Meadowdale’s Ruby stays involved after medical condition halts playing career

Published 8:54 pm Thursday, November 5, 2015

As the Meadowdale football team gets set for its 3A quad-district playoff game against Auburn Mountainview on Friday, it’s hard not to look back at the adversity they’ve overcome this season.

A new head coach and a roster filled with inexperienced players had several people thinking the Mavericks were in for a rough season.

But that was just the beginning of the challenge for first-year head coach Matt Leonard and his team. Leonard said he’s had to deal with more injuries this season than he has in all the other years of his coaching career combined.

Two of the more serious injuries happened in the first three weeks of the season.

Senior offensive and defensive lineman Bailey Walsh was injured against Lake Stevens and taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Two weeks later against Edmonds-Woodway, senior middle linebacker Tyler Ruby had a similar fate.

In both cases, the players were down on the field for over 20 minutes and little to no movement could be seen from either.

“It’s the absolute worst nightmare,” Leonard said. “It’s the thing about this game that you fear the most. I had a pretty ugly situation last year where an opposing player was down and in very serious condition on the field. It really puts things into perspective. It’s about the enjoyment and the fun and brotherhood and the wins are just so irrelevant at the end of the day.”

Though it looked serious, Walsh’s trip to the hospital was largely precautionary and he returned to the field the following week.

Ruby wasn’t so lucky.

Doctors told Ruby he had a condition known as Arnold-Chiari malformation, which affects the brain stem and caused his injury on the field. Though he was able to return home the night of his injury, Ruby was told at the time that his football career was over.

“I think I took it pretty well,” Ruby said. “I spent the last four years of my life in the weight room getting better for football my senior year. I spent my last four years growing with every single one of these guys making myself the best team captain that I could. Getting it blown away like that, it was kind of my everything.”

Ruby had three follow-up MRIs and all of them revealed the same condition, though he was told later by doctors that returning to sports, including football, was a possibility, but he would have to be very careful.

“They said I could return to football, but I would have to take it really carefully,” Ruby said. “My position, at middle linebacker, you can’t really do that.”

Ruby would still be at a higher risk of injury than any of the other players on the field and that risk was too much for his mother and coaches to overlook.

“My mom wouldn’t let me and my coaches wouldn’t let me, not because they didn’t want me on the field, that’s what they wanted, but they didn’t want me getting injured,” Ruby said. “My life mattered more to them than my football career.”

Leonard said he never considered letting Ruby return to the field.

“It’s not even a second thought,” Leonard said. “I actually got asked the question by somebody else of what if he wanted to play and I said, ‘over my dead body he would play.’ There was just no way. I could never live with that on my conscience.”

Ruby accepted his football career was over, but that didn’t keep him from his teammates. He has been at most practices and all of the games since and has continued his off-the-field leadership role, serving as a go-between for players and coaches and helping players without as much experience on the field understand what their responsibilities are.

One of those players, junior linebacker Quinton Bourgette, took Ruby’s spot at middle linebacker.

“I love that he’s still here,” Bourgette said. “It shows that he’s truly committed to the team. He’s still a captain and everyone still respects him. It’s not much different other than that he’s not out there.

“Tyler has always kind of been like a mentor to me,” Bourgette added. “He’s always helped me kind of learn the defense because I’ve only played linebacker for two years, so he’s always coached me to learn the position.”

Leonard said Ruby’s attendance at practice and games sends the message to his teammates that things are as normal as possible.

“I think it just speaks to who he is,” Leonard said. “He was voted a team captain. He’s still been out here and he’s been working out and helping with the kids. I think it shows everyone else that it’s OK. Life is OK. You get hurt, you get knocked down and you get back up. A lot of people that don’t play the game don’t understand what we do. I get that from certain people that our on the outside and don’t understand the effort and the time and the relationships that you build. It really shows you the friendship and the tightness of this group of kids that he wouldn’t think to not be here.”

Though Ruby has spent plenty of time on the field with his teammates since his injury, not playing hasn’t been easy.

“I miss it every day,” Ruby said. “This is what I do and this is what I love doing. We lost a game, the first loss after my injury, and one of my guys came off the field crying. He said, ‘I hate losing.’ I just burst into tears. I said, ‘I wish I could be out there to help you guys. That’s all I want.’ That’s all I wanted to do, but I know my job out here is to help them in any way that I can.”

Aaron Lommers covers prep sports for The Herald. Follow him on Twitter at @aaronlommers and contact him at alommers@heraldnet.com.