The Mountain View High School boys basketball team stared attentively as coach Aaron Shepherd drew up plays on a whiteboard.
Jake Ryan stood behind his teammates. His hands were folded behind his back, which rested against a row of lockers.
Ryan could be forgiven if his mind wasn’t completely on that night’s game against Heritage.
As his teammates studied ways to pierce the Heritage defense, Ryan’s thoughts were on a different kind of surgery. The next morning, doctors would open his rib cage and perform a life-saving operation on his heart.
Ryan will not play one minute of his senior season, but his presence pulses through the Mountain View basketball team. His teammates wear warm-up shirts with the slogan “Heart Over Hype” with Ryan’s No. 10 on the back.
Though Ryan offers encouragement from the bench and in team huddles, his biggest contribution is the ever-present reminder not to take health and sports for granted.
During this holiday season, Ryan’s family and everyone in the Mountain View basketball program are more thankful for blessings they might have overlooked.
“There’s so much emphasis on winning these days that I don’t think coaches and kids always enjoy the experience,” Shepherd said. “This puts it into perspective. I tell the kids ‘Jake would give anything to get back on that court.’
“You never know when it could all go away.”
A mere murmur
As a three-sport athlete most of his life, Ryan had undergone numerous preseason sports physicals. He had no reason to think the one on Nov. 13 would be any different.
The doctor worked through the normal battery of tests. He checked Ryan’s breathing, reflexes and posture. But the doctor paused when the stethoscope relayed Ryan’s heartbeat to his ears.
Something in the heartbeat’s sound was slightly off. The faint murmur was probably nothing, Ryan was told. But the doctor wanted a cardiologist to take a look.
A few days later, a Portland cardiologist performed an electrocardiogram, which measures the heart’s electric activity. An ultrasound and MRI were also done.
Those tests revealed that the murmur was not nothing. Ryan had a potentially fatal heart defect.
The valve between the heart and the aorta, the body’s largest artery, is made of three cusps that prevent blood from slipping backward into the heart.
Ryan was born with just two cusps, meaning the valve couldn’t completely close. Every heartbeat, some blood would flow back into his heart’s left ventricle. Ryan’s heart had to work harder than normal to adequately pump blood into his aorta.
That extra strain left him with an enlarged heart. An active person such as Ryan could suffer sudden cardiac arrest during exercise.
“The valve was in really bad shape,” Jake’s father Greg Ryan Sr. said. “Within a year, he would probably have started to have complications.”
A family’s close calls
The prospect of sudden cardiac death hit the Ryan family harder than most. Jake’s older brother, Greg, was in the physical education class at Wy’east Middle School when his friend Quinn Driscoll died from an undiagnosed heart ailment in 2009. That tragedy led to the creation of the Quinn Driscoll Foundation, which has raised awareness of sudden cardiac death in youths and has donated automated external defibrillators throughout Clark County.
Now a student at the University of Washington, Greg Ryan had his own brush with death in 2012. He and three friends from Mountain View were involved in a rollover car crash on Interstate 5 in Northern California. Greg was sitting in the back seat with his girlfriend, Mandy Lathim. Both were ejected from the car. He survived, she didn’t.
Logan, the oldest of the three Ryan children, also had a close call with death. While at the University of Washington in 2010, she was admitted to the intensive care unit with severe breathing difficulties after a strep infection invaded her lungs.
The first night Logan was in the hospital, doctors couldn’t fully guarantee Greg and Tiffany Ryan that their daughter was going to survive.
“I hope this family is done with close calls,” Greg Ryan Sr. said.
Coming to grips
Doctors recommended surgery to replace Ryan’s aortic valve.
“It’s scary,” Jake Ryan said on Dec. 15, the day before his surgery. “I’m glad they found it. I feel like it hasn’t fully hit me yet.”
But Ryan’s thankfulness was tempered by the realization that his high school basketball career was over. He had played the sport every winter since kindergarten. He chose not to play football this fall to prepare for final basketball season, for which he was named team captain.
For Ryan, the days that followed his diagnosis were an emotional roller coaster.
“I’m feeling all of it,” he said. “Anger, sad, mad, thankful, blessed. There have been on and off days.”
As hard as missing this season is for Ryan, it isn’t much easier for his coach and teammates.
Tears welled in Coach Shepherd’s eyes when he talked about the day Ryan came into his sixth-period class and said “I’ve got bad news.”
Shepherd is in his third year of coaching at Mountain View. It’s a rebuilding effort that has seen the team go 2-18 the previous two seasons. Through those down years, Ryan grew as a basketball player and a quiet leader.
“This kid has had my back as a coach when we were struggling,” Shepherd said. “Now it’s his senior season and we know we’re going to be a better team this year. It’s one of those times in life when you don’t know how to react to it.”
Senior Colin Biggs has known Ryan since kindergarten. They have been teammates on football, basketball and baseball teams since third grade. Biggs didn’t play basketball his junior season, but is back with the team this year.
“Part of the reason I came back was because of Jake, just to be out there one more time,” Biggs said. “Hearing that news kind of broke me inside.”
His teammates immediately dedicated their season to Ryan. The team breaks each huddle by saying “Heart Over Hype,” the slogan that is on their warm-up shirts. Several players have his initials written on their shoes.
“Every huddle we talk about playing for Jake,” senior guard Tyler Vu said. “Every drill, every practice, every game, it’s all for Jake.”
Nobody complains about running an extra set of lines or doing a drill once more.
“Jake would love to be out there with us,” Biggs said. “Why should we complain when the sport he loves is taken away from him.”
Captain, redefined
Ryan could have sunk into a funk and withdrawn from the team.
That was never an option. Before the surgery, Ryan helped any way he could at practice and during games. He’ll continue to do so once fully recovered.
He passes balls during shooting drills and offers guidance and support during games.
“I’ve been looking forward to this season for a long time,” Ryan said. “I just wanted to make my senior season memorable and do whatever I can to help the team.”
When people think of “Team Captain,” the team’s best player usually comes to mind.
Ryan has redefined that role for his Mountain View teammates. Ryan was never a vocal leader, but the quiet respect shown to his game, teammates and opponents made him loved.
“He’s what you want representing your program,” Shepherd said. “It’s just how he carries himself on the court and how he treats people at school.”
A big rebound
Ryan went into surgery at 8:30 a.m. on Dec. 16 at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. By that afternoon, post-surgery pictures of Ryan in a hospital bed clutching a heart-shaped pillow were being shared on Twitter. The following day, he was slowly walking up and down the hospital’s halls.
Doctors told Ryan he would likely spend five to seven days in the hospital. He was home in four.
Barring any complications, Ryan should be able to live a fully active life. His heart should soon return to normal size. Though his sternum will be held together with wires for the next six weeks, he hopes to play baseball in the spring.
Inspired by Ryan, Mountain View’s basketball team has made a rebound of its own. At 6-2, the Thunder have won more games this season than in the previous two combined.
But spend any time around Mountain View’s coaches and players, it becomes clear that winning isn’t what the team holds dearest.
A player who won’t play a minute of this season has helped his team realize the value of sports beyond the box score.
“It has made me think how privileged I am to be able to play all the sports I do,” Biggs said. “Jake is going to fight through this and be back for baseball season. I know he will.
“But just be thankful for what you are able to do.”
