In his four years of college, McDonald alumnus Ryan Henry has had four different coaches. He’s had success along the way, including setting a freshman record at YSU, but last season at Penn State was his most successful.

Under the tutelage of PSU alumnus and 2016 Olympian Darrell Hill, Henry earned first-team All-American after a sixth-place performance in the NCAA Championships earlier this month. Henry competed in the shot put with a throw of 64-5.75 feet.

He also earned second-team All-American during the indoor season, winning the Big Ten Championship in the same event, with a 65-5-foot throw. That throw was good enough to be third all-time for the indoor program.

Henry was disappointed by his first indoor season and redshirted for the outdoor season that spring. That served as a wake-up call for the 2021 state champion. He used it as a chance to improve, competing in smaller meets with a different mindset. It paid off.

“After having such a big failure at the end of that indoor season at (the Big Ten championship), missing nationals and missing finals for Big Ten indoors, it was a very big wake-up call to how I was approaching meets,” Henry said. “I had to really take a step back and look at, ‘Okay. Why did I fail? What happened? What was good? How can I improve from here?’ So I ended up entering a lot of smaller local meets, like Slippery Rock, and that really taught me how to compete. You got to go in with a calm mindset, and you have to trust yourself, and that wasn’t something that I used to do. I used to try to hop myself up on caffeine and try to go balls to the wall and go as hard as you can. And unfortunately, in our sport, that just sometimes doesn’t work out like that.”

The new approach helped him earn two All-American honors in the same academic year.

“It’s pretty surreal,” Henry said. “That’s something that as soon as you enter the NCAA, that’s one of the first goals that a lot of people set, and that’s one of the goals that I’ve set. So, it’s pretty crazy to kind of end up hitting that goal.”

Henry’s new mentality and Hill’s knack for motivation have made for a strong combination.

“Just his motivation and passion. You can just tell that Darrell has so much passion for the sport and love for it, and he has so much love for Penn State in the program there,” Henry said of his coach. “Since he went through it, he said Penn State’s changed his life. He just wants to do that for other people. He shows up every day, gives you the same attitude and same motivation every single day, and I think that’s just him being such a foundational person in my life at the moment.”

Henry still keeps tabs on his alma mater, noting how proud he is to see the Blue Devils’ strong tradition remain.

“I still pay attention to it,” Henry said. “I just watched Drew Zajack finish out his senior year at the state championships in the discus, just like I was, just like Zach Gray was. The alumni at McDonald, we always pay attention. To see them finally get that state championship (in 2025), like we couldn’t, we went two years in a row back-to-back runner-up, so to see them finally come in and crush it was really, really cool.

“As far as the throwing aspect of it, I know Coach Mary (Domitrovich), she’s a G. She’s always gonna have great throwers coming up. She’s a really good coach, and as far as the kids, I know they hear stories of the older guys, like I heard stories of Matthias Tayala and Christian Smith. So to see this tradition carry on is really, really cool.”

With one more year of outdoor eligibility left, Henry hopes to have another strong outing in the spring and make a return to both the Big Ten Championship and the NCAA Championships.

Following that, Henry plans on continuing to work with his coach and potentially exploring professional options depending on how his fifth season goes.