Strong and Free: The determined life and too soon death of Ryan James
by Mark McDermott Ryan James ran his final race in his own utterly distinct way. James, a stalwart runner who graduated from Mira Costa last June, had set a goal to run a marathon but obstacles kept getting in the way. Last fall, he suffered a freak injury, a collapsed lung, in the middle of his senior Cross Country season. Then, this spring, he broke an arm after a fall from a rock climbing wall. James came back from his collapsed lung with a vigor that flabbergasted his coaches. “He had the collapsed lung in mid-season, which was just a complete fluke,” said Rebecca Kelley, the MCHS Girls Cross Country coach, who was not James’ head coach, but worked with him throughout his time at Costa. “It happens in some taller, skinny men, sometimes just randomly. It cut his season to shreds. And very quickly, even though he was in the hospital for I think 10 days — he literally was asking the doctor, ‘When can I run?’ — he came back at the end of the season. He wasn’t the same as if he had been uninterrupted, you can’t recover from something like that on a distance team, but he was like, ‘Well, I’m not letting this stop me.’ He was running with the boys as soon as he got clearance.” Kelley…
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