By DAVID WOOD, for The Democrat
“I went to a few doctors after it happened and they told me I should quit playing sports, so they put me in a back brace. I was in it for two-and-a-half years.”
Noah Ryan had fractured a vertebra in his spine, the first of four over the next year as a freshman at Roncalli High School in Indianapolis. Crushed, he figured he’d never play football again; sports had been a part of his life for as long as he could remember.
After moving to Brown County partway through his junior year, Ryan happened upon what he called strange luck.
Encouraged by a member of the football team, Ryan attended one practice halfway through the 2015 fall season.
It wouldn’t be his last.
“I ended up falling in love with the team, they were like a second family to me. … It was just strange luck that I started playing again.”
“I joined because of Coach (Randy) Minniear. But I didn’t think I was going to play because I had a bunch of injuries. I wasn’t really planning on it, but I talked to him; he told me, ‘We’d love to have you,’ so I strapped up for a few practices,” Ryan said.
He more than excelled, becoming a team captain and starter while balancing baseball in the spring.
“He’s an extraordinary young man that played two sports here and carried a 4.0 or higher. He’s a brilliant student and really a classy kid,” Minniear said.
“We watched him very closely but he never complained. I told him, ‘All you have to do is give me the nod if you’re hurting,’ because he’s the type of young man that isn’t going to just fade on you.”
Alex Baker, now a junior at BCHS and a member of the football team, remembered Ryan as a leader and an energetic hype man in the locker room. “Noah was a really loud and hyper person so he would get us all pumped up and ready to go out and play,” he said.
Ryan was in attendance for the Eagles’ season-opening game against Edinburgh on Aug. 17, where his former teammates dominated the Lancers 58-8.
He wanted to see his old friends off while imparting wisdom he had gained amid his injuries and high school career.
“I just really wanted to tell them that life flies by, whether you expect it to or don’t want it to, but it does,” he said.
“I just wanted to let them know, the seniors that are playing, that they have to play 110 percent because it can all be gone in an instant.”
He also spoke to the team about what it means to play high school football. Ryan called it more than just a game; to him, it was and always will be a family and brotherhood, but one he can’t reclaim.
“Every time I come in this locker room I get the chills. I just want to strap up with the old team and even go through just one play with them, and I can’t. It’s something I can’t obtain,” Ryan said.
“High school ball is different from college. You’re not walking the same hallways or always in the same classes.”
To his own amazement, just five years after his injury, he’s not just playing football, but playing at a collegiate level.
Ryan is a sophomore at Franklin College where he’s been accepted onto their Division 3 football team. At the same time, he’s pursuing a pre-med degree in hopes of one day becoming an orthopedic surgeon.
Distanced from his freshman year of high school and the worries over his sports career, he’s learned what it takes to be happy through the circumstances of life.
“The only way to be happy is to live each moment in the moment. You can’t sit there and wish something didn’t happen; you have to live in the moment to be truly happy.”
