Marty Ryan was too busy to talk Thursday. He had meetings in Augusta. High school regional and state wrestling tournaments to plan. Wrestling rules to discuss. Maybe more than three hours in his car coming and going.

My mistake. I thought he had retired last spring after about 40 years of teaching, coaching and overseeing the sports programs at Wells High and then at Kennebunk. Just last month he was inducted into the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association’s Hall of Fame in Indianapolis, one in a class of 12.

Wasn’t the induction the gold watch of farewell gifts?

No. Ryan shed a job title, but he may never be able to walk away from a commitment few of us understand. At the age of 64, he isn’t done trying to bring order and accountability and simple enjoyment to the playing of high school sports in Maine.

Coaches get the headlines, the handshakes and the Gatorade showers when championships are won. Athletic directors get to stand in the shadows. For a big man, Ryan did that better than most.

“When things go well, no one thinks about you,” Ryan said when he had a chance to talk Wednesday night. “It’s when things go wrong that everyone knows your name.”

He was the teacher and football coach who followed the time-worn path to the athletic director’s position. In 1979, he was appointed Wells’ new football coach. The team hadn’t won a game in three seasons.

“We won five my first year and people thought I walked on water,” he said. But Ryan knew better. What means more to him today is that some of his players off that team are among his best friends.

His mother died when he was 5. He doesn’t believe his father finished school. His brother nearest to him in age is 15 years older. An older sister became his substitute mother.

Ryan doesn’t say that he had a hard or difficult childhood. He did learn to value relationships and to appreciate those who overcome obstacles or challenges.

Ask him for memorable people, memorable moments from some 30 years as athletic director. Limit him to a handful or so. Who will he remember at the risk of forgetting so many others?

Ryan thinks of Andy Bair, a 152-pound wrestler who was Wells’ last competitor, last chance to score points in the 1988 state wrestling tournament at Bates College. “He was behind in his match, got a reversal and ended up winning,” Ryan said. “It was tremendous effort. Wells won the state title on that match.”

Nate Dingle is on Ryan’s short list. Dingle played football, and was a heavyweight wrestler and a discus thrower. He went to the University of Cincinnati to play football for Tim Murphy, the former Maine coach who had recruited him. Dingle didn’t have extraordinary size to be a linebacker at the Division I level, but his motivation was off the charts. He played briefly with four NFL teams.

After Ryan moved on to Kennebunk, he saw a slight freshman emerge as the state’s dominant female runner. Ryan was as transfixed with Abbey Leonardi’s talent and mental strength as everyone else.

Dwight Hunter, the former athletic director at Caribou High, became a good friend. Despite living and working in opposite ends of Maine, the two found common ground in trying to improve high school sports.

And there are others: Ed McDonough, the former English teacher at Wells who became football coach. “You talk about educational athletics, you’re talking about Ed,” Ryan said.

Ed Rafferty, the longtime football coach at Kennebunk, for the way he taught, coached and mentored his players.

Carmen Perry, an assistant football coach at Wells for over 30 years. Ryan can’t forget the sight of Perry, who was not a teacher, pulling into the school parking lot and hustling to the practice field or locker room, pulling on his sweatshirt as he ran, eager to get started.

The late Dom D’Angelo, who retired from a Connecticut high school, only to coach for some 20 more years at Wells and Kennebunk. “He was my sounding board,” said Ryan, who missed D’Angelo’s advice when he realized younger coaches and athletic directors were coming to him for his opinions.

In Gerry Durgin, who retired last year as the Gorham athletic director, Ryan found a brother. Each had led the national administrators association as president. While the never-ending demands of time and community interference drove younger men and women from their jobs as athletic directors’ offices, these two men stayed.

Retirement? You can hear a bit of laughter over the phone. “People think I’m busier than ever,” Ryan said. “But now I get to pick and choose what I want to do.”

Good for him. Good for Maine’s high school athletes.

Staff Writer Steve Solloway can be contacted at 791-6412 or at:

ssolloway@pressherald.com

Twitter: SteveSolloway

 

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