ERIE, Pa. - He looks like any other player out there.
He's definitely not.
It's a rainy, cold day near Lake Erie–one of those bleak spring afternoons in which the sensible move is to curl up at home under a wool blanket. But the Mercyhurst University men's lacrosse team is out on the field, getting soaked as they roll to a big lead over visiting Alderson Broaddus.
No. 44 for the Mercyhurst Lakers checks in. Ryan Scoble. A 6-foot-2 senior out of Cincinnati, Scoble is a scrappy, physical defenseman playing with something new this season:
A new heart.
Watching Scoble blend into the game, thumping opponents who venture near the Mercyhurst goal, you would have no idea that this 23-year-old athlete had a life-saving heart transplant less than two years ago. This is what he prefers. Scoble hates the idea that any player might take pity and treat him differently. When he returned to practice he instructed his Lakers teammates to hit him hard, to be just as physical as they had been before.
"I didn't want them to take it easy on me,"
Still, there is a shift in the game's mood. This will be the most playing time Scoble has seen since his transplant—he'll play close to the full contest, and in this miserable weather. His Lakers teammates excitedly bark his last name. So do the scattering of parents in the bleachers, including Ryan's father, Steve.
Scoble!
Let's go, Scobs!
C'mon Scoble!
"Everyone wants to see him out there," says Mercyhurst's coach, Chris Ryan.
The Cincinnati kid with the new heart is back playing lacrosse. It's a day that few saw coming.
Except Ryan Scoble. He saw it all along.
Ryan Scoble's parents, Kelley and Steve, wait to greet him following a game.
Let's begin with Steve, because he's the start of this wild adventure. Scoble's father, now 62, felt his health worsening in the middle of 2020. He was short of breath; his legs were swollen; his fatigue was extreme. These were the early months of Covid-19, so that was an initial suspicion. Steve Scoble was hospitalized, and in early November 2020, the now-retired sales consultant received a more startling diagnosis: late stage heart failure.
By the end of the month, Steve was outfitted with a Left Ventricular Assist Device, or LVAD. The mechanical device, which pumped blood from Steve's heart to the rest of his body, got him stable and back at home. Still, a heart transplant loomed as a possibility.
Ryan Scoble's health began to deteriorate in the spring of 2021, during lacrosse season. The sport was a huge part of his life. He also played football in high school, but he leapt at the chance to be part of a top-tier Division II lacrosse program like Mercyhurst. That season he had been recovering from a broken foot, and wrestling with what he thought was chest congestion, or allergies, or perhaps Covid. Maybe he was just out of shape.
It was none of the above. Scoble struggled during an early game—his heart was racing like a panic attack, he recalls—and a Mercyhurst trainer, Jake Winkle, advised Scoble to get a chest exam. That exam revealed fluid in his lungs, and a heart "the size of a grapefruit," Scoble says.
Ryan's mother, Kelley Scoble, says the early prognosis for her son was alarmingly stark.
"They were very aware of how acute it was," Kelley says. "'Transplant' was being thrown around from day one."
Ryan Scoble had a heart transplant in May 2021.
Today it's presumed that Ryan inherited cardiomyopathy from Steve, but they didn't know this at the time. And while an LVAD had stabilized Steve, the enlargement of Ryan's heart made that option more precarious. Ryan eventually transferred to the Cleveland Clinic in his home state, where he was outfitted with a different pump that was considered only a temporary bridge to a transplant.
"We were in a waiting game," says Dr. Andrew Higgins, who supervised Scoble's care at the Cleveland Clinic.
Ryan recalls feeling a combination of exhaustion and shock. "I was in the middle of lacrosse season," he says. "All of a sudden I have heart failure." He had no idea what his future held; he couldn't bear the possibility of not being able to compete. "The idea of sports being taken away–it was like I was being stripped of my freedom."
Kelley Scoble says the call about an available heart arrived on the afternoon of Mother's Day, May 9, 2021. She was with her son. "He pulled the phone away from his mouth and said, 'They have a heart,'" she recalls. His procedure was done at the Cleveland Clinic in the early hours of May 11.
Steve Scoble, meanwhile, would have his transplant done at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville Tenn., on Sept. 22, 2021.
Father-son heart transplants. It's an interesting dynamic.
"We're bonding—it's almost like we're tag-teaming it," Ryan says. He and Steve frequently commiserate about the state of their recoveries, their medications and therapies. He doesn't know what he or his father would have done without Kelley, a director at an educational tech company, who somehow managed to keep the family going.
"An absolute badass," Ryan says of his mother. "Mind of a fighter pilot and the courage of a firefighter."
Ryan Scoble makes his way to the lacrosse field at Mercyhurst University for warmups before the game against Chestnut Hill College.
In his cardio therapy, Ryan Scoble was definitely the kid in the room. "I was the youngest person in there by like 50 years," he says, laughing. He began with modest goals—an early milestone was to lightly ride a stationary bike, or walk 15 minutes on a treadmill. Once he did that, he tried running. He was told he was the first heart transplant recipient at his therapy center to run a mile on the treadmill.
"I could tell it was firing up some of the older people," he recalls.
Lacrosse still seemed like a reach. Besides the physical exertion, it is a contact sport, in which players already wear chest protectors to alleviate cardiac risks from getting struck by hits or the ball itself. As a defenseman, Scoble was often in the mix, at high speed.
Ryan Scoble underwent a heart transplant in 2021 and has been cleared by doctors to return to play.
"It wasn't like he was getting back to gentle cycling," says Higgins, the Cleveland Clinic doctor. But when Scoble agreed to wear a chest protector—"basically a massive shield over my chest," he says—the medical team gave him their cautious blessing to attempt a return.
Every patient is different, Higgins emphasizes—some transplant recipients are more cautious and risk-averse, which is understandable. At the same time, "I think there's a sense of immortality that 21-year-olds are innately gifted with," the doctor says. "When that's called into question so dramatically, like was for Ryan, I think it's a sharp reminder of how ephemeral things can be. He's clearly taken that as a cue to get out there and make the most of it."
Still, there was no clear road map to a return. Instances of athletes returning to NCAA or professional athletics after receiving a heart transplant are exceedingly rare. Soccer player Simon Keith returned to play for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and on to a pro career after a heart transplant in 1986. Erik Compton, a golfer who played the University of Georgia, continues to play professionally following two heart transplants.
Scoble reached out to Simon Keith for guidance. Keith says Scoble's determination reminded him of his return to soccer, as did the resistance.
"You're traveling down this path that makes no logical sense to anybody but yourself," Keith says.
"Everybody around you has seen you go through this horrific health journey, and most of them just want you to be grateful on the other side," Keith says. "I understand. But what's the whole point if you can't resume the life that you were meant to live?"
Coach Chris Ryan leads the Mercyhurst men's lacrosse team in prayer before a game.
This was precisely how Scoble felt. His ambition to return to lacrosse was mostly humored–Sounds great, Ryan!– but he was determined to regain his strength. (He had lost close to 60 pounds from his 195-pound playing weight.) He ran sprints in the backyard of his family's home. He rebuilt his endurance on hiking trips with his friend and former Mercyhurst teammate, Daniel Saxon. ("It's crazy how much he was pushing me," Saxon recalls.) He began playing lacrosse in a local league in Cincinnati, where his situation wasn't widely known, at least at first.
"People would ask me, 'When did you graduate?'" Scoble says. "And I'd be like, 'Oh I've not graduated yet, I still got another year.' And then it would slowly get to: 'Yeah, I took a year off because I had a heart transplant.' "
"They'd just kind of sit there with their mouths open. [I'd] have to be like: 'It's cool, dude. I'm allowed to do this.' "
Returning to play lacrosse at Mercyhurst was a bigger challenge. "A hard sell," Scoble says, laughing. "I wouldn't say they were opposed, but they had questions." After all, it was the team that had noticed his decline and set in motion the events that led to his transplant.
"I had reservations, but I was not going to hold Ryan back," says Chris Ryan, now in his 22nd year as the Lakers coach. "We were going to support him."
Ryan Scoble takes the field in the fourth quarter against Chestnut Hill College.
They'd held onto his No. 44 jersey, but Scoble would have to earn his spot. Mercyhurst is a highly competitive DII program; a national champion in 2011, they're currently ranked No. 4 in the country. Talented new players had arrived during Scoble's extended recovery. The battle for playing time would be fierce.
Bring it on, Scoble thought. This was what he loved and missed most of all, the competition. He even liked the suffering at practice. "I enjoy the suck," he says. "The suck is what makes it worthwhile."
"When he came back, he was dishing out as much as he was taking," says Scoble's teammate Nicholas Mabe. "He wasn't coming back to just screw around and be there."
"I'm not just here to put on a jersey," Scoble says. "I'm here to get it done."
Ryan Scoble has a "NOT TODAY' tattoo.
Down Scoble's chest there's an eight-inch scar that runs from his clavicle to just below his sternum. Right above where his new heart beats, there's now a tattoo. It features a shattered Grim Reaper's scythe, and two words:
NOT TODAY.
What's next? As always, the Lakers have their eye on the NCAA tournament, and a run at a national title. Scoble intends to graduate Mercyhurst this spring with a degree in business management. He'd like to pursue an M.B.A.
"I also want to actively push the idea of what a heart transplant recipient can achieve," he says. "I don't want to stop with college lacrosse.…I want to keep living my life until it's full."
Scoble's story has caused ripples in college lacrosse, says Dan Arestia, the host of the "Sticks In" podcast who chronicled Scoble's return for USA Lacrosse magazine.
"Guys come back from serious injuries in lacrosse, but it's usually the kinds of things we're used to–knee injury, ankle injury, guy tears his ACL and works his way back," Arestia says. "This is obviously something totally different."
Ryan Scoble greets his parents after a game.
Scoble isn't able to be a carefree college student; there are multiple medications he must take at specific times, and his schedule is built around them. "I'm not able to wake up right before class and just stumble out of bed and go," he says. "Because of my immunosuppression level, I have to be cognizant of filth. I can't live in a gross setting. Everything has to be wiped down clean. With food, I can't just eat slop. I try to eat heart-healthy."
He does not know who his heart donor was; that information has been kept private, and he has not had any contact with the donor's family. Scoble respects this, though he hopes he is able to thank them one day.
"I love this heart," Scoble says. "It saved [me]. It actively wakes me up, gets me out of bed to tackle the day."
He considers it a relationship. And like in any relationship, there are aspects to his heart he's yet to understand—like when he goes running, and he feels that his breathing doesn't match his heart rate. Sometimes the whole situation feels mind-blowingly surreal, having an anonymous stranger's heart inside. He expects that it will take a while to feel fully in tune.
But this heart gave him back his life. And lacrosse, with Steve and Kelley watching from the stands.
"It's my heart now," Ryan Scoble says. "And I'm going to fill it with as much love and hope as I can moving forward."
