According to senior defenseman Ryan Root, “This weekend really wasn’t my best defensive weekend.” The Central Collegiate Hockey Association disagreed, and awarded Root the Bauer/CCHA Defensive Player of the Week award.The 23-year-old 5-foot-11, 215-pound defenseman is only the latest in what seems to be a rash of POW awards given to the Ohio State hockey program, making an OSU icer POW in three of the past four weeks.”I love the honor – but to say that I deserve this award would be wrong,” said Root, who like his teammates, prefers to credit the accomplishment to the program. “It’s a team game and was a team effort.””I was pressing too much – caught worrying a little too much about my offense,” Root said. “I expected Ray [Aho] to get it because he played a great game.”The award is just another notch in a career that Root began in his native town of Pueblo, Colo., a geographic region more suited for the slopes than the rink.After playing in Pueblo for three years, Root became part of a state-wide team known nationally as “Team Colorado.”The team was created to give opportunities to the select few who were good enough to play big-time hockey, but couldn’t due to the lack of interest in the region.The level of competition while playing for Team Colorado was higher than that of other leagues in the Western United States, but just wasn’t competitive enough for Root to make the next leap.It was then that Root decided to pursue his dream of one day playing professionally. At the tender age of 16, he moved from his home in Pueblo to Detroit, where he attended school and lived on his own.”It was a collective effort between my parents and I,” said Root. “They knew I needed to get away because it was a critical point in time,” he said of his life-changing decision.”It was all for him,” said Root’s mother Kathy, who played a huge role in his hockey roots.”I didn’t want to try it, but my mom talked me into it, and I just got hooked,” said Root of his beginnings.”It was hard to let him go, but we knew if we stopped him he would never realize his dream,” she said.”You know, you grow up pretty quick when you move away from home at 16,” said Root, who doesn’t regret his decision, and even credits his scholastic success to it.Being an OSU scholar-athlete, going on four strong years, has helped Root to understand the importance of an education, and has even helped him land a postgraduate job at Crowe Chizek and Co. LLP- an accounting firm located in Columbus.”I was fortunate,” said Root, who added that, “If every student athlete at Ohio State really knew the importance of education, then they would put more of a priority on it.”