Football, Basketball
Favorite athlete: Julio Jones
Favorite team: Philadelphia 76ers
Favorite memory competing in sports: Beating North Penn for District One title
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened whie competing in sports: I was playing intramural basketball, and I inbounded the ball to a teammate, and he proceeded to shoot a three on our own basket.
Music on iPod: Indie/Alternative
Future plans: Continue football career at Towson and study business
Words to live by: "You'll never know until you know."
One goal before turning 30: Graduate college and have a job set up on graduation.
One thing people don't know about me: I can solve varying sizes of rubik's cubes (3x3-5x5).
By Mary Jane Souder
Roll back the calendar to the fall of 2013.
Upper Dublin teammates Ryan Stover and Michael Sowers were walking to football practice together when Sowers raised an interesting question.
“He said, ‘Where do you see yourself playing football after high school?’” Stover recalled. “I was like, ‘I’ve got this weird feeling – a school like Towson.’”
Funny how things work out sometimes.
Stover recently made a verbal commitment to accept a full scholarship to play football at Towson University.
“It was so weird – I didn’t say that thinking, ‘Oh yeah, that’s my dream to play at Towson,’” the 6-4 senior quarterback said. “I didn’t see myself at the time to be a Division One quarterback, but I felt like I had the potential to get to that 1AA level.
“It just happened to be something crazy.”
Crazy perhaps but also prophetic. Towson entered the picture midway through the fall season.
“The quarterback coach/offensive coordinator there – Jared Ambrose - messaged me on Twitter and was like ‘Really like the film you put out at the beginning of the year. I’m going to stay in touch. You’re in our top five,’” Stover said.
The senior quarterback’s stock rose quickly.
“In a week’s span, I went from not knowing him to being in the top five and then their number one guy,” Stover said.
Stover also was the number one guy for a Flying Cardinal football team that made history this fall when it captured the program’s first ever District One Quad A title. Stover was the catalyst for the Cardinals’ magical season, calmly directing the offense while putting up dazzling numbers. The senior QB threw for 2,525 yards and 25 touchdowns and also rushed for 1,003 yards and 13 TDs. All told, Stover accounted for 3,528 yards of offense and 38 touchdowns.
“He had a firm grip of our offense, everybody’s assignment on every play,” said coach Bret Stover, himself a successful quarterback at Upper Dublin and later at Millersville University. “A lot of times he had to tell people what they were doing.
“Being in complete command of what we did offensively obviously helped him. He’s doing things that I didn’t do until I was a senior in college. His ability to run the offense at the line of scrimmage – maybe that’s attributed to growing up in the household he grew up in and being around the game so much.”
Bret Stover – who is Ryan’s father – had a front row seat to the entire journey.
“I would also attribute it to starting all these guys as seven-year-olds and the football IQ these guys got from Dave Sowers and Mark Wolpert, their coaches all the way up until they got to us,” the Flying Cardinals’ coach said. “I think that had a bigger part of it more than anything.”
*****
Ryan Stover’s journey to becoming an elite quarterback began when he was a youngster, accompanying his dad to film sessions for his Upper Dublin team.
“They were like flies on the wall,” Bret Stover said of Ryan and his friends. “Every once in a while someone would turn and point something out to them.
“Whether that registered – I can’t say specifically, but I think just being in the room helps you. Ryan used to sit and watch me break down film back when they had DVDs. I’d be pointing things out to him. I think all of that just stacks on top of each other.”
For his part, Ryan – the oldest of three brothers - wasn’t really sure football would be his sport of choice. It was one of many sports that occupied his spare time.
“I always kind of leaned towards basketball when I was real young because I was still taller than anybody and kind of dominant and I had a little bit of touch,” he said. “In football, I didn’t play a position I exactly liked. I liked football, but I played the line.”
In those early years, Stover played tight end and defensive end.
“Every now and then I would catch some passes,” he said. “On defense, I would just stand there and beat kids up because I was bigger than them.”
Stover also played baseball, and for the three-sport standout, his focus was on whichever sport was in season.
“That was kind of my routine until middle school,” he said. “Eighth grade, I wasn’t really feeling baseball anymore.
“I started getting tendinitis in my elbow, and it became disinteresting to me. I was making the move from tight end to quarterback around that time, so I wanted to get a leg up on my competition, so I decided to go with two sports instead of three.”
But not for long.
In ninth grade, Stover was talked into playing lacrosse by his friends as well as UD lacrosse coach Dave Sowers, who also is an assistant coach for the football team. He was back to playing three sports in ninth and 10th grades.
Stover’s football career suffered a setback in eighth grade when he sprained the AC joint in his throwing shoulder and was relegated to playing on the defensive line. In ninth grade, he was in the high school system, working with the varsity quarterbacks and the quarterbacks coach – his father.
“He got to work with me on my mechanics every day,” Ryan said. “We did some camps here and there. I got comfortable with throwing and all the footwork and stuff.
“I ended up getting hurt freshman year. I actually had the same injury – I sprained my AC joint again in my shoulder before the season started. I came back and played in the first couple of games. In practice, I had the wrong footing on an uneven surface and got a high ankle sprain. I was out the (rest of the) season until the last game. I was looking like one of those kids who couldn’t stay healthy.”
Stover did strengthening exercises with the trainer and also did some lifting, but he still wasn’t completely sold on the idea that his future was in football.
Until opening night of his sophomore year when – after starting quarterback John Derr suffered a dislocated shoulder – he was thrown into the varsity game.
“I had to go in under Friday night lights,” said Stover, who primarily played free safety his sophomore year. “We were up at the time, but it was a competitive game.
“The rush I got from that – that’s when I got hooked, and I was like, ‘All right, this is what I want to do.’”
In a preview of things to come, Stover completed 15-of-20 passes for 208 yards in UD’s 36-28 win over Coconut Creek in the team’s season opener in Disney World last year, and behind Stover’s strong arm, the program reached new heights.
“He likes to compete, which is part of the reason why he’s so successful because he’s so competitive,” coach Stover said. “He demands a lot of himself and of his teammates too, which is a good attribute of a leader and why he is successful.
“Ryan went to a lot of quarterback camps, honing his skills – really being taught by the best of the best on the East Coast. He went down to the Manning Passing Academy in Louisiana after his sophomore season which I think helped him tremendously.”
Last year, the then junior quarterback led the Flying Cardinals – who had never won a district game - into uncharted territory when they advanced to the district semifinals. They fell to eventual district champion Pennsbury but were in the game until the end.
This year, they silenced any critics that may have remained by advancing to the state semifinals.
“Honestly, from the beginning, I thought we had a really talented group, but to get to the heights we reached this year – it wasn’t really imaginable,” Stover said. “We didn’t really have a problem with putting in the work and doing what needed to be done to get to that point once we realized we could.
“I always remember riding in the car with my dad after practice - how would we do if we played North Penn or Pennsbury? He would tell me my 10th grade year – ‘We’d hang around for a little, but they’d wear us down.’ My junior year, he said, ‘We’d give them a run for their money,’ and we saw that in the Pennsbury game. This year he told me he thought we could beat anybody in the district, and we still believe that to this day that we could beat anybody in the district.”
This fall, Upper Dublin won its second consecutive SOL American Conference title and went on to earn a 46-21 win over North Penn to capture the District One Quad A title before falling to powerful Parkland in the state semifinals.
“Really, the progression from (the Coconut Creek) game until we lost to Parkland and seeing him grow and mature and become a well-rounded quarterback – he does everything well,” Bret Stover said. “He really worked hard in the offseason to get his speed up, his agility up, and it definitely showed on the field.”
Making the run so remarkable was the size of the school. Upper Dublin has 569 male students. North Penn – the squad it beat in the district title game – has 1,861.
“It’s not a huge pool to pick from player-wise,” Stover said. “Probably out of those 500, only 45-55 actually play football.
“We became a real tight-knit group. To get a group like that to come together and do that – the common goal which was the district championship. To have done that under the circumstances was definitely something that’s got to be noted. After injuries and what not, we probably finished the season with 40 guys.”
While football is Stover's number one sport, he is a three-year varsity player in basketball as well.
"I can't say enough about Ryan Stover," UD coach Josh Adelman said of his senior forward. "Every year he has improved as a player based upon the confidence he exudes on the court. He has a tremendous work ethic, and he hates to lose.
"He has become a more vocal leader each season and wants his teammates to leave it all on the court. The thing that is so fun to watch as a coach is Ryan's ability to see the court so well. He sees things develop even before they actually develop. He gets as much joy getting an assist as he does dunking the basketball, which he does with great ferocity these days.
"If he wasn't such a great football player, he could definitely play basketball in college. I believe the area is really going to enjoy watching Ryan play this season. He had an unbelievable spring and summer basketball league season and is just getting back into basketball mode. He was dominant at times."
Stover - who missed the entire preseason - has just returned to the basketball court.
"We have just seen glimpses of how good he will be this season," Adelman said. "Beyond his athletic gifts, Ryan is really down to earth and a tremendous student.
"He is not afraid to talk to the coaching staff and say what he is seeing on the court. Ryan is the kind of guy that you root for and understand that his future is going to be a bright one. We will be hearing much more from Ryan in the future. He wants to be great, and he will continue to stay grounded based on his strong family and his work ethic. He is a great person."
Adelman was part of the UD community rooting for Stover on the gridiron this fall.
"I was very fortunate to be able to watch from afar as Ryan was helping to lead the football team to their remarkable season," the UD coach said. "As the basketball coach, I constantly had to answer questions about when we would be getting Ryan and the football players back to our team.
"The greatest compliment I could give Ryan would be to say that I honestly thought UD was going to win the state championship because he is that good of an athlete and leader. He prepares and watches more tape on his opponents than any player I have ever coached. Some players talk a good game, but Ryan actualy lets his play do his talking. I am looking forward to seeing our season progress as Ryan gets more comfortable on the court. The sky is the limit."
As for his future on the gridiron, Towson was the frontrunner since it entered the picture.
“It’s a perfect location, and they run a spread type offense that I’m used to running in high school,” Stover said. “They have everything I want academically. I just think it’s a really good fit.”
Although he hasn’t settled on a major, he is leaning toward something in the business field, possibly accounting.
For now, Stover is focusing on his final high school basketball season.
“These next couple of months are going to be fun,” he said. “I get to play basketball with the seniors I started this whole journey with.
“I’ll take my official (to Towson) in a couple of weeks and get ready for football. The Senior Class trip to Disney is going to be sick – I’m a Disney freak.”
There’s also the little matter of possibly playing a spring sport. Stover hasn’t ruled out lacrosse or baseball and is even toying with the idea of trying volleyball. Whatever his choice, nothing will trump the memories he takes with him of his final high school football season.
“It’s been fun,” he said. “There’s nothing better than showing up to practice four or five days a week with those guys. We get our practice music bumping to start us off and get us in the mood and then doing what we all love to do for a couple of hours and then putting it together for games on Friday night and stringing those games together to win trophies and hang banners.”
Stover and his teammates re-wrote the history books of a football program that was 0-11 in 2004, the second year Bret Stover took over the program.
“There were people in this community that told us, ‘Football will never work in Upper Dublin,’” coach Stover said. “This year that was one of the most satisfying things - doing it with my son, doing it with his friends, and turning it around and seeing the community there and supporting us.”
