People like to say it’s not what you know, but whom you know.
Sometimes, however, it’s both.
That’s the way it was for Ryann Hendricks. Because her mother happens to know one of the greatest high school track athletes in Illinois history, Ryann received the knowledge she needed to become a state champion.
The Chicago Christian senior won the long and triple jumps at the Class A state meet last year. A year before, she had finished sixth in the long jump and a particularly disappointing 11th in the triple jump.
Ryann vowed to do better, and her mother, Dawn, vowed to help.
Dawn had competed in basketball and track in the early 1980s at Luther South, where she had become friendly with Mike Conley, a seven-time state track champion and an eventual Olympic gold-medal winner in the triple jump.
Conley agreed to give Ryann some pointers, so shortly before the track season started last year, that mother and daughter drove to Indianapolis, where he works for USA Track & Field.
Conley tutored Ryann in a high school gym for several hours. He talked about technique, but he emphasized the mental side of sports.
That’s where Ryann really needed help. As a freshman and sophomore, she was good enough to make the finals in the state meet in both jumps, but her focus was as shaky as the Bears’ passing game.
“If I had one bad jump, it threw everything off the rest of the day,” she said.
Conley pointed out he had produced only about 15 perfect jumps in his entire career, so that it was silly for her to let one bad one get her down.
“He told Ryann that every jump is a new track meet,” Dawn Hendricks said. “I think that really gave her an understanding not to beat herself up so badly, just to leave it out there every time.
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“She was fiercely determined to win state. I think she had gotten to wherever athletes get when they have tasted a bit and want more.”
Ryann Hendricks got plenty more last May at Eastern Illinois University. She won the Class A triple jump title with a wind-aided leap of 38 feet 3 1/2 inches and set a Class A record with her best legal jump, 37-11 1/2. She won the long jump at 18-7 1/4.
“I was tired of getting a lower spot,” she said. “I knew I could do better.”
Mike was the second Conley to help Ryann’s track career. His younger brother, Steve, a two-time state triple-jump champion at Luther South, had lent a hand when she was in junior high.
Dawn was Ryann’s coach then–in basketball as well as in track–at Bethlehem Lutheran School on Chicago’s Southeast Side.
Ryann wanted to attend high school at Young or Kenwood, but her mom figured that a kid whose 8th-grade graduating class had five students was not quite ready for a large Chicago public school. Besides, Dawn wanted her daughter to get a Christian education.
That led them to Chicago Christian in southwest suburban Palos Heights, even though it meant Dawn would have to spend about 35 minutes each morning and another 35 each afternoon driving Ryann between the school and their South Side home.
Besides being a chauffeur, Dawn is her daughter’s biggest cheerleader, known for doing cartwheels–literally–during Chicago Christian basketball games.
“She is very enthusiastic,” Ryann said with a smile. “Home or road, it didn’t matter.
“When it was needed, she would do it to hype the crowd. It used to be embarrassing, but everyone got used to it.”
Dawn keeps her feet on the ground at track meets, but Chicago Christian girls coach Jim Kwasteniet felt like doing one the first time he saw Ryann jump. Her work with Steve Conley as well as with the University of Chicago Track Club, which she joined in 7th grade, gave her technique that was advanced for her age.
“The main thing for us was just to fine-tune some of that stuff and just try to get her stronger,” Kwasteniet said.
Last spring Ryann was strong enough to score in four events and lead Chicago Christian to a tie for fourth place at the state meet. Besides the jumps, she was fourth in the 200 meters and ran a leg on the seventh-place medley relay, giving her a hand in all 29 of the Knights’ points.
All of Hendricks’ medley relay teammates–junior Brittany Price and sophomores Christine Iwema and Melissa Voss–are back this year, so Chicago Christian has an excellent chance to move up and finish among the top three teams next month and bring home a Class A trophy.
Hendricks, the lone senior on a team with only 11 other athletes, is aiming to win both jumps and get the Class A long-jump record. She has not signed with a college but is leaning toward attending Arkansas, where both Mike and Steve Conley went. She’ll specialize in the jumps in hopes of becoming an All-American and reaching the Olympics.
Ryann Hendricks believes she has the confidence to achieve such goals.
“I just started to have faith I could do stuff, that it was not for no reason that God gave me ability,” she said. “It happened for a reason.”
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