Tom Ryan was a month away from coaching his third CAA Championship team in his ninth season as the head wrestling coach at Hofstra when his life changed in a way no young father can imagine. 

Ryan’s 5-year-old son Teague died suddenly in his arms on February 16, 2004.

“I don’t think there’s a dad anywhere in the country that I know, none of the people I surround myself with, who wouldn’t gladly exchange their life for the life of their child,” Ryan says of the pain and loss he felt in the months following Teague’s death.

As an elite college wrestler under legendary Iowa coach Dan Gable, Ryan thought he’d known suffering and sacrifice . . . but Teague’s sudden, unexplained passing was something different entirely.

“Until something touches us personally, we don’t necessarily pay much attention to it,” Ryan says. “And the loss of a son touched me in a way that was far beyond any pain I’ve ever experienced.

“But what happened with losing my son . . . caused me to stop and quiet the world and assess something I’d never assessed, which is, ‘Where is he?’” he explains. “That’s when the journey began, a journey of logically, I think, pursuing whether God is real or not.”

That journey, and Ryan’s examination of what leads to true greatness in sport or in life, is the focus of his new book, Chosen Suffering. In the book Ryan shares the deeply personal experience of not only losing a son, but of sharing that loss with his wife Lynette and their three surviving children Jordan, Jake, and Mackenzie.

It was Jake, then just 8 years old himself, who put things into perspective for the grieving father.

“When we came back from the hospital after Teague had passed, he met us at the car door,” Ryan recalls. “We pulled in and he came running down the driveway and said, ‘Dad, where is he?’ And I was 36, leading people and I didn’t know where he was.

“I really didn’t know. I just knew that dinner would be different going forward, that we would all have this emptiness in us, this hole in our hearts.”

At the time, doctors and medical experts thought Teague died from a disorder called Long Q-T Syndrome that caused an electrical malfunction in his young heart, but tests were unable to confirm the diagnosis. For nearly a decade the Ryans were left to wonder what had taken their baby boy from them.

Because he had a family counting on him, the up-and-coming coach realized he needed to find some deeper answers to Jake’s question about where his brother was.

“When we’re in enough pain – and unfortunately it’s pain more than anything – to stop the world and say, let me try to make sense of all of this, I came up with two options: one is chance, and the other is God,” Ryan says. “Either we got to planet earth by chance, a random explosion of some sort, or we’re made by a Creator that loved us.”

After reading as many books as he could find, exploring both alternatives, “pouring my life into it,” Ryan says he came to one logical conclusion: “I used an open mind, and I studied and read about people who were brilliant and what they found, and ultimately I had to make a choice. There were facts on chance and there were facts on God, but ultimately, I believe with every ounce of me, I would die for this, that there is a God who loves us and wants the best for us.”

Getting Answers & Saving Lives

Ryan says that journey of deep philosophical exploration has led him to a place where he no longer believes in chance. To illustrate the concept, he points to the lives Teague may help save now more than 16 years later through transformational research being done at the Dorothy M. Davis Heart and Lung Research Institute at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

Early in his tenure as head coach at Ohio State, Ryan met and became friends with another Tom Ryan: Thomas Ryan, MD, the executive director of Ohio State’s Richard M. Ross Heart Hospital and director of The Ohio State University Heart and Vascular Center. Aside from sharing a name, the two Thomas Ryans were both from New York, and were both wrestlers.

Dr. Ryan introduced Coach Ryan to a man who wanted to help bring the Ryan family some answers about their late son’s unexplained passing: Peter Mohler, Ph.D., the director of the Davis Heart and Lung Research Institute. Mohler’s specific research interests lie in the cause and treatment of abnormal heart rhythms and heart failure.

After hearing Teague’s story, Dr. Mohler saw a mystery that fit right into his area of expertise, and the opportunity to help prevent other families from going through the kind of loss the Ryans suffered. 

Through what Ryan describes as “a miracle,” the Suffolk County coroner still had Teague’s blood stored, and although Dr. Mohler warned there was a very slim chance that the sample would be usable enough to get good DNA from it, he wanted to try. 

“He gets the blood and wow, they have the blood; they test the blood, wow, the blood was incredible, they got great DNA off of it,” Ryan says. “Now there’s like 10 million mice being tested, and they’ve found a gene that might be involved.” 

Mohler and his team have discovered more than 20 gene variants related to cardiac arrhythmia and heart failure by studying cases like Teague’s from around the world. It took two years of research to find that Teague had a genetic variation that had not previously been associated with abnormal heart rhythms that sometimes lead to death.

That single variant gene was, in essence, why Teague died on that February day 16 years ago. Discovering that gene led to three years of additional research at the Institute and published research that may lead to life-saving diagnoses for kids with the variation.

“I don’t understand it all, but I know this: I know that my life has moved to a place where I don’t believe in chance,” Ryan says. “I don’t believe in chance meeting these people [at Ohio State]. Basically Teague’s life, even though it was only 5 years, his life is impacting the lives of others through Ohio State, the Medical Center, and their genetics office with Dr. Moeller.

“We’re just blessed and grateful that, listen, if he saves one other person’s life then nothing could bring us greater joy than that.”

Chosen Suffering

Going through that period of darkness and coming out the other side changed how Tom Ryan approaches his life as a coach of elite collegiate and world-class athletes. His teams at Hofstra won six conference titles, including one just a month after Teague’s death.

Since coming to Ohio State, he’s coached three Big Ten championship teams, five NCAA runners-up and the 2015 national champions, not to mention numerous 22 individual conference championships and 12 individual NCAA title victories.

“You get a lot of parents who ask the question, ‘Hey does my son have what it takes to make it at the next level?’” he explains. “The answer is, well, how much is he willing to suffer?”

Ryan calls that willingness to sacrifice “chosen suffering.” It’s something different from the tragedy he and his family felt in 2004, but what Ryan describes as a “gritty word for love and sacrifice.”

“How much is he willing to sacrifice, how much love does he have for this?” he asks of potential Buckeyes. “The underlying premise is that chosen suffering, going the extra mile, is something I’ve seen in everyone I’ve been around who has excelled at life and wrestling.”

Ryan’s book Chosen Suffering goes on sale May 17.

Andy Vance is a Columbus-based journalist who covers the Ohio State University wrestling program for Eleven Warriors, the largest independent sports site on the internet for Ohio State news, analysis, and community. He is co-host of the site’s Eleven Dubcast podcast. Follow him on Twitter @AndyVance.