The instructions were simple. Do not kill the president.
This was fall 2021, on Dick Woods Road out by Western Albemarle High School, and the men’s cross country team was preparing for a 14-mile training run. Coach Vin Lananna’s runners, like most people familiar with then-President Jim Ryan, knew their guest could run well and run hard.
“But do not run too fast and drop him,” Lananna told them.
The road is long, fashioned from dirt and gravel. A year before, Ryan ran sprints with the women’s team. He ended that fartlek gassed, relegated to the role of encourager, but Lananna still concluded that the 53-year-old man could have made the women’s team.
The long run a year later ended similarly to the fartlek. Ryan posted afterward on social media that today he ran “with, then near, then sort of near, and finally somewhere in the same county” as the team. He kept up, though, on a legitimate training run, with Lananna’s instructions reining in the runners.
It was more than a craving for exercise that pushed Ryan to the gravel road that day, or to the track a year before. It was more that landed him at sporting events on weekday afternoons, in offseason workouts and team banquets. It was more that spawned 230 posts on his social media accounts about the school’s sports teams.
Jim Ryan cared about these teams.
“Jim loved to engage in the life of U.Va. athletics,” Matt Weber, Ryan’s senior advisor and the man behind the social media accounts, wrote in an email. “Wins, losses, practices, you name the sport: Jim loved supporting our student-athletes and U.Va.’s terrific coaches.”
The social media accounts, the ones stuffed with posts promoting athletics, underwent a minor change a few weeks ago. The accounts’ handles now read “profjimryan,” not “presjimryan,” a small but solemn signpost.
Ryan’s June 27 resignation under pressure from the Justice Department welled emotion in the community and among the student body over the departure of an iconic leader. But beyond the legal tussling rested athletic teams, players within them that shared a natural connection with the man at the center of the turmoil.
Ryan tried every year, Weber said, to watch each sports team in person. He drove around in a cart at Birdwood Golf Course, cheered from the family-and-friends crowd at field hockey games, operated the t-shirt cannon at basketball, schmoozed in his box at football — except for the time he rushed the field after the 2019 win over Virginia Tech. He jumped in the pool, fully clothed, with the victorious women’s swimming and diving team, and he appeared on the ESPN broadcast of the 2023 NCAA Cross Country Championships.
“Anytime somebody did something that was nationally relevant, there was always a text or an email from the president,” Lananna said. “I'm sure he did that for all sports. He's a big sportsman.”
But why? Why did he do it? Why did he spend so much time on athletics? Look at a football game in November 2023.
Lex Long was sitting in a chair behind the endzone. Not even on the grass, not even on the artificial turf that borders it, no, he was all the way on the concrete. The linebacker had to be over there to stay out of danger. Away from the hazard.
He was sitting there, and he was feeling a lot like he had during that month, since getting season-ending foot surgery. Like he could not do anything. Like he was “nobody.”
Ryan, meanwhile, had recently suffered a stress fracture from running and also wore a cast on his leg.
“So here comes Jim Ryan, hobbling on,” Long, now a graduate linebacker at Toledo, said. “He was like, ‘Hey, we’re matching!’”
The two talked, “chopped it up.” At Ryan’s offer, they snapped a picture, two guys with arms around each other, one tall and hoodied, the other wearing a jacket and tie, both smiling at the humor and absurdity of it all.
“I was like, ‘Man, you're real happy, you know?’” Long said. “He was like, ‘I try to be.’ And it was very evident that in his core is that joy in athleticism.”
So why did he spend so much time on athletics? The answer, to some extent, is obvious. Sports are important. They are the face of the University. But it is one thing to say that and quite another to live it. Maybe Jim Ryan — Yale club rugby player, distance runner, student-athlete parent, former little league coach — just loves sports.
“I saw that love of sport easily map onto his love for U.Va., creating a beautiful pairing,” Weber said. “It was natural for him, and I think supporting U.Va.’s terrific student-athletes never felt like work.”
Trace it, in one way, through social media. The posts started early in Ryan’s tenure and were fuzzy, unrefined, an echo of those fledgling days of internet and algorithm. The first was a picture of a V-Sabre bag, on the floor, in an airport. A phone charges on top, cord strewn randomly.
The picture is blurry, the caption encumbered with asymmetrical hashtags. But the sentiment — support, no matter how corny — was there.
The account in 2019 even shared a screenshot of a Google search. The results? Virginia’s women’s basketball team had beaten Virginia Tech. The shrug at decorum fit. The account always felt out the pulse.
“I can’t imagine that there are other presidents at universities who are posting on Instagram something that the lacrosse team, the wrestling team did,” Lananna said.
Lananna would know about the president’s idiosyncrasies. Ryan’s first workout with the cross country team happened years ago due to an encounter with Lananna at Foods of All Nations. They started chatting about the president’s running, his marathons, the problems of a pandemic. No one could do any running, at least not in a group.
The next day Ryan showed up to Foxfield. He wore a mask. The coaches introduced him as a new team member and prepared to start the day. The undercover agent had infiltrated practice, and nobody seemed to notice. As he talked, though, they realized, little by little, and then they laughed and ran.
“I would say he must be the fastest university president in the country,” Lananna said.
For his part, Long remembers a preseason event one year at the Kimpton The Forum Hotel, by Darden. He somehow ended up at a table with Ryan. The president may have seemed out of place, at a table of football players 40 years younger than him. Then the conversation started.
“It was just crazy, like he was connecting with everybody at the tables, me and a couple other guys,” Long said. “I think one of them was Jahmeer Carter … not really a big talker, but, you know, he was able to connect with him even still.”
Long has been thinking about the original meeting of the foot-cast brothers since the news landed. He posted the picture on his Instagram story a few weeks ago, to say thank you.
Ryan loved talking about sports. He loved watching and competing in them. It was a fascination, not an obligation.
“He was a true fan and loyal friend to U.Va. athletics his entire presidency,” Weber said.
Read More
Blocked Youngkin Board appointees are not allowed to serve, judge rules
By Ford McCracken | 9 hours agoThe ruling is a major development in the ongoing battle between Senate Democrats and the state Republicans and officials at three universities.
Following Ryan’s resignation, community initiatives remain in limbo
By Lucia Gambacini | YesterdayDuring Jim Ryan’s tenure as University president, he pledged to improve the University’s relationship with Charlottesville and Albemarle County. At the end of his tenure, many of those promises remain unfulfilled.
What to expect as the University searches for its 10th president
By Nicolas Biernacki | 2 days agoThe special committee to nominate the 10th president was announced Friday.
