When it all began a little more than 10 years ago, this experiment to turn a then 13-year-old Sean Ryan into a champion open-water swimmer, his parents would drop him off at the Girls Preparatory School boat dock in North Chattanooga around 6:30 in the morning, then strongly implore the supervising adults: “Please take care of our little son.”
Three years later, Jimmy Welborn – who along with Rick Schumacher and McCallie coach Stan Corcoran had first seen something special in the slightly built Ryan – said of his development, “I was having to wear fins to keep up. You could tell he was going to have a chance to do something special.”
One of the Scenic City’s more accomplished open-water swimmers through the years, Welborn joined more than 60 other fans of Ryan gathered at McCallie School’s Brock-Lazenby Room on Tuesday morning to watch the 2010 McCallie grad and eventual University of Michigan All-American attempt to do the most special thing in his sport: Medal in the 10K open-water swim in the Olympics.
In a sentiment shared by all before the race ended, longtime McCallie math teacher Tom Makepeace said of Ryan’s Olympic appearance: “Every young swimmer dreams of getting to the Olympics. Whatever happens, Sean made that dream come true.”
So it mattered little to most when he finished 14th among 25 swimmers with a time of 1:53.15, a mere 16 seconds in back of winner Ferry Weertman of the Netherlands in the saltwater septic tank just off Copacabana Beach.
The second he crossed the finish line, the crowd roared and clapped, especially former Blue Tornado swimming standouts Jason Cha, David Clark, Mitchell Meeks, Wells Parker, Billy Pritchard and Wells Simon. Winning a medal is great, but qualifying for the Olympics is the real accomplishment.
“We’d talked over the weekend,” Corcoran said. “Sean wanted to stay in the middle of the pack, then make a move the last lap. He wasn’t that far behind. He just got stuck behind some people.”
Added Welborn: “I’ve never seen a race that tight the whole time. You’re getting hit and kicked and grabbed the whole race. People say swimming’s a noncontact sport, but it wasn’t in that race.”
But racing with the pack is the essence of the sport most of the time. The one swimmer who tried to run away from that pack – Aussie Jarrod Poort – finished 21st after leading for the first 90 minutes of the race.
“I saw somebody go from the start, but I figured that when they went that early they would probably get caught,” Ryan told the Detroit News after the race. “It’s hard to swim a 10k on your own.”
But it’s also hard to swim with all that kicking and grabbing.
“I was in the right place,” he told the Detroit paper. “I just couldn’t get the move that I wanted. People are hitting you left and right. You don’t have clean water to swim in. I was just fighting, trying to keep my head down and stay composed.”
Over the course of a swim that takes almost two hours to compete, there are a lot of stories to be told.
McCallie teacher Bob “Doc” Cutrer, a neighbor of the Ryans’ in Hixson, recalled the time Sean swam the swimming portion of a triathlon relay for Cutrer’s team.
“He was really young,” Cutrer said. “But we were third when he came out of the water, and if I’d been swimming we would have been third from last.”
Makepeace talked of having Ryan in honors geometry “and what a good student he was.”
Clark and Meeks recalled favorite moments with the swimmer nicknamed “Skeletor” for his bony frame.
“He’s just a good, loyal friend,” Clark said. “He won one national race when a wave tossed him over the top into first place. He needed a wave to help him in this one.”
Meeks, who won the local open-water Rat Race by a better time than Ryan’s due to a favorable current, joked, “Sure, you’re in the Olympics, but call me when you can beat my Rat Race time.”
Clark recalled working out with Ryan in the McCallie weight room and Corcoran worrying about his star swimmer getting injured.
“Stan would say, ‘Sean, you’re a water creature. Don’t hurt yourself,'” noted a grinning Clark.
Asked what he thought made Ryan special, Corcoran pointed to McCallie and to Sean’s parents, Margret and Eugene.
“His dedication to this sport and his family’s dedication,” he said. “They scheduled vacations around his swimming schedule. Sometimes they didn’t take vacations. He never missed a practice. And the school worked with him whenever there was a big national meet. He missed a lot of school at times. He was only in school six days one March because of meets. Not a lot of schools would be that understanding.”
Corcoran also credited the Tennessee River, which was wonderful and chilly in the early spring to acclimate Ryan to open-water swims he’d face in cooler countries.
But through it all, Corcoran always has seemed more impressed with the person than the athlete.
“He’s such a good kid, such a great student,” he said. “If you had a daughter, you’d want her to go out with him.”
Ryan is now out of swimming, putting his master’s degree in manufacturing engineering to practical use in September when he begins a job at Detroit Diesel.
“This is something I’ll cherish forever,” the 24-year-old told the Detroit News. “I’ll never not be an Olympian. I’ll be an Olympian for the rest of my life. I couldn’t think of anything better to end my career.”
It briefly looked as if it could have ended much better. A few minutes after the race, Ryan was disqualified. Within an hour, however, the DQ was lifted. According to the Detroit paper “it was merely a timing error that needed to be corrected.”
Then again, what else would you expect from someone you’d want your daughter to date.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.