Aiden Ryan, a cross country athlete at The Bolles School, has been named the 2022-2023 ITG Next Northeast Florida Male Cross Country Runner of the Year.
Born and raised in Jacksonville, Ryan grew up around the Bolles culture. Ryan’s mother was head of the girls dorms at the Bolles School and his father, Tony, is a teacher and the girls cross country coach. Tony Ryan won his 10th girls cross country state title as coach and recently won his 10th Class 2A Coach of the Year Award.
Influenced by his father’s experience in cross country, Ryan started running at a very young age, and he took a liking to a few other sports as well.
“I was mostly good at soccer and basketball because of my speed, so I translated that into track,” he said. “I ended up falling in love with the team before I fell in love with the actual action of running, and I guess it all spiraled from there.”
Ryan’s bond with his Bolles cross country teammates has been beneficial for everyone involved.
“Last year as a team, we won for the first time in three years; we had gone through a bit of a drought,” he said. “It wasn’t as set in stone as it was this year. So it was exciting to pull that off with a lot of the guys that are in college now.”
Bolles won its seventh state team title at the 2022 Class 2A FHSAA State Cross Country Championship. After being runner-up for the 2A individual title last year, Ryan had something to prove; he came back this year and won it, too.
Because cross country takes up most of his time, it’s important that he relax and find hobbies outside of his sport. When Ryan isn’t running, he loves playing video games such as Red Dead Redemption. He also enjoys playing with his little brother, and even more surprising, solving a Rubik’s cube.
“I can solve a Rubik’s cube pretty well,” he said. “I can solve it pretty fast; I can do it in less than a minute.”
Although Ryan has had a lot of success, it didn’t come without obstacles.
“I would say my biggest obstacle would be confidence,” he said. “In my junior year, I would always get psyched out at practice or races, going into it planning for 20th or 30th place. Then I switched it to saying, ‘I want to win this race.’ Having confidence when you’re doing well is easy. But being able to have confidence even when you’re not doing well, it’s what the X factor was.”
Ryan has learned the key to confidence and is ready to take that newfound confidence into his next chapter. He will be attending the University of Tennessee.
“I guess it was just the perfect storm,” he said. “I really liked Knoxville as a town. I liked everything that Coach Carlson told me and the guys on my recruiting visit were all equally as excited. When they committed, I committed, and I was really excited about the freshman class. Everything combined for it to be the place for me.”
This young man has the attitude and a plan to take him all the way. Congratulations to Aiden Ryan, the 2022-2023 ITG Next Northeast Florida Male Cross Country Runner of the Year.
