Oak Harbor alums achieving greatness at collegiate level

Press Contributing Writer
sports@presspublications.com

Oak Harbor alums Clay Schulte and Tyler May were stellar football players during their time in high school, so it’s no surprise the duo would go on to do great things at the collegiate level.
Schulte was an all-Ohio linebacker in high school who set a number of records as a running back, and May set some records, too, as a wide receiver who also played cornerback.
Schulte is playing linebacker for the Indianapolis Greyhounds, a Division II school. He leads the team with 67 tackles, had a career high 13 tackles in a 24-14 win over Quincy earlier in the season, and Indianapolis is in the midst of a great season with a real shot at getting into the playoffs. The Greyhounds, who are 8-1 and ranked ninth in Super Region 3, have already clinched a share of the Great Lakes Valley Conference with a 5-1 mark in the league.
“Right now, we’ve just got to win to get in, I think we can go as far as we want to go and make a run at a national championship,” said Schulte. “If we get in, we’ll go wherever we have to, and it’s a whole new season at that point. Survive and advance.”
Schulte, who is a two-time GLVC Player of the Week, was arguably the greatest football player in Oak Harbor history. He was a force on both sides of the ball and led the Rockets to two league titles and the program’s third regional championship.
For Schulte, who is 5-11 and 202 pounds, and his teammates, the success is a result of the time and effort invested during the offseason. (Schulte is a senior but has one year of eligibility remaining because his freshman season was almost entirely ruined due to the coronavirus pandemic.)
“For me, I put a lot of work into the offseason, and I tried to make sure I was ready to go for this season,” he said. “I set some goals for myself to try and accomplish those.
“I think we’ve got a bunch of guys that like playing football, a lot of guys that care for each other, too, and a lot of guys that want to win. We had 85-90 guys that stayed to lift over the summer, and I think that separates us from a lot of teams.”
Schulte is the son of a football coach Scott Schulte, who is the offensive coordinator for the Rockets. He was a standout running back at Hillsdale College in Michigan and graduated in 1997 before making it to the final cut with the Miami Dolphins later that year. Clay Schulte talked about what he learned from his father.
“The work that goes into everything, the amount of work in the offseason, during the season and film, anything like that; the time and effort, I understand that it’s not easy to win. Winning is a big thing, and how hard it is to accomplish, and what it takes to win. That’s what I learned from him.” Schulte said.
Schulte’s sister, Hannah, was arguably the greatest soccer player in the history of the girls program. She scored 104 career goals, was a two-time Sandusky Bay Conference Player of the Year and led Oak Harbor to a district championship. Their sister, Effie, who is a junior at Oak Harbor, was part of a relay team in track that reached the podium at the Division II state tournament, and she’s also a stellar soccer player that plays basketball, too. And Isaac, a sophomore, is a very good offensive lineman for the football team.
As for May, he is in the midst of a good season as well at Wittenberg, a Division III liberal arts school that has about 1,400 students.
He is second on the team in three categories: receptions (26), receiving yards (447) and receiving touchdowns (5). He leads the team with an average of 17.2 yards per catch.
The best game of May’s career came in a 41-35 overtime loss to DePauw, where he caught eight passes for 229 yards and two touchdowns — one for 81 yards and another for 66 yards — and is now third all-time in school history for single-game receiving yards.
Perhaps the highlight of May’s career was a 24-yard touchdown catch he made in overtime of the Tigers’ 27-24 overtime win over Denison.
He has had something of a similar collegiate career to Clay Schulte, one of his best friends.
“I think (my success) is just an accumulation of all the work I’ve put in throughout the years — training in this program and buying into everything, showing up on game day and playing hard,” May said. “Knowing my assignments and going out and playing confident — this is the most confident I’ve felt.”
“I think we’ve grown a lot throughout the year. We’ve had some ups and downs, but you have that every season. Our team has shown a lot of toughness and grit. There were a couple of games where we were down a score or two, but we kept fighting. We know good things will come our way if we keep working. It’s a close group, there are a lot of seniors playing, and we have good chemistry.”
The Tigers are currently 6-3 and 5-2 in the North Coast Athletic Conference. It is a storied program that has won five national championships and 17 NCAC titles. Wittenberg is second all-time in Division III victories with 754, just 15 behind Mount Union.
May’s father, Mike, is in his 16th year coaching at Oak Harbor. Tyler May talked about what he learned from his father with respect to the game.
“Really, just everything. Clay and I have known each other our whole lives. Clay and I, we loved being around the older players, we’d pick up on things, the good traits, and there were a lot of guys that we looked up to — that’s who we wanted to be,” he said. “He kept us around the sport and we loved the game. Having a father that’s a coach, you know a lot more about what goes into coaching, and I think you get a different perspective on the game, like going to practice, always being around the game. I fell in love with it, getting to see your dad on Friday nights coaching and that can rub off on a kid. Boys all look up to their dads.”