Football, Lacrosse
Favorite athlete: Walter Payton
Favorite team: Philadelphia Eagles
Favorite memory competing in sports: Beating CB West on Senior Night.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: I once accidentally threw my stick over a fence during a lacrosse scrimmage.
Music on playlist: AC/DC
Future plans: Attend Ursinus College to play football and study Kinesiology and Exercise Science
Words to live by: “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”-Yoda
One goal before turning 30: Go to Alaska
One thing people don’t know about me: I am a huge Star Wars fan
By GORDON GLANTZ
While Central Bucks South is coming upon just its 20 years of existence, it is safe to say two-sport senior Will Ratcliffe is a throwback.
Examples?
Based on highlight reels, Walter Payton - whose life and career ended before Ratcliffe was even born - is his all-time favorite athlete.
His favorite sports team was the Eagles (even when Mark Sanchez was the quarterback).
He prefers learning in person, in the classroom, as opposed to virtual learning.
In lieu of Hawaii or the Bahamas, he’d rather go to Alaska one day.
And he battled back from not one, but two, severe knee injuries while playing AC/DC – as opposed to bro-country, hip-hop or rap – as he rehabbed.
A self-professed “Star Wars geek,” Ratcliffe reminded himself of the words of ancient and wise Jedi master Yoda: “Do. Or do not. There is no try” during his struggles.
“For this situation, there is no trying to play,” he explained. “Either I’m playing, or I’m not. That kind of fit with this scenario. I knew that I needed to be either all-in or not in at all.”
At age 18, Ratcliffe is old enough to waive the 9-month rule and return to action this spring for one last hurrah, which he did Monday night in a victory against Hatboro-Horsham.
“Will Ratcliffe gave us a huge lift on defense,” said South lacrosse coach Mike Strayline after the game. “He sparked our players, and we beat a very solid Hatboro team.”
One day later came the game Ratcliffe had circled on his calendar, which was against CB West against many friends from his years playing at the club level.
Although that game ended in a loss, it proved he could play on successive nights. Meanwhile, there were a lot of emotions involved.
It was a loss on the field but a victory in his heart, and he is taking time to live in the moment.
“I’m definitely happy to have gotten out there,” said Ratcliffe. “We unfortunately lost, 9-5, but it was against a solid team and I’m happy with how our team performed.
“We had some friendly banter (with the Bucks) during the game and some pictures after the game,” he said.
That is not to say the decision to come back this spring was an easy one, especially with an opportunity to play football at Ursinus College on the horizon.
“There was a family discussion,” he explained. “It was something I was thinking about, even before the appointment. If I were to get cleared, would I really want to do it? It was a long thought process. If I didn’t feel comfortable or ready to play, I would just step back anytime I want to.”
Emotional Moments
While his injuries have caused the incoming freshman at Ursinus College to fly in under the recruiting radar, he was far from an unknown coming into high school.
“I’ve known him since he was a real young kid,” said Titans’ football coach Tom Hetrick. “Ever since he was a little guy, he has always been ‘that kid’ when it comes to sports and athletics.
“As he was transitioning from middle school to high school, he was excited to get his football and lacrosse careers going.”
Any chance of making an impact in either sport as a freshman was wiped out by COVID, but he came back with a vengeance as a sophomore in the fall before sustaining his first severe knee injury in his lacrosse season that spring.
Ratcliffe, a defender in lacrosse, recalls making an awkward cut and initially thinking it was a weird cramp.
The team’s trainer thought it was perhaps a dislocated kneecap, and he might have attempted to play on it if that game had been closer.
Fortunately, he stayed out and avoided further damage to what a subsequent MRI revealed to be a complete tear of his right MCL and a strained meniscus.
He recalled: “The first thing I thought, when I got the phone call, was, ‘Am I going to be able to play football or did I just ruin my junior year of football?’ I tried my best to push and get cleared, but I just didn’t get the green light. I still got to be around and be part of the team, but I didn’t get the chance to step on the field with them.”
Strayline remembers how quickly Ratcliffe established himself before the injury, making the injury all the more upsetting.
“His sophomore year, he was ready to go,” said the coach. “He was showing leadership skills and was just a great kid, all-around. He was in the weight room constantly. He was doing all the little stuff.
“He started out having a really great season. Four games in – I believe against Souderton – it was just a freak accident. He caught a ball, and he turned and twisted his leg a little bit and he tore his ACL.”
The emotional effects were visible.
“He was down,” said Strayline. “You could see that he was struggling with it a little bit, emotionally, but we stayed on him to keep working and assured him that things would start to get better.”
The tremors of the earthquake rumbled within the South football program.
“We saw some really good promise from him as a sophomore as a football player,” said Hetrick. “Then, unfortunately, he tears the first of two ACLs in the spring of his sophomore year. It was just like, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ He had literally waited his whole life to get into the position to play football and lacrosse in high school. It was crushing.”
Ratcliffe was cleared by February of his junior year and played a solid full season for the lacrosse team.
“He had a great year as a junior,” said Strayline. “He was our leading defender and one of the best guys on the field.”
Then, midway through this past football season, lightning struck for a second time, only this time to the left knee.
He was playing defense – blitzing off the edge from his linebacker position – when the injury occurred. This time, there were no doubts.
“I was thinking about what had happened before and I knew right away that I blew out the left one.”
Complete ACL, MCL, meniscus, strained patellar tendon and cartilage damage.”
Technically, it was a more severe injury than the first, but he was able to apply a lot of the rehab methods to get back in shape faster, putting him closer to the six-month window to return.
But that did not come without some emotional hurdles.
It was only natural for Ratcliffe to ask, ‘Why me?’ before talking it over with his inner Yoda.
“The second time around, for me, was really challenging,” said Ratcliffe. “Mentally, it beat me down. It was hard to get into the mindset that I have to get back to work.”
Chasing the Dream
A driving force for Ratcliffe was his goal of playing at the next level.
“My hopes were always to play college football anywhere,” he said. “I didn’t care where it was. As long as I’m getting an education and get to play football while doing it, that’s what I wanted. So, I kept working. I was hoping there would be a school out there that would take the kid with two surgically repaired knees and just let him play ball.”
There was some interest from Widener University and Keystone College in the Scranton area before he threw a Hail Mary pass in the direction of Collegeville to see if Ursinus would respond.
“It was like a last-ditch effort to see if they would want to talk to me,” said Ratcliffe. “Luckily, I sent that email. They showed a lot of interest in me and said they had heard about me. The whole recruiting process went really well. I loved the team and loved the campus. I felt like it could be a new home.”
If he scored a touchdown with Ursinus, it was Hetrick helping to pave the way with some devastating lead blocking by explaining the unique case to the Ursinus coaches.
Hetrick explained: “I said, ‘Listen, you have to trust me when I say this, but I have a kid who is just an unbelievable kid. A kid who is a just great person and a hard worker, not to mention unbelievable athlete, but he is coming off a knee injury.’
“They said, ‘Have him come over and look at Ursinus.’ When they met with Will, they were, like, ‘We need this kid here.’ That’s just the kind of an impression Will gives to people. He’s just a good dude, and he’s the kind of kid anyone would want to have involved in their program. I can’t wait for him to get over there and have the opportunity to play four seasons in a very good football program.”
It will certainly be a Hollywood ending for a young athlete who overcame many hurdles.
“Some of the opportunities that he missed at South, I hope that he will be able to go and live out those dreams there,” said Hetrick. “My hope for Will is that he has a couple seasons at Ursinus where people are going to say, you know, ‘How did we miss on this kid? How did he fly under the radar?’ But, he does have a story that put him under the radar. Ursinus took a chance on him. I hoping, for everybody’s sake, that it pays off. I’m pretty confident that it will.”
‘An Amazing Kid’
Like almost everyone else, Ratcliffe played baseball early on but “hated” the sport and was advised to look at lacrosse as an option.
It has been a good run, but he will focus all his significant energies on football at Ursinus.
“I think, after this spring, I’m going to put the stick down for a while,” he said. “I missed a lot of football, with these knee injuries. It’s my first love, so I want to just try and focus on that.”
At some point, during rehabbing, Ratcliff went from 5-10, 180 to 5-11, 195. With due diligence at Ursinus, he could easily begin his career as a running back at over 200.
His growth spurt and the tragedy and triumphs of rehab have focused him on the major of Kinesiology and Exercise Science.
And, while there, he is fully aware he got there on the shoulders of others, from his immediate family of his mother (Barbra Ottey) and father (Marc Ratcliffe) to older sisters (Ryann, Raegan) and younger sister (Whitney) to extended family to coaches, teammates and friends.
But, at the end of the day, Ratcliffe was motivating himself through extreme adversity.
“He’s just an amazing kid,” said Strayline. “For the amount of tragedy that he has gone through, it’s unbelievable. Some people would have just given up and said, ‘That’s it. I’m just going to go to college and that’s it.’ He has that drive, that energy. He wants to play.”
Added Hetrick: “He has had so much to overcome some harsh realities in his life. They could put a 16- or 17-year-old into such a funk that they think, ‘If I don’t have the athletics, what do I have?’ I give him all the credit in the world for being able to stick to it and not let his grades dip. He has had to go through that two times in the last 2 ½ years. That’s not easy, but he has done it.”
To put it into historical context, Hetrick will be going into his 10th year as the head coach at CB South but has been in the business for much longer.
Other than maybe Josh Adams, who tore his knee up as a junior at CB South but still went to Notre Dame (and eventually the NFL, where he actually led the Eagles in rushing in 2018 with a pedestrian 511 yards), he can’t remember a comeback story like this one.
And Adams, unlike Ratcliffe, was already a known entity to big-time schools when his injury occurred (he ran for 2,085 yards and 28 touchdowns as a sophomore and was still four-star recruit after gaining 1,625 yards and scoring 25 more times as a senior).
And it was only one knee injury. Ratcliffe had two, and barely had any game film or discernable stats to his name.
“I have never had anyone, in that span of time, do that to both of their knees in that span of time,” said Hetrick. “In my 28 years of coaching football, I’ve never seen it. If I coach 20-25 more years, I’ll never see it again.
“He worked hard and was able to rehab it. He was able to get back onto the field again as a senior football player, and he did some really good things for us. Then, you know, we get to the middle of the season and there goes the other ACL.”
Respect
Strayline is thrilled to have Ratcliffe back in action, but made it known that there are parameters around fatigue and pain.
Hetrick, while closing his eyes and crossing his fingers, fully understands why Ratcliffe felt the need to finish out his scholastic career on the field instead of watching the entire season from the sidelines.
“You don’t quite know, but that’s no way to live life,” he said. “You have to go out there and do what you want to do. I’m a little worried about it, because I know he is planning on playing at Ursinus next year and I don’t want him to get that off and running on a bad foot, but he has this need to get out there for at least a few games before he graduates high school.
“It is almost like he spent his whole career with a desire to get out onto the field, but he kept having it denied by these random freaky injuries. I respect him for the hard work that he has put in. The second time is so much harder because you already know from the first time what a grind it is. It is so hard and such a commitment. The mental toughness you’d need to get through that a second time, is pretty intense. I have so much respect for him.”
That respect, according to his coach, carries over to his teammates as well.
“The best way to describe him is that he has a grounding effect to him,” said Hetrick. “He’s just such a good kid. He’s not a rah-rah type of guy, but the kids have so much respect for him. His presence alone has such a positive impact.”
