Baseball
Favorite athlete: Bryce Harper
Favorite team: Phillies
Favorite memory competing in sports: Striking out Garry Sheffield’s son in a summer ball tournament when I was 14
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Freshman year when I was playing first base, there was a play at the plate, and I was the cutoff. I got the ball from the outfield and throw a strike not at the catcher but right at the umpire’s private part.
Music on playlist: Nirvana, Led Zeppelin, future, Nelly, Fleetwood Mac, Creed
Future plans: Attend Villanova and play club baseball
Words to live by: “Adapt, overcome and improvise”
One goal before turning 30: One goal I have before turning 30 is to be a homeowner.
By Mary Jane Souder
A “true program kid.”
That’s how coach Chris Manero describes Ryan Heincer, and there’s no arguing the Plymouth Whitemarsh senior fits the bill.
“He’s done everything with us,” the PW baseball coach said. “He takes advantage of every opportunity we have – every fall workout, every workout in the weight room in the winter.
“Every time we get to do something out on the field in the winter – he’s just always there. I think it’s part of that – if you want to work your way up through the program and you want to work your way into the lineup, sometimes it’s just putting in as much time as you can and taking advantage of the opportunity we give, which is what he’s done.”
While that’s certainly a tribute to the Colonials’ first baseman, there’s nothing particularly unusual about that.
In fact, Heincer’s journey hasn’t been all that unusual. He earned a spot on the JV as a freshman - a promising start for any ninth grader. The following year he again played JV, and as a junior, he was the first player off the bench for the varsity.
This year, Heincer is an everyday player at first base.
“He finally had an opportunity to be our starting first baseman, and not only that, he’s now hitting in the middle of our order,” Manero said. “He’s probably one of our top three hitters, and he’s just having a really good senior year.”
Adding an interesting twist to Heincer’s story is the fact that he was elected a captain by his peers. And that is not exactly typical for a first-year varsity player.
“If I go back to last year as a junior where it was hard to even get him on the field – to me, that would be a surprise if you had told me a year ago that he’d be hitting third in the order, playing first base, and he’s going to be our captain,” Manero said. “I think he has a lot of respect from the kids around him.
“He’s a guy that is a good teammate and the younger players respect him, and it’s put him in that position.”
Heincer acknowledged his story does not follow the usual script.
“It doesn’t happen all the time, but I always had confidence in my abilities,” he said. “Last year, for varsity my junior year, I had the role of first bat off the bench. I took pride in that role.
“I wasn’t like – “Oh, I might not get in,’ but I was like, ‘If he needs me at the end of the game, I’ll be there,’ so that always kept my confidence up.”
The baseball journey
Heincer tried a little bit of everything as a youngster – basketball, soccer, football.
“But I always came back to baseball,” he said. “Once I started playing fall ball, it was all baseball from there, which was probably when my mom stopped letting me play football, so I was 10 or 11.”
Heincer went the usual route from t-ball to little league to travel ball.
“My coach asked me to play on the township travel team, and that opened up a whole world of more baseball,” he said. “I was about 10 when I played on my first summer travel team, and for those same teams, I would usually play fall ball. Once I got to high school, it was high school fall ball.”
So what made baseball Heincer’s sport of choice?
“I had a coach tell me when I was around eight that baseball is 10 percent physical and 90 percent mental,” he said. “And I love the IQ part of the game – knowing what’s coming.
“Watching the Phillies game when everyone else thinks it’s boring - I’m thinking about what runners are where, what the pitcher is going to throw, that kind of thing. I really enjoy that part of baseball.”
When he reached the high school ranks, Heincer viewed his progression to the varsity level with an attitude that underscores why he was chosen a captain.
“Right when I showed up for the first day of fall ball my freshman year, I was standing next to Colin Brady, who was the starter at first base for three years, and also another really good ball player, Chase Fisher, who is playing college ball right now, so I knew when I would be starting on the varsity field, it would most likely be my senior year,” Heincer said. “I had that pretty made up in my head.
“Obviously, I was going to do everything in my power to have it happen sooner, but I set that expectation for myself. Those guys were great. I learned a whole lot of baseball from those two, especially Colin as the three-year starter. That whole junior season that I spent mainly on the bench, they were a bunch of help.”
It was a positive approach that came naturally to Heincer.
“I’d always played against great competition,” he said. “From my summer ball teams, I never had a spot secured. It was always a battle for the position, and that was a big motivator for me.
“So, it always kept me going, kept me with a new goal in mind to move up the ranks. I just knew there was a bunch of stuff I could learn while on the bench as well because Manero tells us about it a lot – he always says, ‘speed of the game.’ Coming out of my second JV season, I was like – ‘Yeah, okay, how much faster could it be?’ But it was a lot faster.”
Heincer found that out firsthand.
“When we were in our first scrimmage last year, I got completely turned around,” he said. “I got a walk or something, and I was on base. I was all happy about getting on base and then I got picked off because it was moving too fast.”
Listening to Manero tell it, it was something of a ‘perfect storm’ that kept Heincer – a pitcher and first baseman - off the field as a junior.
“We really felt last year would be the year he would contribute for us,” the PW coach said. “He had some arm issues and really was not able to pitch at all last year. We thought maybe by the end of the year he would.
“It just slowed things down a little bit, and then we had a senior first baseman, and we had another senior who played first base when the other guy pitched. It was almost like the perfect storm where it was hard to get Ryan on the field as much as we thought we would, but we used him off the bench. He probably wasn’t playing as much as he’d hope but really took everything in stride. I thought he handled it really well.”
Opportunity taken
Manero doesn’t have a set-in-stone method for choosing captains. This year, the captains were completely selected by the players.
“A lot of times we do it when we’re down in Florida on our spring trip, which is the very beginning of the season,” the PW coach said. “This year, I just wasn’t ready to do that yet, and I felt like I needed everybody to
get to know each other a little better.
“We waited until we got back from the trip. The guys know him, and I think they looked at how he led in those early couple weeks of the season, and I think that meant a lot.”
Heincer, according to Manero, showed up at fall ball a much different player last fall than the one who contributed in a reserve role the preceding spring.
“It’s the reason we do workouts in the fall,” he said. “I look at him the fall of ’23, and I look at him this year in the fall of ’24 – as a coach, I was disappointed in the fall of ’23. He struggled a little bit. It wasn’t a great fall for him. I think he would probably admit that too, but this past fall – I think it was when we started to get more confident in what he could do for us and saw that he was improving his play at first base and was a more confident hitter.
“I would say that going into this spring – we had him penciled into that spot, and a lot of it was because we saw good growth in the fall.”
Heincer’s journey is serving him well in his role as captain.
“Not a lot of times are first-year starters the captain,” he said. “Last year, I felt like sort of a leader on the bench.
“It’s really hard to keep the morale up when you’re sitting for two hours. I think my ability to relate to the starting guys or maybe our young guys that are starting – I could also relate to the guys that aren’t in as much and need a little extra push to get through the game – stay focused and motivated.”
For Heincer, it was well worth the wait.
“It definitely was an adjustment, for sure” he said. “I remember our first scrimmage in Florida – I was nervous. I haven’t been that nervous before a baseball game in a while, and I was definitely shaking in my boots a little bit.
“As the season went on and my teammates showed confidence in me – that helped me build my own confidence. I had to keep reminding myself that I earned this role, I deserved this role. I just have to fulfill it. I don’t have to think about it too much. I got voted (captain) for a reason. Just keep doing what I’ve been doing is how I thought about it.”
Looking to the future
Heincer considered playing collegiate baseball and participated in showcase tournaments last summer.
“But I got accepted at Villanova, so I had to take that,” he said. “I want to get involved with club baseball at Villanova. I have some buddies that have been on the PW team that have graduated over the past few years that have said club ball is the most fun baseball they’ve played, and I want to get in on that.
“I’ll be playing legion this summer, and I definitely want to keep baseball in my life as long as I can.”
Heincer, who received a conditional acceptance from Villanova, will enroll in the liberal arts school as a freshman.
“My goal is eventually to get into the business program,” he said.
An honors student, Heincer readily admits he struggled academically coming out of COVID.
“My freshman year grades were really not pretty, and I was struggling with confidence in the academic side,” he said. “I had a talk with my family, and they put it into perspective – that high school is not nothing, your freshman year is not nothing, and to get to the next level, you have to take care of this.
“So, I buckled down and got honors my sophomore year after a bunch of Cs and a D or two freshman year, so I definitely had to make a turnaround. Once I figured out study habits, what works for me and how to block off time, I was able to get my grades up. I needed to grow up a little bit.”
Heincer’s outstanding senior baseball season recently hit a bump in the road.
“It was a freak accident where I cut my pinky and thumb during practice,” he said. “Despite a few stitches, it was best case scenario, and I’ll be back in time to close out the season.”
His team is looking forward to his return.
“He’s just an outstanding kid, he really is,” Manero said. “He has this old soul kind of personality, and I think that’s helped him. I think that’s part of what keeps him grounded, well-liked, not just by players but by coaches too.
“To have such a good start to the season – he was in the middle of what’s been an outstanding probably all-league caliber season - only to now be unfortunately saddled with this really makes you want to root for the kid even more.
“As coaches, we want all of our guys to succeed, but you really like to see the guys that do everything right have that success in the end, and he’s definitely one of them. I have never heard a bad thing about him from any of his teachers.
“He’s a really good student, and he’s a lifer on the baseball field. It’s just good to see that the guys who go about doing things the right way – eventually, they get theirs. He’s just a good kid, he’s a very well-respected kid.”
