WOODLAND – Ryan Sturdivan is 5-foot-11, but he’s been walking much taller lately.
He’s been a celebrity at Woodland High School since Dec. 15, when the senior basketball guard sank two shots from the half-court line – including one with a second left in the game to give Woodland a 49-47 victory at Kelso High School.
Then things got really interesting.
Woodland Athletic Director Paul Huddleston sent electronic clips of the shots to the sports television network ESPN. They responded by making Sturdivan’s feat the No. 1 play on the station’s nightly feature called Top 10 Plays. The 25-second clips composed by Huddleston also put Sturdivan atop the running as of Dec. 22 for ESPN’s Best of the Best, which had previously been led by New York Giants receiver Odell Beckham Jr. and his one-handed pass catch.
That wasn’t all for Sturdivan, though. A day later, he found himself talking to an ESPN anchorman during a live broadcast. Other major television networks and publications interviewed the suddenly hot phenom, too.
“It’s been crazy,” said Huddleston. “I even got an email from a random TV station in Los Angeles wanting to use (the clip).”
“It just blew up,” agreed Woodland High School senior Aaron Shoup, Sturdivan’s longtime friend. “And it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”
Shoup, Huddleston and Woodland boys basketball coach Jason Buffum say Sturdivan is a modest teenager who hasn’t let the attention affect him. He has put up with some good-natured ribbing, though.
“They call me SportsCenter,” Sturdivan said with a chuckle before a recent practice. “It’s a blessing. I’m getting all this support from everyone.”
“Everybody loves Ryan,” Huddleston said. “He’s humble and handling it very well. Every chance he gets, he gives credit to his team.”
Sturdivan did that during an interview with The Reflector. He explained the last-second victory at Kelso by saying, “It was a team effort. I just had a hot hand and people were getting the ball to me.”
Both of his long shots against Kelso were meaningful. The first came at the end of the third quarter, and brought Woodland within three points of the hosts.
With Woodland trailing by two points and with possession of the ball with just 1 second left in the game, players huddled around their coach during a timeout. Buffum said he thought about throwing the ball long for a possible tip-in under the basket, but decided against it because of the chance of a turnover.
So he instructed Sturdivan to shoot if he was open. Buffum told him off-handedly as the timeout ended, “You’ve made one tonight, why not another?”
The sharpshooter’s 15 minutes of fame began shortly afterward, although it took the stunned crowd a few seconds to react.
“When it happened, everyone was in shock,” Huddleston said. “Did we just see this? What made it better was that both shots mattered. When I got home, I thought ‘I’ve never heard of that happening – two half-court shots in one game.’”
That initiated the clip being sent to ESPN and their quick reaction.
“Within an hour, I had a call and email from ESPN saying they’d like to run it,” Huddleston said.
Buffum was still shaking his head over the shots last week.
“It’s pretty unique for this to happen to a high school kid,” he said. “It’s something he’ll never forget.”
Sturdivan finished with 24 points in the game.
Despite his obvious skill in basketball, Sturdivan wants to play golf in college rather than basketball. He tied for third place last spring in the Washington Class 1A state golf tournament.
He said there’s a connection between golf and basketball.
“Confidence helps so much,” Sturdivan said. “I developed that in golf and brought it to basketball.”
