Basketball
Favorite athlete: Lesean McCoy
Favorite team: Philadelphia Eagles
Favorite memory competing in sports: Winning the travel basketball championship in fifth grade against Hatboro-Horsham in double OT.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Playing girls lacrosse in eighth grade and having to wear a skirt.
Music on mobile device: Meek, PNB, Lil Uzi
Future plans: Attend college and play basketball. I plan to study journalism, and aspire to be a sports broadcaster.
Words to live by: “When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful.”
One goal before turning 30: Have my own summer basketball camp for kids.
One thing people don’t know about me: I can name all the NFL teams in under 40 seconds.
By Ed Morrone
Ryan Coyle’s love for Upper Moreland athletics runs so deep that as an eighth grader he even donned a skirt and gave girls lacrosse a try.
Yes, you read that correctly. Allow Coyle to explain.
“A friend of mine and I were thinking, ‘What if we tried girls lacrosse? Why not?’” Coyle recalled. “There wasn’t a boys team, and it gave us something to do to stay in shape. I had fallen out of love with baseball by that point, and I still wanted to get out there and run around.”
And how did the experiment turn out?
“At first, we’d get to the games and they would laugh at us,” Coyle said with a chuckle. “I don’t think they wanted to play against boys, but we thought it was something funny we’d remember forever.
“And Upper Moreland’s girls lacrosse program is pretty good, so we figured playing against some boys might help them get better and stronger. It was something we just did for fun, but I think we ended up having a pretty good season.”
Coyle hung up his lacrosse stick after that season, but luckily for the Golden Bears, he’s continued to lace up his basketball sneakers. Coyle, a senior at Upper Moreland, has been a four-year varsity starter at the school. He grew up in a house with a sports-obsessed father, and it didn’t take long for Coyle to follow suit.
He started playing travel ball for Upper Moreland in first grade, even if he was admittedly “more interested in the monkey bars at the playground than the basketball hoop” when first starting out. Coyle tried his hand at football and baseball, in addition to his one-season detour on the girls lacrosse team, but basketball was always number one in his heart.
“When I’m out on the court, it’s just something different,” he said. “It’s what gets me up and out of bed in the morning.”
Coyle honed his skills through childhood, saying it was his fifth-grade Upper Moreland travel team winning a championship where “everything began to click.” By the time he got to high school, he was good enough to be an immediate starter in the Golden Bears’ backcourt; however, that doesn’t mean stardom came immediately.
“There were definitely growing pains early on,” he said. “I don’t want to sound cocky, but all my life I was ‘the guy’ on my team, the leading scorer who did everything. I only averaged 3.2 points per game that season. I struggled shooting, and my confidence dipped.
“But I was 14 years old going against 17- and 18-year-old men, so it was a big step up in competition. Even though there were times I wanted to quit, I just kept my head up, worked hard and kept going.”
Upper Moreland first-year head basketball coach Sean Feeley, then an assistant for the Golden Bears, acknowledged Coyle’s trouble in adjusting to the punishing competition of the Suburban One League; at the same time, he also took note of the freshman’s perseverance, will and drive to make himself a more well-rounded player.
“He didn’t have too much of an offensive game at first, just no confidence at all in his jump shot,” Feeley remembered. “He could handle the ball and make good decisions, but he was a bit one-dimensional. But he’s a smart, smart kid, and he started watching more film and studying opponents to the point where, as a sophomore and junior, his jump shot progressed. Now, he can shoot the three, he loves to drive and get to the line. He’s a threat from anywhere, and his defense has improved greatly as well.”
Coyle prides himself on the work he puts in during the offseason that’s helped his game evolve to the point it’s at presently. For him, putting in the extra work doesn’t feel like work at all; rather, that’s the fun of it, exhaustively improving his game while others are off enjoying their summer vacations.
This past offseason, Coyle’s father helped him find a personal trainer, and he hit the weights hard and bulked up from 145 to 160 pounds in an effort to make his body stronger for the punishing SOL schedule. Not only that, but with the team still without a head coach (former head coach Matt Heiland left to become the athletic director at Lower Moreland) and its gym under construction over the summer, Coyle took it upon himself to organize workouts with teammates at the outdoor courts in the park across the street from his house.
“This past summer, running the workouts and making up drills for my teammates to run - that was a lot of fun,” he said. “I want to help my teammates get better, improve their skills so they can make bigger impacts down the road. I always prided myself on being the first one into the gym on game day to put up extra shots.
“Working on my game, even if it’s just an hour or two each day … it might sound cliché, but you have to put in the work to get better, and that’s always stuck in my head. If I want to be successful, I have to keep getting reps. Putting in the work is the fun part, so once I get on the court in a game situation, it comes easier.”
Coyle’s commitment to the program has been reflected in the results. Upper Moreland won seven games Coyle’s freshman season, nine the following year and 12 last year as a junior. This year the Golden Bears are 8-8 after 16 games with an eye on making the district playoffs. Coyle is 0-3 in his three previous trips to the postseason, and one of the main goals he has left as a senior is for Upper Moreland to host a playoff game and get over the proverbial hump before he moves on to the next chapter of his life.
“We got blown out my first year against Octorara, lost to Holy Ghost in double overtime sophomore year and gave No. 1 Chester a great game last year before losing,” he said. “I want to beat one of those really strong SOL teams in the regular season and get to the playoffs and host a game. We have some of the best fans in the area, and I want it for them as much as me.
“The sport is all about winning and the competitive nature of it, and that’s what I love the most. I’m 0-for-3 so far, and I don’t want to end my career 0-4. I also want to get first-team all-league honors, because I didn’t work this hard to get second team. But winning a playoff game, especially at home, that’s my top goal.”
Despite the fact that Feeley is a teacher at Upper Moreland and had a previous stint as an assistant basketball coach, he admitted the transition to head coach for his star player’s senior year did not come under the most ideal of circumstances. But Coyle handled the situation with aplomb, even taking it as a challenge to assert himself even more as a reliable leader on and off the court.
“It was a massive transition for me, and I constantly had 25 things on my mind,” Feeley said. “He was a calming influence in the locker room, and he earned the right to be my voice on the floor and give suggestions at practice or in timeouts during games when things weren’t going well. I’m proud of him just for the way he led by example. He’s very mature and just has a tremendous personality.”
In addition to being a basketball standout at Upper Moreland, Coyle does more for the athletics community than just play sports. He joined the school’s media club as a freshman and has been a part of student-run broadcasts of Upper Moreland’s football, baseball, lacrosse and field hockey games, among others.
As a result, he’s decided to pursue a career in sports journalism. He’s likely to play basketball somewhere at the Division III level in college, so Coyle hopes to find a school that offers a competitive hoops program, as well as a strong communications program that will allow him to chase his other passion.
“Sports make me happy,” he said. “It’s all I do, all I talk about … it’s what I love. I’ve always thought I was a talented writer and I have knowledge of all the games. My parents always told me to study hard, get into a good school and pick the job I want that will make me happiest in life. What’s more fun than writing and talking about sports? I fell in love with it, and it’s what I want to do with my life.”
Coyle said he’d also like to be running his own basketball camp for kids by the time he’s 30, just as a way to give back to kids by teaching them the game that has provided him so much enrichment.
But for now, there’s still business to conduct, most notably getting the Golden Bears back into the postseason and winning as many games as possible before graduation comes calling. Coyle has poured his heart and soul into the basketball program at Upper Moreland, and he and his teammates plan on leaving it all out there on the court.
“I don’t care what anyone says, Upper Moreland has the toughest kids around, and we pride ourselves on that toughness,” he said. “We might be smaller than a lot of other schools, but you can punch us in the face and we still won’t back down from anybody. We’re some dogs out there, but we don’t give in. It’s helped me as a player, because my motor always keeps going and we’re not backing down … it’s something we pride ourselves on as a school.
“I definitely think about the end every day. I still remember my first game, walking into the locker room and seeing my jersey hanging there. I remember our past three playoff losses and how upset the seniors were; I don’t want to be in that position, and I’m not ready for it yet. It’s been a special time, playing with Upper Moreland for the last 11 years, 90-some straight starts at the high school level. Playing in front of my family and friends who have supported me my whole life, I’m just thankful for everything this game has given me. I don’t want it to end, and neither do they, so we’re just going to keep it going and hopefully get some playoff wins.”
