'Live Like Phil': Ohio State's Colby Baumann runs Spartan Race to honor late father
Colby Baumann was scrolling through his Instagram feed when, of all things, an advertisement caught his eye.
With his second season at Ohio State looming, the walk-on guard from Texas was back home enjoying some downtime – or what passes for downtime for Baumann. In between pickup basketball games and a flight-school lesson, a new challenge presented itself: a Spartan Race, something he’d routinely considered doing, was set to take place nearby.
In a week and a half. No time for training. But he needed to find out if he could handle the challenge.
“It wasn’t someone telling me to do it; it was proving to myself that I could,” he said. “That’s what made me say, ‘Yeah, I can do this.’ ”
In a field of more than 150 competitors for a 5K competition complete with 20 obstacles, Baumann didn’t just compete. He finished seventh overall, running alongside his friend, Vic Ponce.
But this wasn’t just about climbing underneath razor-sharp barbed wire or scaling a 20-foot rope obstacle or sprinting for more than three miles. When Baumann and Ponce finished the race, they posed for photos holding white T-shirts with the words “TRUST GOD.” The shirts are part of Baumann’s LLP Clothing line.
LLP stands for “Live Like Phil,” Baumann’s late father who passed away in 2017 after a fight with cancer. The aim of the clothing line is to encourage people to take chances, to challenge themselves and to approach life the way Phil Baumann did during his 53 years.
On this occasion, it powered his son and his friend through the most challenging race of their lives.
“We wore his shirts the whole race to promote Phil and how Phil would be living,” Ponce said. “If he was still alive, I guarantee he’d be out there running it with us no matter what his age was. Colby’s a lot like his dad: When they want something, they’re gonna get it.”
Spartan Race idea had been floating around for Ohio State’s Colby Baumann
After a post-graduate year at Bradenton (Florida) IMG Academy, Baumann joined Ohio State as a walk-on and appeared in three games during the 2022-23 season. During that time he often considered signing up for something like the Spartan Race, but it wasn’t until the advertisement popped up on Instagram that he put those thoughts into motion.
That included recruiting Ponce, and when the two signed up, they made a pact to stick together in the race.
“My main goal with this challenging myself is to get out there and be uncomfortable and do stuff the normal person wouldn’t do, like signing up for a Spartan Race spontaneously the week before,” he said. “No sane person is gonna do that, let alone finish seventh.”
Ponce and Baumann first met as freshmen at Humble (Texas) Atascocita. And given what he's learned about him in the six years they've known each other, Ponce was not surprised that Baumann would so quickly sign up for an event that most people take significant time to specifically train for.
It took about a mile before the two began to separate, leading Ponce to tell Baumann to go at his own pace.
“He was in first place for a while,” Ponce said. “I was tracking behind him and got to a point where I had to start breaking off so I could keep my pace going and wouldn’t have to stop. He’s an inspiration. He pushes you, and he was waiting there at the finish line for when I got there too.”
Baumann finished in 47 minutes; Ponce’s time was an hour and two minutes.
“Mid-race I was so exhausted and I remember thinking, any time I’m in a 3 ½-hour long practice or a two-hour weight session, I’m gonna be fine,” Baumann said. “If I can get through this, I can get through anything. People were tapping out. It was bad, but at the end of the race, I told myself and my friend Vic, it was good that it challenged us like that. We would’ve been disappointed if it didn’t challenge us in that way.”
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Baumann said the hardest moments predictably came near the end, where his mud-caked hands struggled to grasp the rope needed to scale a 20-foot climb. Then came a challenge where competitors had to use a pulley system to hoist a sandbag weighing somewhere around 150 pounds high into the air.
"Everyone was so exhausted," he said of that point in the race.
The challenge isn’t over. Baumann and Ponce, who works as a welder in Temple, Texas, are now planning to complete the Trifecta and earn a special medal given to participants who complete all three races. More immediately, Baumann is preparing for his second season with the Buckeyes, where he joked that he feels decently prepared for the weightlifting and conditioning sessions that await the players upon their return for fall semester.
Along the way, Baumann plans to continue working on his clothing line while living the message he hopes it embodies.
“My main goal is for when people buy this clothing or see the clothing at least that it makes them want to get out there and live life to the fullest and challenge themselves with something,” he said. “It's really challenged me in not only remembering my dad and making sure people remember him, but getting out there and saying yes to some things I normally wouldn’t have.”
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio State guard Colby Baumann runs Spartan Race to honor late father
