Horn
Every athlete dreams about that one day when everything goes right and everything is perfect.
Joe Horn had two of them.
First, he won three events in the state track meet and anchored a winning relay team when Waynesfield-Goshen won the Division III state championship, the only team state championship the Tigers have ever won, in 2006.
Four years later he scored six touchdowns on Senior Night in his final home football game at Ashland University.
He called those two days “two of the most fun days of my life.”
“Both those days are similar. Everything just seemed to be going right. Everything fell into place, everything felt right. Everything I wanted to do, I was able to do that day.”
Horn, who is the wide receivers coach at East Tennessee State University, is already in Ashland’s Hall of Fame. On Friday, he will be inducted into the Ohio Association of Track and Cross Country Coaches Hall of Fame for his accomplishments in track.
Horn set school career records for touchdown catches and receiving yards at Ashland University and signed a free agent contract with the Indianapolis Colts and played in three preseason games. He also played in the Arena Football League and played in the Canadian Football League with the Calgary Stampeders.
So, which is his favorite sport – football or track?
“Growing up, basketball was my love. But nobody wanted a 5-foot, 11-inch shooting guard who couldn’t shoot,” Horn said, with a laugh.
He didn’t play football until he was a sophomore in high school but says he loves that sport “tremendously” now and has made a career in it.
Before joining East Tennessee’s coaching staff Horn coached two years at Ashland, four years at Tiffin University and a year at Colgate.
Waynesfield-Goshen won its state championship in 2006 with only four athletes. Joe Horn won the 100 meter dash, the 200 meter dash, the 400 meter dash and anchored the winning 4 x 200 relay team (Gray Horn, Kellen Fetter, Jesse Norris, Joe Horn). Gray Horn, who went on to win two SEC championships in the decathlon and finished third in the U.S. Olympic Trials in that event, won the pole vault and was eighth in the long jump.
“Each race has its own place in my mind. I remember all four pretty well,” Horn said. “There is a lot of joy thinking back on it – my family and the friends who were able to be there, the town supporting us and getting to see how happy everyone was.
“I’ve set many high goals in my life and you usually don’t achieve all of them. But when you do something as special as that it’s rare and it feels really good. That’s definitely one of the favorite memories of my life.”
Horn spent only his senior year of high school at Waynesfield-Goshen after his parents moved to Waynesfield, where his grandfather had coached football and track..
He already was an individual state champion in track before he got to Waynesfield. As a junior at Cincinnati Christian he won the Division III 100 meter dash at the state track meet and ran a leg of the winning 4 x 400 relay team.
“I really liked the winning part of track. I liked track because I was good at it. And I liked the competition,” Horn said. “One of the reasons I was able to have a shot at playing at the next level with the Colts is that I ran some really good 40 times.
“I think ultimately I’d like to be a head (football) coach someday. But right now I’m just trying to learn and soak up as much as I can,” he said.
