School: Abington
Football
Favorite athlete: Stewart Bradley
Favorite team: Philadelphia Eagles
Favorite memory competing in sports: All the memories and experiences I had with my teammates.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: My junior year I was the starting center on the football team, and our quarterback accidentally lined up over the guard and tried to take the snap from him. Luckily, he realized his mistake in time and was successfully able to take the snap from me. The offense didn’t realize what happened until we saw it on film two days later. We all joked around with him when we saw what he did.
Future plans: To graduate near the top of my class in college, get a good job that I enjoy and start a family.
Favorite motto: “The goose flies at midnight.”
One goal before turning 30: To be happily married.
One thing people don’t know about me: I’m an extremely good ping-pong player.
Nick Ruhl should be forgiven if his high school resume isn’t an especially long one.
The Abington senior is involved in just one activity outside of the classroom – football.
“My guidance counselor tells me, ‘Get involved, get involved. It would look great for colleges if you were doing something on the side because it shows you’re taking the initiative,’” Ruhl said.
If colleges need to see more activities on Ruhl’s resume, they are clearly missing the point about a young man who knows all about taking initiative. And establishing priorities. And discipline. And all the other things that would seem to matter most.
Ruhl is ranked first in his senior class of close to 650 students, and he hasn’t done it the easy way. He takes a full course load of AP classes, and while many of his peers are heading straight home to their books after school, Ruhl’s day is just beginning.
“Four days a week I get home after seven o’clock,” he said of his rigorous schedule during football season. “At times like this, it’s definitely not easy.
“The fact that I have to go to football and don’t get home until 7-7:30 makes it really hard to keep up with everybody.”
Ruhl’s parents have dinner waiting when he arrives home, and then his immense discipline kicks in.
“I’ll eat dinner, and then I’ll take a shower,” he said. “I usually get 15 minutes of rest because my legs will be tired and I’m extremely sore after practice.
“At 8:45, I go to the computer room and start my homework. I’m usually not in bed until midnight. Every day I wake up hoping I can be in bed by 10:30, but a lot of times it doesn’t work out.”
Abington football coach Tim Sorber calls Ruhl the ‘classic kid.’ That is undoubtedly an understatement.
“He’s been in the program, and he’s never missed a workout, he’s never missed a practice,” the Ghosts’ coach said. “He’s an extremely hard worker and really typifies what a student-athlete is all about.
“We spend a lot of time, especially Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays with practice and preparation watching film. For a kid that spends as much time in football, especially during the weekdays, to continue in the rigorous academic program at Abington is not easy.”
Underscoring the high level of Abington’s academic program is the fact that three members of last year’s graduating class, according to Sorber, were accepted at MIT.
“That tells you a little about the academics,” the Abington coach said. “Nick gets it done and not only on the field.
“To be number one in the class is showing that when he leaves practice, he’s not falling asleep or surfing the internet. He’s got his face in the books and is working extremely hard. That typifies the type of effort Nick puts out.”
Ruhl credits his parents for establishing priorities early in his life.
“Even in elementary school, they always impressed on us the importance of academics and school comes first,” he said. “School first, then sports. School first, then friends.
“At this point, I feel like I have my priorities straight. As much as I love football, I’m not going to be playing football in college. School is definitely first, then football, and last comes free time on weekends and hanging out with friends.”
Ruhl came by his love of football early on in life. He played the usual gamut of sports - baseball, soccer, football, hockey and basketball, but football quickly became his sport of choice when it came time to focus on just one.
“My older brother played, and my younger brother plays now,” Ruhl said of siblings Mike and Chris. “We’re always trying to do better than each other.”
And what was it that drew Ruhl to football?
“I don’t know,” he said. “I put the most work in, and I got the most out of it.”
It also didn’t hurt that football involved some hitting.
“You don’t exactly go up and hit somebody in baseball and basketball,” Ruhl said. “Football is the only sport where you can play with your emotions almost.”
Ruhl was the starting center on last year’s squad that advanced to the district playoffs.
“For an offensive lineman, he only weighs 200 pounds, which some people might say was undersized,” Sorber said. “But he makes up for that with great technique and great effort.”
This year, Ruhl is playing both ways, lining up at outside linebacker on defense.
“He has performed very well at outside linebacker,” Sorber said. “He’s playing a lot of snaps, and he has worked extremely hard to get himself in shape to play both ways. We’re really happy with the performance of Nick.”
Despite the loss of key skill position players from last year’s squad to graduation, Ruhl is optimistic about the season.
“Even though we are a young team, we’re playing for right now,” he said. “Nobody is saying, ‘Hey, we just lost to Neshaminy, but in a couple of years, maybe next year or in two years, we’ll be a really good team.’
“We’re playing for right now, this season. Nobody is thinking, ‘We’re a young team. We’ll learn for the future.’ Everybody on this team is playing for this year.’”
Ruhl places a high value on his time spent in Abington’s football program.
“Over the past couple of years, we have had a lot of success, which is awesome,” he said. “When I leave the program in a couple of months, I’m going to be a completely changed man. It taught me teamwork, it taught me everything.”
As for college, Ruhl is undecided on a major, but since he excels in math and the sciences, he has not ruled out the possibility of pursuing a career in engineering.
“I’ve kept all my options open,” he said. “I haven’t really focused on what I’m going to do.”
Underscoring Ruhl’s work ethic is the fact that he was ranked third in his class at the beginning of his junior year but was number one by the end of the year.
“It’s really competitive,” he said. “There are kids that are really shooting for valedictorian, they’re shooting for salutatorian. I don’t want to say they go home and get down to schoolwork right away, but they definitely have a head start because they’re not coming home at 7:30, sore Monday through Friday.
“Hopefully, I will be able to keep that through the end of the year. I wouldn’t say I’m the smartest kid in the school, but I feel I’m definitely the hardest working kid, and I’m lucky that I understand things a lot better than some other kids.”
When his final high school football season ends, Ruhl – who has devoted 10 months of the year to the sport - plans to heed the advice of his guidance counselor and become more involved in outside activities at Abington, but for now, football and schoolwork occupy almost all of his time.
“Unless they have garden club on Saturdays or Sundays, I can’t do anything right now,” he said.
In reality, adding a club or two to Ruhl’s high school resume wouldn’t make it any more impressive than it already is.
