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SoCal Prep & High School Report

Riverside News: Murrietta
Valley Injury Update--(February 11, 1998)

This one comes to us care of the Riverside Press Enterprise and since they don't archive their articles, we're going to reproduce it here in it's entirety. In fact, we're going to reproduce a whole series of articles on some of the Riverside and San Bernardino County teams in order to try to get the word out on some of their better players before the season ends. Here's the update on the injury sustained by Murrietta Valley's start point guard, Ryan Coyle, sustained in, of all things, a slam dunk contest.

The stage was set last Wednesday afternoon at Murrieta Valley. During the winter sports assembly, the boys' basketball team was going to have its slam dunk contest featuring 6-foot-2 Wayne Rodriguez, 6-1 Jorge Cordova, 6-5 Brian Wethers and . . . 5-9 Ryan Coyle?

Yup. Ryan Coyle.

The junior guard had it all planned out. He would spring off a chair and do a simple two-handed dunk to wow the crowd.

But it wasn't that simple. On his way up, he slipped off the chair and came crashing down on his left wrist.

"He asked me three times before I gave him the OK," Coach Steve Tarabilda said. "A whole gamut of emotions ran through my mind when he fell, and then I just thought, `No big deal, he fell again, he'll bounce back,' because he's such a tough kid.

"Then, as he was sitting there icing his hand, we just kind of hung around, hung around and then another half-hour went by and it was pretty sore. We knew we had to take him to get X-rayed."

Coyle, it turned out, had compressed the growth plate in his left wrist. He missed the Nighthawks' game against Corona Centennial the same night.

The Nighthawks missed Coyle as Centennial squeaked out a 70-67 victory to hand Murrieta Valley its first Mountain View League loss. Coyle is averaging 11.3 points and 2.1 steals per game. Thus far, he has made 53 of 106 three-pointers (50 percent). "After it happened, I regretted it," Coyle said. "But it's better. I'm gonna try to play on Thursday, and if there's any pain, I'll just play through it. I just want to play."

Tarabilda is hoping that Coyle, who has a splint on his wrist, will be able to shoot around by Wednesday. "We played him for about 20 seconds last Friday night and taped him up really good but ended up taking him out," Tarabilda said. "The doctor will determine if he's OK for Thursday. "I know he really wants to be out there, but we want him healed and ready for the playoffs."