A ‘whirlwind’ from the start: The Hilinski family’s experience watching Ryan’s Year 1
Kym Hilinski was cleaning out a drawer in her family’s house when she found it.
It was a set of goals. Her son, Ryan, writes them out before each football season. When this set was compiled, he was just embarking on his first college season at the University of South Carolina, competing for a backup spot behind a fourth-year starter.
“One of his goals was to see the field,” Kym Hilinski said. “He said, ‘Well, I definitely saw the field.’”
These days feel a long way from when she joked about hoping, as a mom, that he could go be safe and through a career with four redshirt seasons at South Carolina. Then the starter, Jake Bentley, made it to the end of the first game of 2019 before breaking a bone in his foot.
It set off a whirlwind of a weekend and thrust Ryan Hilinski, a true freshman, into the starting lineup. Hilinski himself ending up dealing with multiple injuries. And his parents were there, guiding and supporting him though a season where he got an unexpected chance and suddenly had a whole lot on his plate.
They’d come across the country from California for a new beginning, and so much came so quickly. Looking back, it was a crucible of sorts. They learned and came through as a family who had already been through a great deal of taking on so much of the unexpected.
“He’s grown up a tremendous amount in one year,” father Mark Hilinski said. “I think he’s in such a better place right now than he was.”
That weekend for USC, the Hilinskis
Mark and Kym Hilinski knew the mechanics of splitting time well.
When their late son Tyler was at Washington State University, they sometimes had to balance Ryan’s high school games and trips to Pullman. On that first weekend of South Carolina’s 2019 season, they were again splitting time.
Ryan’s older brother was taking the Medical College Admission Test that morning and the Gamecocks game, in Charlotte against North Carolina, kicked off at 2 p.m.
“Kym stayed here” in the Columbia area, Mark said. “I went up there. Kym ran up at halftime, drove up to Charlotte to see him. We waved and did whatever, and then she took off back home.”
South Carolina suffered a stunning upset loss that day. Bentley slipped on the game’s final play as a Tar Heel landed awkwardly on his foot.
As Mark Hilinski drove back from Charlotte, he got a text from his son, “Jake really hurt his foot.”
The timing was only a few weeks after Ryan Hilinski had edged Dakereon Joyner for the backup QB job, a competition that had been one of the top storylines of the offseason.
Ryan Hilinski had been focused on the life of a backup. One of the quirks of the position: It’s all-or-nothing, to a degree. Second-string QBs don’t rotate in like a backup running back does. The starting quarterback gets the snaps, and the backup waits and works. The third-stringer, meanwhile, gets scant practice reps.
And as the weekend wore on, it became clear things were going to change.
“There was a lot of consternation around Jake’s health,” Mark Hilinski said. “And Ryan was getting phone calls to be prepared, etc., etc. And then when we found out, I think on Sunday, he had really broken it clearly badly, they said, ‘Ryan. you’re going to be starting next week.’ And then it all sort of changed again.”
They admitted, it all felt like a whirlwind.
There’s not much joy in getting a starting job because a senior went down. Losing the game was a surprise. Things were unsettled all around.
And up next on the Gamecocks’ schedule was the tune-up with Charleston Southern and a visit from highly rated Alabama. That brings a different sort of nerves.
“Was I nervous?” Kym Hilinski said. “Absolutely, as a freshman, playing in the SEC. Once he got on the field and once we saw that he was doing well in the first game that he started in, I was so happy for him happy for our team. But I’m always going to be a nervous mom watching him play.”
The grind, and then the Georgia game
The first game against Charleston Southern was an emotional one, to say the least.
Mark and Kym Hilinski had not been to a college game at all since Tyler’s death. As Ryan took the field that day, Kym inadvertently yelled, “Let’s go, Tyler!”
“I couldn’t believe I did that,” Kym Hilinski said. “I think it was just my worry, and you know just closing my eyes and seeing Tyler out there, too.”
That game went well. South Carolina dominated an overmatched team. Mark Hilinski said Ryan was probably the healthiest he’d ever been and was well-prepared by Dan Werner, a veteran quarterback coach the family trusted. It allowed him to wash out the taste of a first game, take a deep breath and turn to top-5 Alabama.
That showdown vs. the Crimson Tide brought a different sort of buzz. The Gamecocks couldn’t hold back an offense stocked with NFL players. Ryan Hilinski was asked to throw more than 50 times, and he put up 300 yards, threw a beauty of a touchdown pass to Shi Smith and kept the Gamecocks within striking distance into the second half.
It was that day the school started calling on fans to raise three fingers at the start of the third quarter, a gesture to remember Tyler, who wore the No. 3 jersey in college and whose number Ryan shares.
But some turbulence was coming.
An elbow issue and a Missouri team that relied heavily on the run led to a rough game in Ryan’s first road start. The team bounced back to beat Kentucky, but was sitting at 2-3 heading into a trip to Georgia. That day in Athens proved to be a dramatic afternoon for the team and the family, complete with both an upset win and a harrowing moment.
Ryan Hilinski had helped stake the Gamecocks to a 17-10 lead against the No. 3 team in the country when it happened. Georgia linebacker Alan Anderson tripped over the leg of Gamecocks left tackle Sadarius Hutcherson, sending Anderson flying.
He came down flush into the side of Ryan Hilinski’s braced knee. He was down for a few moments.
”
Soon after the injury, Ryan sat on the trainers table with his leg braced up. He looked at his mom in the stands and gave her a thumbs up, trying to let he know he was OK. She doesn’t remember it that well, but saw it as a moment when a child tries to calm a parent.
After all, all moms worry. Sometimes the son who is out there trying to dodge massive pass rushers is the one doing the reassuring.
“I remember leaving the stadium because I just couldn’t, I just couldn’t watch anymore,” Kym Hilinski said. “I was so worried I didn’t know if they were going to put him back in.”
Both parents were receiving updates from USC trainer Clint Haggard and team doctor Jeff Guy.
“Just you know, ‘Hey, looks OK,’” Mark Hilinski said. “’He’s OK, mom’ — you know, that kind of stuff. And then we would ask more questions that they couldn’t answer, like what is it? So that’s somewhat helpful and calming.”
More than an hour later, outside the stadium Kym heard the low roar, not loud enough to indicate a home win, but a sign her son’s team pulled it out. When the game finished, Mark and family took different paths through a stunned, slow-moving Georgia faithful. Kym tried to guide her husband through the litany of buses around the campus.
They was there to meet Ryan and share a few words.
“There he was trying to put me at ease,” Kym Hilinski said. “Helping me not worry, but that’s typical Ryan.”
The rest of the season showcased something else about Ryan: toughness.
Despite a knee injury that ended up requiring minor surgery at season’s end, he was out there the next week, and the week after that. Ryan Hilinski, who the school did not make available for an interview, had to throw a lot and took a lot of hits, sometimes having to limp off the field as family looked on from the stands.
And some of the memories form that first night after the USC win over Georgia stuck with his father.
“A lot of these injuries are fixable, you know. It’s part of the game,” Mark Hilinski said. “You get banged up. You go and get treatment and you heal. But late at night … take after the Georgia game, I mean, he was in a lot of pain, right? So that’s hard when you see your son, he can’t fall asleep because he’s excited about the game but the injury was bothering him. That’s, that’s pretty tough.”
Staying away from talking ball
On a game day, Mark Hilinski can almost feel the plates spinning.
He’s been a football parent for a long time. He knows the pressure on quarterbacks at every level. On top of that, the family name will always be linked to Hilinski’s Hope, the family’s foundation that came about after the suicide of Ryan’s older brother Tyler.
It means the TV broadcast will eventually show the family in the stands. A serious voice will again tell their story. They might even go on camera and talk about it.
It’s a lot in a moment where they might want to step back for a bit.
“Really, that hour and a half, two hours of football, you just want to focus on Ryan,” Mark Hilinski said, “and maybe your friends or family that came with you, and so I think there was a lot of plates spinning for our family for those 10 weeks.”
To a degree, the stakes of those games changed in subtle ways for the Hilinskis. In their sons’ younger days, they could let their emotions ride on the wins and losses. But that mellowed of late, tempered by the hard case of reality.
Losses can now mean lost jobs for coaches or others around the program. People they grew to know might not be part of their lives after a bad season.
Winning becomes a salve of sorts. It makes questions of injuries or playing time less important. Players think they can win every game, even against the longest of odds.
And for a mom and dad, it informs the way their child feels, for better or worse.
“As parents, all we care about is his happiness,” Mark Hilinski said. “But his happiness is contingent somewhat on, not somewhat, a great deal on the success of the football team. So you have to sort of split the difference somehow and be the parent and take care of your child and make sure he’s getting everything he needs. And you also have to understand that he’s going to be unhappy and disappointed and worried and nervous, like anybody when he’s struggling or the team struggling.”
It’s something many parents of players go through, but it’s also just another plate.
Although the Hilinskis moved across the country from California, in the course of the season they only get to see their son so much.
College players have responsibilities that can run from dawn into the late evening, between practice, meetings, film, class, study hall and everything else. Mark and Kym said they usually had a meal with Ryan on Sundays. Sometimes he’d be able to make it over to their house on Lake Murray.
Another guiding force for Ryan was Kelly. Their bond as brothers is a close one. While doing media interviews in the spring, Ryan mentioned that he sometimes stays with Kelly during the year.
“They’re close, playing video games, just kind of just talking, texting, FaceTiming with each other,” Kym Hilinski said. “That’s really important to them, and you know I’m thankful that they have that relationship.”
Mark Hilinski added that Kelly could share the perspective of having been a college quarterback and what it was like to go through injuries. He saw Kelly’s nearby apartment as “a nice place for Ryan to be able to go.”
At times, a nice place to get away is necessary. Life as a quarterback can knock people around emotionally.
Players at that position become avatars for a team’s success and struggles. Because of their singular nature and the focus on them as starters, the calls for them to be benched come the loudest.
The first season made Ryan Hilinski navigate that, to a degree. Talented backups are heralded, perhaps in a way that’s not fair. Early success garners praise. Team struggles and growing pains curdle the commentary from fans.
“You get a lot of credit you don’t deserve, and you get a lot of feedback and negative comments, where you don’t really deserve those either,” Mark Hilinski said. “But it’s part of the job, and I think watching Ryan having to navigate that part of it might have been just about as as difficult.”
A parent or coach can talk about not looking at social media. But staying off completely, or not having a comment slip through, that’s near impossible.
For Ryan Hilinski, there was a process in learning about the way the world saw him, maybe being bothered a little but growing through it. As parents they could only pass on a message about focus.
Key in on effort, effort on the field and effort in preparation. If everything is given, and you learn from when things go wrong, you’ve done what’s been asked and more.
Another go of it
As the Hilinski parents spoke about their son getting back on the field, one could detect a certain lightness in their voices.
That first-year grind was behind their son. It wasn’t as successful as anyone had hoped. It featured some trials by fire.
“The season didn’t go as as Ryan had wanted,” Kym Hilinski said. “But I’m just glad that, you know, that he walked away and had a surgery and he’s very healthy now.”
Mark Hilinski mentioned that his son took to some of the changes around him. Ryan likes his new offensive coordinator (Mike Bobo) and his new strength coach (Paul Jackson). He’s been adapting, learning a new playbook and working on foot speed while school was out. Everything else is part of the natural cycle of football.
There is the looming question of the coronavirus pandemic. At the moment games are still on, but that is a fragile situation, and might well be even after a season commences.
Kym Hilinski said her son truly believes USC will be playing in the fall. Each small bit of news about a canceled part of practice or another conference moving its season to the spring sparks some concern, but it’s not something parents can give extra focus to.
They’ve had a long time to recharge from everything that came to pass in the fall. There’s not too much need to fret about the future.
It helps that Ryan Hilinski is a person adept at filling his time. He earned good grades his first year. He joined the SEC leadership council. He does small, sometimes random things to help others, like driving across the state to help victims of a tornado. And he’s digging in on football all the time.
So his parents see their role as not hammering even more on the game. As the season approaches, games become something more tangible than just names on a schedule. That’s what Ryan Hilinski might see. So his mom and dad make sure when they see him, the first subject isn’t about sports, but something else entirely.
“I approach the season the same way I do every season,” Kym Hilinski said. “Just trying to get him ready mentally, physically, doing my job as a mom, supporting him loving him, always having food ready, always having a hug and a kiss and an ‘I love you’ there for him.
“That’s my job and and that will always be my job as a mom whether he’s a football player, a quarterback. Whether he stands on the sideline, whatever it is, I’ll always approached every single day with Ryan the same way I have since he was a little guy.”
