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Max Haynia, left, Trevor Hayes and Jack Ryan.
Jack Ryan’s tenure as head coach of the Westhampton Beach boys cross country team could be summed up as: “I’m here for a good time, not a long time.”
After leading the Hurricanes to their best season ever — the team placed second as a team in the New York State Class B Championship race and qualified for the state Federation Championships — Ryan has stepped down after a short three-year stint with the team to pursue a long sought-out military career.
Ryan, 23, will sign what he called a special warfare open enlistment contract with the Air Force, and if all goes according to plan, he’ll land himself a job within the branch in a year or two. He said the process is somewhat rigorous, and he’s guaranteed nothing, but now was as good as time as any to go after it.
“I have to pass a few physical tests, go through a development course here for a while, and if I pass that, then I will go out for a selection program,” Ryan explained. “If you get selected, then it’s a series of schools you need to pass to get there. You go to the selection and then they select you for a certain job in that program, or they don’t.
“That’s the plan, it’s a longshot, but I figured I’ll roll the dice,” he added.
Prior to Gavin Ehlers, Ryan was arguably one of the top runners to go through the boys cross country program, graduating in 2017 and parlaying his successful high school career to a spot on the Davidson College men’s cross country team. But Davidson didn’t work out, Ryan said, so he returned home and took some volunteer coaching jobs back home in Westhampton Beach.
Eventually, Ryan took over the cross country program from his former coach, Jim Ford, in 2019. He helped the team win its second straight county title that season and a fifth-place finish at states, which at the time had been the program’s best season until this past fall. He continued to guide the boys cross country and indoor and outdoor track teams through the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, when the cross country team once again won another county title.
Ryan’s runners said he will be missed.
“This year especially he’s been fantastic,” Ehlers, a senior, said. “He’s a young guy, so it’s easy to be super close with him. He’s part of the guys, basically. It’s been great, it’s been a lot of fun. It’s been good to have someone who knows their stuff when it comes to distance running. He looks out for us, he knows what it’s like being a top-tier runner, and he knows what he needs to do help us get there. He’s been in these tight races, he knows what goes on. That definitely provides a helpful perspective.
“He knows when to push us, when to hold back,” another senior Cole Cammarata said.
Westhampton Beach Athletic Director Kathy Masterson said Joe Mensch, 29, a physical education teacher at Westhampton Beach Elementary School who graduated from Stratton Mountain School in 2010, will be taking over for Ryan, starting this winter track season and going forward with both spring outdoor track and cross country next fall. Erika Habersaat will continue to be the track program’s assistant coach.
Masterson said Ryan’s young age didn’t put her off hiring him as a head coach in 2019.
“I didn’t have any worry about hiring Jack,” she said. “You worry about some kids, but I never worried about Jack. Jack is a different character. Jack was young, but he is an old soul, and I mean that with the utmost respect. He’s gained the respect of all the coaches in the county, he thinks before he speaks. He’s been a joy to have, he really has.
“I’m sad for us, but happy for him,” Masterson added. “I had Jack as a student-athlete, got to watch him grow, then he started volunteering for us and eventually took over the program. It was seamless and he did an amazing job. I know this is where his heart is, what he wants to do, so I support him 100 percent.”
Ryan said part of his decision to go after this position with the Air Force was that he no longer wanted to be a teacher.
“I realized going to school to become a teacher was not what I really wanted to do. As much as I love to coach, coaching high school cross country in New York isn’t really a career. So if I wasn’t going to be thrilled to be a teacher, I had to find something else and that was something that had always been an interest, something I thought about but never really was a reality, because I wanted to run in college.”
Ryan admitted that he could go through all of the medical and physical tests, basic training and still not be selected for the position he’s pursuing. He is not counting out the possibility of returning to coaching somewhere, someday down the road, but his focus is elsewhere now.
“Things are always subject to change. A lot of things are out of my control, I could end up doing something totally different, but this is something I really want to do,” Ryan explained. “I think down the road, if I end up coming back wherever I end up, whether it’s a different part of the state or country, I could definitely return to coaching in some capacity. I love it so much, I love working with the kids so much. It’s a feeling you really can’t describe, seeing them succeed at such a high level and all their hard work paying off. It really is something special.”
