'Big Tasty' Caleb Fyock More Than a Moniker

This article was originally published April 30. We’re recirculating it as one of our top stories of 2025.

 “Big Tasty” Caleb Fyock is a Best of Lax 2025 finalist for Best Men’s Breakout. He won the Ensign C. Markland Kelly Jr. Award as the national goalie of the year after leading the country in save percentage (61.2 percent) and Ohio State to the Big Ten championship.

Written by Andy Backstrom, this story appeared on the cover of our Goalie Edition (May 2025).

MOST NICKNAMES ARE GIVEN. Caleb Fyock didn’t get the memo.

The Ohio State sophomore goalie nicknamed himself in elementary school.

“Caleb has always been different,” his mother, Jessica, said in a sing-songy way before letting out a chuckle over the phone.

“The Goldbergs,” an ABC sitcom set in the 1980s, was a staple in the Fyock household. Caleb, the second of three children in his own family, identified with the middle child on screen, Barry Goldberg, otherwise known by his rap name, “Big Tasty.”

Like Troy Gentile’s character, Caleb Fyock is outgoing and infectiously goofy. A free spirit. He loves on his sister, Addison, who has Down syndrome. The two share a connection filled to the brim with watching cartoons and playing board games.

When Fyock is home, he’s often shirtless. He wears shoes without socks. When he talks, his words flow like the curly black hair behind his ears, as if written in cursive, comfortably strung together one after the other.

The nickname fit quite literally. Always stout but now 6-foot-2 and 285 pounds, Fyock is a Chipotle connoisseur who looks more like a football player than a lacrosse player. His order: a bowl with a tortilla in it, with white rice, double chicken, lettuce, corn, sour cream, hot sauce, cheese and guacamole.

“I mean, it’s in the name,” pointed out his older brother, Aleric, a goalie at Penn State from 2019-23 and now assistant coach at Gettysburg College. “He’s a big dude. But he’s got some swagger to him, and he’s a handful. Sometimes I do forget his actual name is Caleb.”

“Big Tasty” echoed around the house and at school in his hometown of Bowie, Maryland. The moniker traveled with him to the lacrosse field, where he played club for the Annapolis Hawks and the Baltimore Crabs, and where he starred as a top-flight recruit and burgeoning social media icon at St. John’s College High School (D.C.).

But as game time neared, his teammates quickly learned he could turn into what he calls a “whole different person.”

“He can flip his mindset like a light switch,” Aleric Fyock said.

Ohio State head coach Nick Myers believes that’s partly why defensemen and middies love playing in front of him.

“The guys really appreciate both of those feelings. He’s happy, he’s excited, he brings a great joy and attitude,” Myers said. “But he’s a winner, he’s a hard worker and he’s a scholar-athlete – those are things that I think really speak to the man that he is, and sometimes that gets lost in the ‘Big Tasty’ and the aura and the vibes.”

“There’s a fierce competitor inside,” said Myers, now in his 17th season leading the Buckeyes.

That fierce competitor as of press time ranked third in the country in save percentage (62.6) and second in goals against average (7.13). He’s Big Tasty, and he’s also a big reason why the Buckeyes bolted to a 11-1 start and made a rapid ascent to a top-two ranking in national polls.

FYOCK’S MOTHER SENDS HIM THE SAME TEXT before every game. 

“Hey, I love you. Have fun and do your best,” she recited. “And that’s it.”

Fun is Big Tasty’s middle name. “But there’s a time and place for it,” he said. “If it’s game time or some point of practice where I have to flip that switch, I will for sure flip that switch.”

In pursuit of a ground ball early in the fourth quarter at Denver on March 16, Ohio State's Ari Allen launched Pioneers redshirt sophomore attackman Cody Malawsky, albeit with an illegal check that came with a targeting penalty.

The hit resulted in more than just one infraction, though. It was unsurprisingly met with resistance from a Denver team trailing by five goals. Fyock sprinted to the fracas to back up Allen, first pushing down a defenseman and then jawing with a midfielder.

“Managing emotion, managing a game, managing what’s going on out there and still being able to play with that looseness that he has is a balance,” Myers said. “That was a growing opportunity for him, for us, for our team. But being on the road in a tough environment and being there to support your teammates is something that I stand behind.”

Moments like these have earned Fyock, a sophomore, the respect of his teammates at Ohio State. Buckeyes defenseman Cullen Brown called it "season-defining" and said he doesn't know of many goalies who would put their neck on the line the way Fyock did.

A similar thing happened a month into Fyock's freshman season against then-No. 3 Virginia. Connor Schellenberger, a three-time Tewaaraton finalist, threw the ball on net right before halftime but after the whistle had blown and the horn sounded. Fyock didn’t like it, Myers recalled, and got right in the face of Schellenberger in front of the UVA bench.

“We weren’t playing great,” Myers said, “and their star player does something — I’m not saying he was in the wrong — but the fact that Caleb stood up for himself and our team, the guys really rallied around that.”

“That was a moment for him his freshman year, it was like, ‘OK, this is our guy.’”

Fyock wasn’t the guy to begin the season, however. Henry Blake earned the starting job as a junior before the 2024 season, except stomach surgery sidelined him for the final 14 games, all of which Fyock started in his stead.

Thrown into the fire, Fyock collected Big Ten Freshman of the Week honors twice and was tabbed the team’s most outstanding freshman. The Buckeyes, however, finished 6-9 and missed the NCAA tournament.

“Coming from a high school program where I only lost four games, and then coming here where I lose more than four games in one season, it was tough,” Fyock said. "I just tried to find the bright side in all of it, realizing I’m lucky enough to be in this opportunity, to be put in this place to play lacrosse and play with some of my best friends.”

Ohio State suffered six of its nine losses last year by three goals or fewer, including each of the three final regular season outings by one goal apiece.

The close games the Buckeyes were losing last year are now the ones they’re winning in 2025. Each of its last five wins before this edition went to press were decided by no more than four goals. With senior standout defenseman Bobby Van Buren back from injury, senior attackman Alex Marinier already recording a career-high 40 goals at press time and sophomore Jack Oldman leading the Big Ten in ground balls and emerging as a weapon at the faceoff X, the Buckeyes had already far exceeded their No. 19 preseason ranking.

Fyock and company had come a long way since a season-opening 19-13 loss at Utah.

FYOCK’S PROMISING FRESHMAN CAMPAIGN didn’t guarantee him a second straight season as the Buckeyes’ starting goalie. Blake returned and turned in an impressive offseason.

Fyock upped the ante, too.  Instead of spending his summer sleeping in and boating with his friends back home, he stayed at Ohio State for what the Buckeyes call “Summer BOOM,” the acronym standing for “Brothers on One Mission.” Not much of a morning person, he consistently tested his circadian rhythm, waking up at 7 a.m. for workouts. Van Buren and Brown took notice, and Fyock trained into the best shape of his life.

Come preseason, however, he woke up with a kind of back tightness unusual even for Fyock, who normally sees a chiropractor biweekly. He said it hurt to sit up, and his back locked up when he tried to get into his friend’s car that morning.

In addition to treating his back issue, he also became ill in the days leading up to Ohio State’s fall scrimmage against North Carolina. Blake and Fyock played halves versus UNC and Robert Morris, part of what Fyock called a “healthy competition” between him and one of his closest teammates.

“When this season started and they were doing the goalie competition thing, that’s adversity,” Jessica Fyock said. “That’s how the game is played, buddy. This is life. Go out there, do your best and show ’em that you’re supposed to be there.”

Fyock and his brother, no stranger to goalie competitions, have discussed strategy extensively, and it always comes back to him preparing like he’s the starter no matter what.

Even though Myers opened the season with Blake in the crease, Fyock played the last 13:46 of the third quarter and the first 11:45 of the fourth quarter versus Utah, as well as the game’s final 38 seconds. He made seven saves and allowed just six goals, while Blake conceded 13 goals and recorded only eight stops in close to eight more minutes of playing time.

Fyock has started every game since, a streak of 11 wins at press time. “We knew that Caleb had another level in him,” Myers said. “You’d love for the outcome of that first game to have been different, but I’m not sure we’re where we are without that first game.”

Since allowing 19 goals in their upset loss to Utah, the Buckeyes had yet to allow more than 11 goals to another opponent as of this writing. They knew people wrote them off in February, and they’re on a mission to prove them wrong.

“Just like everyone, I was pissed off,” Fyock said. “The team just focused on us. We didn’t listen to any of the outside noise, nothing like that. I know a lot of people like to talk on the internet, and even some of our fans didn’t even believe in us. We proved we’re here to stay. We’re a great team.”

Myers called a 14-5 win over UVA on Feb. 22 a “launch point,” the kind of “aha moment” Ohio State needed to catapult into a critical March with confidence. After holding off Bryant, the Buckeyes ripped off five consecutive road victories over ranked opponents, starting with a thrilling triumph against two-time defending national champion Notre Dame. Next came Denver, then Penn State, then Rutgers, then Johns Hopkins.

“At the end of the day, those wins don’t mean [anything] if you don’t make it to Memorial Day,” Fyock said.

FYOCK FAMILY HISTORY CAN BE FOUND at Penn State. His grandfather and uncle both went to school in Happy Valley, and his brother continued the Nittany Lion tradition in the classroom and on the lacrosse field.

Penn State was one of four schools Fyock seriously considered in his recruitment, but he veered from his brother’s footsteps, just as he did when he chose St. John’s over Aleric’s high school alma mater, St. Mary’s Annapolis.

More lowkey but equally as competitive, Aleric Fyock didn’t hold back his allegiance to the Nittany Lions on March 23 when the Buckeyes arrived at Penn State’s Panzer Stadium. Four years older than Caleb and almost two years removed from his own college career, he showed up wearing blue and white. He also showed up with a keen eye for his brother in scarlet and gray. And after watching Caleb warm up, Aleric knew a great performance was coming in cage.

When Fyock zones in, he starts to calm down, his brother explained. His pregame song is “Ribs” by Lorde, a coming-of-age pop anthem featuring a symphony of synths, drums and echoing vocals that’s more often played on a cross-country road trip than in any sports context.

Fyock said it’s his chance to stop, focus and be in the moment. Every movement he takes is intentional, his brother said. He gets on one knee, looks at the goal and visualizes.

He’s refined his technique through repetition, years’ worth of training, including with his father, Rob, who joined St. John’s coaching staff as a goalie coach Caleb’s freshman year of high school. Caleb takes up a ton of cage, and Aleric said his brother has the quickest hands he’s ever seen. Myers highlighted his underrated athleticism, fueled by his explosive yet patient feet.

Perhaps what separates Fyock the most is the way he embraces pressure, the way he thrives in the make-or-break moments of lacrosse even when he’s stomached a slow start.

“The thing is, he never gets flustered,” Aleric Fyock said. “When he’s playing a game, he never loses focus. He plays to the last whistle.”

That was the case at Notre Dame when Fyock bounced back from a 3-1 deficit, making two memorable saves down the stretch to set the stage for graduate midfielder Shane O’Leary’s game-winner in the final seconds. The same was true at Penn State when he responded resiliently to a 4-1 deficit, most notably with a masterful fourth quarter in which he made six saves while Ohio State pulled out a 13-9 win.

“If you’re an All-American goalie, you’re still getting scored on 40 percent of the time the ball hits the goal,” Myers said. “You have to be able to reset. You have to be able to have a start where you go down 4-1 like we did and know, ‘Hey, man, I’m still going to have a great game.’”

Like the 2017 Ohio State team that made a surprising run to the national title game, this 2025 Buckeyes squad doesn’t have a superhero.

It does, however, have an up-and-coming, charismatic star with an alter ego.

He’s Big Tasty. And when he flips his switch, he’s one of the best goalies in the country.