BELLEFONTAINE, Ohio — Less than 10 days after Tavien St. Clair’s high school football ended in a Nov. 1 OHSAA playoff loss to Dayton Chaminade Julienne, he was back in the weight room.
Ohio State football’s five-star quarterback commit is ranked as the nation’s No. 2 player in the 2025 class by 24Sports.com. After an illustrious and historic career for Bellefontaine High School, St. Clair now is less than two months away from leaving his hometown and stepping foot on Ohio State’s campus as an official student.
In the meantime, he’s hitting the weight room with long-time trainer Morgan Standley, who’s been leading St. Clair in the weight room for four years. Standley is Bellefontaine’s strength and conditioning coach, leading classes throughout the day and training Chieftain athletes afterward.
Standley said St. Clair was ready to start his offseason workouts less than two weeks after Bellefontaine lost its opening playoff game. As an early enrollee, St. Clair will become an OSU student for start of the spring semester, so his time in the weight room with her is limited, but it’ll nonetheless be impactful.
What he’s up to in the weight room
The Monday after the loss, St. Clair was back with “basic, how-your-body-feels” movements, according to Standley. After a week of that, he was ready to ramp up the offseason lifts.
He has been excited to get back to upper-body workouts, Standley said, which he doesn’t get to do often in the season. There’s an injury risk in doing heavy workloads in the upper body during the season, Standley said, so St. Clair doesn’t go quite as heavy on those lifts.
Before the high school season this fall, Standley said St. Clair maxed out in the 300-pound range for bench press, 435-pound range for squat and at over 500 pounds for deadlift.
“My goal for him is to get him back to those numbers before he leaves,” she said. “And to be confident in his abilities.”
‘It’s becoming real for him’
The prospect of officially signing on Dec. 4 and then joining Ohio State in January may be providing extra motivation for St. Clair.
“I can tell he’s just excited,” Standley said. “He came to me about being ready to get back in the gym in the mornings… I think he’s just ready for that next step. We’ve been talking about it since the middle of summer [before his junior year] and he’s just so ready.”
St. Clair and Standley have their sights set on him being as prepared as possible for Ohio State, but there will be a real and unavoidable ascent in intensity when he steps into the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, Standley acknowledged.
“They’re going to kick his butt,” she said, half-jokingly about St. Clair’s shift from the Bellefontaine weight room to Ohio State’s.
“But I think he’ll be ready for it. It’s definitely going to amp up,” she said. “He’s working hard and he truly cares about what he’s doing, which is hard to come by these days. Every little detail I tell him, he’s paying attention. Even though this is my fourth offseason with him, there’s still things I correct in his form and certain movements… and he’s always ready to listen.”
St. Clair and Standley are now in their fourth offseason training together. Countless days that have started at the brisk hour of 5:30 in the morning are reaching a conclusion, as are training days that have been full of intensity, growth and even laughs to develop St. Clair into the recruit and person he is today.
Standley said it’s hard coming to the realization that St. Clair’s time in Bellefontaine is wrapping up fast.
“We didn’t have quite the season we wanted this year, but we still got to see him break so many records, throw his historic touchdown pass and so many cool things,” she said. “Now it’s just like, ‘Wow, it truly is coming to an end.’ ”
Now their motivation is for the Bellefontaine phenom to be physically and mentally equipped to step into Ohio State’s weight room and be ready to work from the start.
“It’s hard, but it makes me proud at the same time,” Standley said. “We’ve done everything we possibly can to help him get ready for this.”