Wellington’s Ryan cements legacy with senior season
Wellington sits on the outside looking in on regional soccer this week, but the Wolverines were so very close to changing the narrative. One play away from suiting up for the district championship, they instead fell victim to a last-second goal against Royal Palm Beach.
It’s the beauty of sports — that one play can make all the difference — but it doesn’t make the heartbreak any easier to swallow for the team that draws the short straw.
Still, what a game from Wellington goalkeeper Hayden Ryan.
Facing 7A-district 11 juggernauts Royal Palm, the Wolverines played their way into a lead, lost it, then led once more. But no one would have blinked if the top-seeded Wildcats had blown the game out of the water.
Ryan faced three penalties and allowed just a single goal from the spot, making a number of additional saves, including one he tipped just over the crossbar at full extension.
The Wildcats brought the battering ram, but Ryan was one heck of a door that night.
Which is why it was so heartbreaking a scene to witness the embattled keeper walk up to head coach Chris Carrera to apologize after all was said and done.
“I’m sorry, Coach,” he said, to which Carrera embraced him.
“For what?” Carrera replied, as surprised as the others around him. “You did amazing.”
That’s par for the course when it comes to Ryan. The keeper is incredibly critical of himself, always looking to improve, always looking to be a rock for his team.
“He’s very hard on himself,” Carrera said. “He can win a game 6-1 and he will be upset because they scored that one goal. We can’t stop them all. If it’s a 2-1 game, he’s mad because ‘we should have won 2-0.’ He wants that clean sheet.”
Perfectionism often aligns with goalkeeping, even if the fact of the matter is that, as Carrera put it: you simply cannot stop them all.
“As a goalkeeper, you don’t want them to score,” Ryan said. “I wanted to keep the team in the game. A lot of these seniors are not just people form school I know. A lot of them are my close friends. I did not want us to go home this season in that way. I wanted us to make the season last as much as possible.”
While the game ended in a close loss, it capped a playoff turnaround for the program, a team that had struggled through injuries and inconsistency after the loss of 11 graduating seniors following last year’s 10-6-2 campaign.
“I’m proud of my team,” Ryan said. “We got an upset victory over Forest Hill and played very good that game. We’d been struggling to score and then we were able to put some in the back of the net against Forest Hill and Royal Palm, and I was very proud.”
The games against Forest Hill and Royal Palm had been circled on Ryan’s calendar for quite some time. Even if he didn’t know the eventual matchups, he knew what he wanted to accomplish in his senior season.
“We haven’t won districts since I’ve been in highschool,” Ryan said. “I really made it my goal this last year to try to go out on a high note and get the team to districts and win. That’s been my goal ever since Day
No. 1 of coming to Wellington High School. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, and I just felt defeated at that point because I wasn’t able to make that happen for my coach and my team.”
No one on the field that night would have placed a finger of blame on Ryan for the loss, and in fact Royal Palm head coach Malik Hasan, who has coached Ryan on his club team, had only positive words to share.
“Hayden, come over here!” Hasan shouted, stopping a postgame interview after winning the game. “Very good kid,” he continued. “Good family. I was happy to see him play well. He’s outstanding.”
Ryan’s legacy at Wellington will be one remembered by those who knew him both on and off the field.
“As far as him being a leader on the team’s, he’s one of my captains and he displays sportsmanship, dedication, and puts, in his case, everything above and beyond, to our school team,” Carrera said. “He’s said ‘no’ to travel tournaments to play high-school with us. That, to me, speaks volumes, and he leads by example.”
Ryan hopes to continue to lead by example in a future collegiate opportunity, but he’s not putting all of his eggs in a single basket. He’s already taking classes for college credit and has received academic scholarships in addition to his goals on the pitch.
Academically, he’s proven a gifted student, and he’s excited to learn in the classroom and prepare for his future in the best way he can. And while life on the pitch may not be the only option for him, he still hears the call.
“I would love to play college soccer,” he said. “It’s an absolute dream of mine.”