JR RETURNS: John Ryan heads up the ice during his stellar career with the Princeton High boys’ ice hockey team. Ryan, a 2007 PHS grad who was known as “JR” by his teammates and coaches, holds the program record with 259 points on 149 goals and 110 assists. This Saturday, Ryan will be inducted into the PHS Athletics Hall of Fame.

A year before John Ryan took the ice for the Princeton High boys’ hockey team in 2003, he sensed that he could make an impact for the program.

“My Dad used to take me to games over at Mercer County rink,” said Ryan.

“Most of the people on my club team were a year older so a lot of them were already playing in the high school league. We had seen a lot of them playing as freshmen and they did pretty well. We thought myself, Christian McCracken, Peter Teifer, and Shane Leuck could come in and have an effect early on.”

Ryan’s analysis proved correct as he starred from the moment he put on a PHS uniform, emerging as one of the top scorers in the Colonial Valley Conference (CVC) as a freshman. He went on to help the Little Tigers win the Mercer County Tournament as a sophomore and ended his career as the program’s top scorer with 259 points on 149 goals and 110 assists.

This Saturday, Ryan will be inducted into the PHS Athletics Hall of Fame along with John “Chauncey” Rossi ’38 (deceased), Estuardo Ramirez ’99,  coach/athlete Bill Cirullo ’66 (deceased), and the 1972 boys’ tennis and 1974 boys’ cross country teams in a dinner to be held at the Mercer Oaks Country Club.

Despite his record-breaking career for the Little Tigers, hockey didn’t come easy at first for Ryan.

“My neighbors at the time wanted to start playing and I said you know what, I will give it a shot,” said Ryan, a Cranbury native who was known as “JR” by his teammates and coaches.

“I started playing when I was eight. I wasn’t very good at first. I had a lot of fun playing, so then I started skating more and more and it evolved into my favorite sport.”

As Ryan’s love affair with hockey deepened, he quickly moved up the ranks of local club programs.

“I started one and half years later; I was playing in the in house league in Ice Land in Hamilton for a year,” said Ryan.

“There was the East Windsor PAL, they still had hockey then and that was one of the last years that they had it. I did that for a year and after that, it was the Mercer Chiefs from that next year through when I graduated from high school.”

Looking back on his freshman year at PHS, Ryan acknowledged that he had a lot on his plate.

“I think it was just the amount of time, it was my first year in high school so it was getting acclimated to that, there was also club hockey and high school hockey,” said Ryan.

“There was a lot going on all at once so with the energy and time just getting rest was probably the toughest part.”

A major highlight for Ryan came when PHS won the county title in his second season with the program.

“I think the most rewarding part about sophomore year was that we started pretty slow and then we came on really strong,” said Ryan.

“I remember that I had broken my arm so I wasn’t even playing the first game of the year. Even when I came back, we started really slow but then it was great in the end. Winning the Mercer County title that year was the most memorable thing. I can still remember most of the play by play with that game, Shane played the game of his life.”

As a senior, Ryan took his game to a higher level, scoring 81 points on 46 goals and 35 assists.

“That year was great too; once again we started really slow,” said Ryan.

“In our first two or three games I was playing defense because we were short guys at the beginning of the year. We just came together, we had a really good run.”

Ryan enjoyed his time off the ice at PHS. “The good thing is that Cranbury is a small town so I came in with some close friends from there,” said Ryan.

“But then I met a lot of new people that I became really close to after four years.”

After graduating, Ryan decided to stop playing competitively and devote his energy to academics.

“I didn’t play hockey after college,” said Ryan. “There were a few D-3 schools that I could have gone to and there were a few junior programs where I could have gone to school where I would have just played. I was ready to go to school. I ended up going to the University of Rhode Island.”

These days, Ryan has returned to the ice for recreational action. “I still play in a men’s league,” said Ryan, who works for Merrill Lynch in its wealth management department and resides in Lawrenceville.

“It was funny because there were a few years where Pete Miller and his brother Terence had a team together and so we did that for a few years. There are a bunch of guys who still play, like Adam Shemansky, who was my buddy at Notre Dame.”

When Ryan found out that he had been selected for the PHS Hall of Fame, his thoughts turned to the good times spent with his teammates, not individual accomplishments.

“It is fun thinking about it, you almost take it for granted how lucky you are getting to play with all of your buddies that you go to school with; it was pretty much practice or playing games every day for a few months four years in a row,” said Ryan.

“Any time you look back on that stuff, it was a lot of fun. I still remember Pete Miller’s celebration after he scored to put us ahead in that championship game against Notre Dame, that image will always be etched in my mind. The bus rides after games also stand out. We looked at the years where we had a lot of success, particularly our sophomore and senior years; in both of those years we started slow and came together as a team. The trip itself to get there was fun.”