Shoreline Baseball Mainstay Fuller New HK Varsity Assistant Coach
For the past several years, Ryan Fuller has been a fixture on the baseball field as both a player and a coach, particularly in the Shoreline Conference. The Haddam-Killingworth baseball team is hoping that Ryan’s layers of expertise and familiarity with the league can help carry the Cougars to some championships in the coming seasons.
Ryan, an Old Saybrook resident, grew up in Old Lyme, where he played baseball at the high school. After spending some time in the Arizona Diamondbacks’ minor league system, Ryan coached baseball at Quinnipiac University before returning to the Shoreline Conference as an assistant at Old Lyme and later Valley Regional. Last year, Ryan was hired as an English teacher at Haddam-Killingworth, and now he begins his first season as a varsity assistant coach with the Cougars’ baseball team this spring.
“Well, I was hired last year as an English teacher here at H-K, but I was also coaching at Valley. I was getting tired of the back-and-forth commuting, so I contacted [H-K Head Coach Mark Brookes] about being part of the program in some way. I didn’t care in what way. I just wanted to be a part of the program,” Ryan says. “One of their assistants decided to leave and it was just a matter of right timing for me.”
Baseball is both a team game and one of percentages in which players typically experience their fair share of setbacks. Ryan says that he wants H-K’s athletes to learn from any missteps, while embracing their teammates along the way.
“It’s about making sure the kids are doing the right things and knowing that they are part of a team. Being a good teammate to someone is so important,” says Ryan. “Baseball is a hard game, so you have to embrace the mistakes, because if you don’t, you will never have fun with it.”
Coach Brookes and the Cougars have only known Ryan for a short period of time, but Brookes says that H-K’s athletes have enjoyed working with their new assistant coach during the early goings of the spring season.
“After meeting with him in January and getting positive feedback from administrators, teachers and students, I felt comfortable that he would be a knowledgeable and positive role model for our players. Our Athletic Director Lynne Flint agreed, so Ryan became a member of our coaching staff,” says Brookes. “I am still getting to know him, but he has brought new ideas, and the players have responded well to him. He has had previous experience coaching AAU teams and has taught private baseball skill lessons along the shoreline since graduating from UConn.”
Ryan feels a great sense of accomplishment when he makes an adjustment to a kid’s batting stance or his windup on the pitcher’s mound and then sees the results. Ryan also relishes the moments when his athletes realize how much all their preparation pays off in the end.
“It’s fun to give one tip to the kids and it clicks for them. I love opening the doors to them on little things in baseball,” he says. “I also love when they find success with team wins and see the results from when they put in the hard work on those cold, rainy days at the beginning of the year.”
As he’s now the right-hand man for one of the most successful and respected skippers in the state, Ryan would love nothing more than to play a part in helping Coach Brookes grasp that coveted brass ring.
“Coach Brookes has been doing this for a long time and hasn’t won a state title, so it would be great to be a part of that first state title team,” Ryan says. “Playing as a team is our first goal, but we also want to win Shoreline and state titles in the long run. We just have to keep getting better each day.”
Having previously competed against Haddam-Killingworth, Ryan is well-versed in the prestige that the Cougars bring to the baseball field. Ryan feels that it’s a great honor to be coaching alongside someone whom he’s admired for so long.
“We always played against H-K in high school, so they were a team we knew. Coach Brookes is a great guy,” says Ryan. “It’s so clear that he does things the right way. He commands respect, so I just hope to add to his respect.”