Integrity defined

Jim Hayford’s 20-plus years as a basketball coach have afforded him innumerable encounters with people from all walks of life. It shouldn’t be taken lightly when the Whitworth men’s basketball coach said, “I can’t think of any player I’ve ever coached with as much personal integrity and character as Ryan Symes.”

Hayford’s admiration of Symes as a person far exceeds that of Symes as a basketball player, although Hayford certainly respects his team’s leading scorer and possible All-America candidate in that matter, too. The high regard stems from the senior’s remarkable growth into a man following the darkest day of his life four years ago.

Symes said his parents, Kevin and Bernice, divorced when he was a sixth-grader. His father toted Ryan, brother Kevin Jr. and future stepmother Janine from New Jersey to California, where they ultimately settled in Palo Alto during Symes’ sophomore year of high school. Two years later he signed a scholarship offer at UC Davis, but a head-coaching change preceded news that he would redshirt his freshman year.

“It was tough because I felt I had some good workouts and things were going well,” Symes said. “They figured I could use another year of development. … I was the only person that redshirted, too. There were no other redshirts with me that year.”

Symes’ personal trials intensified exponentially weeks later when just before he was coming home for winter break his father went to the hospital with chest pains.

“High blood pressure runs in the family, so my dad was always struggling with that,” Symes said. “The doctors discovered (damage to the heart) and said they needed to put a pacemaker in. They put it in and the surgery went OK. Then they saw something wrong with the pacemaker and had to go in and fix it. During that time he had cardiac arrest, and he never recovered from that.

“We had to go to the hospital, and we saw him on life support. That was one of the harder things for me to swallow. My dad never let us see him in a weak position. To see him in a hospital bed with tubes and stuff was really, really, really hard.”

Following their father’s death, Symes, then 18, and Kevin Jr., then 22, were soon left to fend for themselves. Symes said Janine relocated to Atlanta to rebuild her life, and their mother, Bernice, was living in North Carolina. He said his father’s sister helped Kevin Jr. find an inexpensive apartment and he returned to dorm life at UC Davis.

Symes said he turned to the Bible and his Christian faith to help him cope with his loss.

“I try to turn every negative into a positive,” Symes said. “I prayed all the time and relied on my faith. Whatever is going to happen is gonna happen. Whether he recovered or he didn’t, he was struggling to find a job around that time. Even if he would’ve recovered, he would’ve recovered to a lot of debt and liabilities that would have caused him a lot of stress. He didn’t have to worry about all that. That’s one positive.”

Another positive is the regeneration of his relationship with his mother. Bernice saw her son play for the first time since his youth when Whitworth traveled to New York City in late December. She’ll be in Spokane this weekend when the Pirates tip off against Pacific Lutheran on Friday and Puget Sound on Saturday in two crucial Northwest Conference contests.

Symes’ path to Whitworth came through San Joaquin Delta Junior College in Stockton, Calif., where he transferred to from Davis following his sophomore season. “I was always behind,” Symes cited as his reason for leaving UC Davis. “I missed a whole bunch of practice to be at home with my brother. I felt like I couldn’t catch up. … I needed a new start.”

Symes, a 6-foot-5 forward with explosive leaping ability and the versatility to impact a game in myriad ways, left an impression on Delta coach Brian Katz away from the arena that Hayford has come to know and appreciate.

“We’ve had four different players come to Whitworth from Delta College,” Hayford said. “When Coach Katz said, ‘He may be the best one we’ve ever sent you,’ it really caught my attention. He wasn’t talking about on the court. He was talking about the fit for what we want to do at Whitworth.”

Hayford said his first priority is finding recruits with whom teammates want to play.

“Each of his teammates look at Ryan and respect how hard he works and how disciplined he is,” Hayford said. “Without ever having to say a word, he sets a high bar. Because they respect him, they want to meet that.”

Nowhere does Symes set the bar higher than in the classroom, where the accounting major has excelled and already landed a job at an accounting firm following graduation.

“When you consider a lot of people 18 years old and absolutely no family support or financial support of any kind,” Hayford said, “they don’t stay in school and get A’s in classes and do well. He kept his focus. It was hard. … What Ryan’s really anticipating is his first real paycheck in his life.”

Jokes aside, there is truth to those words. Even with the assistance of financial aid and work-study programs, Symes admitted, it’s been an arduous task putting himself through college.

“Once I left UC Davis, it was pretty tough at junior college. I’d find work study, and that would help me pay rent. Ever since then I’ve relied on work study, working during summer, scholarships, grants and loans to get me by.”

What, no decked-out Cadillac Escalade?

“I’m walking,” he said.

Maybe so. But four years removed from the lowest point of his life, Symes now is walking tall.