New Heart, Same Heart: After Transplant, Ryan Scoble Back on the Field

Ryan Scoble could hardly breathe. His vision blurred, and his hearing was impaired. Completely disoriented, Scoble, 21, was staring down a grim but familiar diagnosis.

What began as feelings of fatigue grew into struggles breathing as time passed. In 2021, his junior year at Mercyhurst, Scoble was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy — or heart failure — just two months after his father, Steve, received the same diagnosis.

And before Scoble could fight his way back to the field, he fought for his life.

Scoble is from Cincinnati, Ohio, where baseball is often the spring sport of choice. But in fourth grade, Scoble picked up a stick and never looked back.

“I was bored with the speed of baseball,” Scoble said. “Lacrosse was developing, but at the beginning stages. We had one team for the entire east side of Cincinnati.”

During his junior year at Turpin High School, he committed to Mercyhurst, a Division II powerhouse that has no shortage of talent from traditional lacrosse hotbeds.

“Ryan got on our radar because he was highly recommended by one of our alums in the Cincinnati area, Brendan Doran,” Mercyhurst head coach Chris Ryan said. “It gets thrown around loosely, but what we loved was his grittiness and determination.”

Scoble’s endearing humor and positive attitude stuck out, too. He recalled Scoble’s first day as a freshman, having to deal with the leaving all his equipment at home in the driveway.

Freshman year was all about getting adjusted to the college game, and to Erie, Pennsylvania.

“The speed took a while to adapt to,” he said. “And the weather, to be honest. We get maybe 3-4 inches of snow a year tops in Cincinnati. Here, you get a foot overnight. But come spring, I was fully in tune with the program and growing into the team.”

The COVID-19 pandemic canceled Scoble’s sophomore year. Scoble was ready to take a leap forward the next year. But during holiday break, a phone call started him down a two-year road away from, and then back to, the game.

“At the end of fall ball, I got a call that my father was very sick,” Scoble said. “He had undergone a stroke, and they didn’t know what he had come across. He was healthy and active. They found out he had dilated cardiomyopathy, which is basically heart failure.”

While home, Scoble was playing in a men’s league game and broke his foot. He missed about five weeks of Mercyhurst’s preseason.

“I came off the broken foot and quickly realized I wasn’t in lacrosse shape,” Scoble said. “I related that to having five weeks off. So, I stayed after practice, got extra reps. But I realized the more work I put in, I still wasn’t getting into better shape. I actually felt like I was somehow getting into worse shape. But I thought nothing of it.”

Scoble’s efforts continued to not yield results, and symptoms of something more serious arose.

“I thought I must just be sick or something,” he said. “But then I was waking up in the night with my heart beating out of my chest. Sometimes a simple drill would happen, and I’d be completely winded. Then I thought maybe I was having panic attacks. That junior year was the most difficult I had undergone academically.”

He trudged ahead through these warning signs, not even considering there could be a serious issue at hand. It wasn’t until a game against Wheeling that he realized might be worse than he thought.

“Waking up for that game, I didn’t feel all the way there,” he said. “I got on the bus and felt like I couldn’t breathe correctly, like I was breathing through a straw. But now it’s spring, so I think maybe it’s allergies. Then warming up, I felt really fatigued and lightheaded. I get my first run, I get on the field and I approach my guy, and I remember just not being able to make a play. I felt like I was choking on something that wasn’t there. I went down to a knee. The trainer took me out and said I looked pale as a ghost.”

He went for X-rays the next day and got a call from the trainer. He needed more tests.

“That’s when I knew it was something serious,” Scoble said. “I got greeted by a team of doctors, which threw me off. I got hooked up for a pulse oximeter, EKG, and they tested everything around my heart.”

He was told he had heart failure, just like his father, who survived a transplant. His heart was swollen to the point that it was just twitching instead of squeezing.

Heart output is measured as stroke volume, which is the volume of blood pumped out of the left ventricle per beat times the number of beats per minute. For an average person, this number is around 70.

Scoble’s was five.

Given the severity of the diagnosis, Scoble was transferred to another hospital. He was there until his mother, Kelley, travelled to Erie to pick him up and take him home for treatment.

“This is two months after my dad really got sick, so I ended up going to the same heart team my dad did,” Scoble said. “Christ Hospital in Cincinnati. In that area, they’re the best heart doctors.”

For the next few weeks, Scoble was on medicine to alleviate stress on his heart to see if it could recover on its own. After that, Scoble went back to Mercyhurst to pick up his things for an extended stay at home. His road was about to get harder.

“I took a nap one day, woke up, and I couldn’t hear anything,” Scoble said. “I had blurred vision. I walked downstairs and was really disoriented. My mom was trying to talk to me, but I couldn’t hear what she said.”

He was admitted to the hospital that day and learned that he had most likely suffered a heart attack while napping. After two days in the hospital, Scoble received dire news. The only step forward would be a heart transplant at the Cleveland Clinic.

“I was admitted into J38, their renowned heart failure clinic, and I got world-class care,” Scoble said.

His coaches were hit by the news like a tidal wave.

“I cried,” Ryan said. “Coach [Ryan] O’Hagan and I were going to the mail room. The phone rang. I remember hanging up and just being bent over crying. As a coach, there are game losses, you don’t play well, there’s all that stuff you get bent out of shape about. But your worst fear is that someone on your team gets seriously hurt or worse. There’s been times when, in lacrosse, things have happened. You think about how you’d handle that situation. Then it confronts you, and it’s shocking.”

Perhaps even more challenging was informing his players.

“We had a team meeting as this whole thing was getting going,” he said. “We had gotten the news that he would need a transplant. … I remember explaining to the team, this thing is happening to the person who has the biggest heart on the team.”

“This isn’t someone blowing out a knee or wrecking a shoulder. I’d never really thought about the idea of Ryan passing, but it was always in the background. And I think for guys on the team, for some, this might be the first time they really thought about their own mortality.”

With Scoble going to the Cleveland Clinic, the community sprung to action. People joined “Scoble’s Army,” offering support to his family.

Parents, alumni, friends and supporters raised money to help the family as it faced the possibility of an unthinkable outcome.

“Everyone was behind him,” Ryan said.

Scoble waited a week before getting the news that he had an antibody, which meant he could not yet receive a transplant. He was tested again and waited about five days for the result. Clearing the antibody from his blood would take between 3-6 months if the tests were positive, time that Scoble might not have had. The wait for results weighed heavily on the 21-year-old.

“I came to peace with the fact that I was probably going to die,” Scoble said. “In those five days, I learned a lot about myself, who I was and who I wanted to be.”

Still, somehow, he did his best to remain upbeat.

“[We] were able to have some really good talks while he was in the Cleveland Clinic,” Ryan said. “I remember being in the parking lot, and Ryan is waving from seven stories up as we talk on the phone. There were some really bad days with the antibodies test. He had to face his mortality in those moments.”

Scoble was prepared for the worst, as he had been informed that the chances of a negative test were slim. But the test came back negative. Beating overwhelming odds, Scoble was immediately relisted for a transplant.

“On Mother’s Day, I got a call that I had a match,” Scoble said. “It was a special day. My mom, having been through all that, to get the news on Mother’s Day was special. Two days later, on May 11, I went under for my operation.”

With transplants, though, the operation is just beginning. Once again, Scoble was met with a challenge unlike any most people will ever face.

“Two days after the operation I had complications with a device I had implanted that kept my heart rate,” he said. “I flatlined for 11 seconds.

It’s funny how life can work sometimes, as his mother later said. An operation on May 11, and just two days later, he had died for 11 seconds.

“I guess 11:11, for some, symbolizes rebirth and renewal,” Scoble said. “After that flatline, my perspective was completed renewed.”

Being just 21, Scoble had an immune system much stronger than most heart transplant recipients. As a result, his body rejected the new heart at first, and he had to spend extra time in the hospital for his body to learn that this heart was his.

He was released in summer but was told he couldn’t go back to school — let alone play lacrosse. Never one to back down from a challenge, Scoble set out to prove that wrong. He had to rest and recover for a full year. Having lost 60 pounds during his hospital stay, his body was weak and exhausted, and Scoble would spend months just getting his bearings.

But getting back to lacrosse was always front of mind.

“My journey back, in my case, everyone around me was making excuses for me,” he said. “I received insane amounts of support, but it got to the point where people were kind forecasting my life in their perspective. People kind of expect your life to go a certain way.”

It was clear that few really expected him to be back on a lacrosse field again, let alone at a Division II contender. Scoble took that personally.

“For me, lacrosse was something that just brought me so much joy,” he said. “It was freedom. Something I enjoyed my whole life. People were implying I might never play again, and that made it personal to me.”

Two months removed from the transplant, he asked his doctor when he could be cleared to play. The doctor’s response was about what one would expect.

“He looked at me like I was a psycho,” Scoble said. “I died in front of this doctor two months ago.”

He remained undeterred. Scoble had to prove that he could exert himself to the levels required of a collegiate lacrosse player. There wasn’t any expectation that this could happen soon. His athletic career was essentially restarting from scratch.

He couldn’t run or lift anything over 10 pounds. So, he walked. Then he was cleared to jog. Then he jogged until he was cleared to lift. Once he could lift, he found a job selling office supplies and spent his pay on a membership at a performance gym in Cincinnati.

He’d call Coach Ryan to update him on his progress. The day he squatted 315, the day he put up a new max on the bench, the day he ran his first mile. And then, after eight months, he called to say the Cleveland Clinic cleared him.

Doctors told Scoble that it takes around four years to fully become in sync with a new heart. He was on a lacrosse field in about 18 months.

“He would call me and say, ‘I’m crushing pullups now, I’m benching this,’ that kind of thing,” Ryan said. “He tells me he started taking a martial arts class with swords. I say, ‘Hey, good way to get a workout in.’ Two weeks later he says he got out of the class: ‘Have you seen the type of people that play with swords?’”

Getting back to Mercyhurst for the first time brought forth a range of emotions.

“I remember it was the first week we were back. I open the door to the locker room and got that first scent — plastic of sticks, smell of pads — and I choked up,” Scoble said. “Putting on the green and white pinnie and the pads, I was tearing up in warmups. I’m trying so hard to stay cool because everyone is fired up, but I’m on a whole other emotional level.”

There wasn’t huge fanfare for his return. No “Welcome Back!” signs, no big event in the locker room. After Scoble was cleared, Coach Ryan told him his equipment and his pinnie would be there in his locker. They were, and that’s all. That’s just how Scoble wanted it.

“I still have times where I have some perspective, and I realize, ‘Wow, I’m on the bus going to Buffalo to play RIT. This is insane,’” Scoble said. “Two years ago, I never thought this would be possible. There are times where it might be a [tough] practice or a tough day, and just being able to be around friends and wear the jersey, get screamed at by coach, it’s all so extra special now.”

Scoble called his journey the hardest thing he’s ever done. He still wants to push himself to reach new levels. His personal goals are the same, but the experience has brought out some new ones.

“Before, it was just to be a positive benefactor on the team,” Scoble said. “I don’t play a glorious position. On defense, you want to prevent people from making big plays. So, it was about doing my job effectively. Now, it’s similar. But I have had this experience of a different kind of goal setting. And I try and share that tenacity with the guys around me.”

The player Ryan first recruited from Turpin High School was intact.

“He was a driven kid going into it, but the situation gave him a heavy dose of maturity,” Ryan said. “He came back with a focused, older outlook on things.”

The sense of humor the Mercyhurst coaching staff loved at first glance never went away. Even the darkest moments became subjects Scoble enjoys laughing about.

After flatlining, Scoble and his coaches joke about whether he “saw anything.” Scoble even suggested his player bio for his junior year be updated to say “Medical Redshirt – Deceased.”

In the days leading up to this season, Scoble and Ryan met for an hour. They discussed the way people treated Scoble now, and how it had begun to bother him. He never wants pity. Ryan assured him that he has nothing to prove.

“He actually wasn’t happy with me in the beginning of the year,” Ryan said. “He didn’t feel like I was getting on him enough. I wasn’t treating him differently; he was just playing well.”

On January 28, Scoble took the field for a scrimmage against Cleveland State, 22 months after receiving his new heart.

Mercyhurst opens officially against Wingate on February 11, and Scoble will be in the lineup. He is still adjusting. His heart is not his born heart, so it’s still finding a rhythm with his body.

Scoble still has eligibility beyond this spring but said he plans on moving on after graduation. He said it still feels great to be back. Nobody takes it easy on him, and nobody makes excuses for him. That’s what he loves most about it.