district tournament last weekend, going over certain moves, finding ways to correct errors made over the past weekend where O’Horo sustained his first loss of the season.

After 30 or so minutes of training, they sit down, and pull up more film, thoroughly rehearsing every move like it’s preparation for a summer blockbuster.

O’Horo trains at least two nights a week following his team practices at school, while also finding time to drive out to Akron to train with former Kent State standout Stevie Mitcheff, who helped Michael while he was in high school.

Since the tail end of his eighth grade season, O’Horo has worked with Tomeo, a former standout at Clarion University himself. He’s someone who drives himself to absorb any knowledge related to wrestling ever since he began in first grade in the early 1980s. He eventually earned a high school record of 143-8, and was a Division I All-American and three-time NCAA national qualifier in college.

Tomeo grew up coaching his sister Erin, who became a successful wrestler herself, back when female wrestling was much less common than it is today, winning multiple national titles. In 2003, Tomeo was hired by Team USA, eventually traveling to Athens, Greece for the 2004 Summer Olympics with the women’s wrestling team.

Being around the biggest stage in the world, there’s lessons to be passed on to O’Horo in Boardman.

“It’s been a contrast progression, when you change in weights and you really get tall, your style changes, so you always have to be evolving to what your body is now,” Tomeo said. “He’s always been good, always attacking, been really working with his hands, he’s gotten a lot better with his hand fighting, that’s what we’re excited about. That’s what this weekend’s going to take, to get up on that podium, it’s the hand-fighting on his feet, just some one of the things we’ve been working on position wise.”

Before this year, O’Horo has been on the cusp of reaching the state tournament but couldn’t quite get over the hump.

Last year O’Horo missed out on state when he lost in the final overtime of his match against the eventual fourth-place state finisher. Then, during his sophomore season, he last in the blood rounds. He was also on the bad side of a loss to another eventual state qualifier his freshman year after he had beaten the same kid four times throughout the season.

Now, it’s all coming full-circle for the football standout who’s committed to play football at Kentucky. After playing safety and running back for the Spartans, O’Horo has found parallels between the mat and the gridiron.

“Wrestling is a little bit more, just staying in your stance the whole time, staying in squat for almost six minutes straight, gotta keep your leg strength up especially moving in that stance,” O’Horo explained. “It’s a lot of cardio, in football it’s eight seconds then you get a 30 second break, wrestling it’s just six minutes straight of just giving everything you have, leaving it all on the mat.

“In season there’s a lot of team practices in that aspect, but throughout the year I’ve been two privates lessons every week, just having my practice then coming here after and getting the extra work, just trying to leave my mark in Boardman history and the state history, just getting better and doing it two nights a week. You just have to have a different type of mental toughness to keep you going and not get burned out.”

It’s crunch time for O’Horo now. Unlike football, there won’t be 10 other guys on your side of the field, or four other teammates on the court, or an outfield backing you up.

It’s O’Horo versus his opponent, and his opponent alone, within the confines of the Ohio State’s Schottenstein Center this weekend, but Tomeo’s largest point of emphasis to O’Horo?

Treat it like any other event.

“We’re looking at wrestling dual matches, we don’t want to get caught up in the aura of the event,” Tomeo said. “A lot of people get caught up on the bigness of it. I joke around a little bit, they’re not going to be wrestling in a pool, or gel pads or in sand, they’re wrestling on mats just like we train with.

“So it’s just focusing on one duel match at a time, taking care of his business, wrestle the best he can, and at the end of that match, find out where we’re at next.”