Tough Love

As a youngster, Ryan Vassil suffered through a lot of miserable games of basketball with his older brother and father.
But it’s made him the player he is today.
Matt, who is six years Ryan’s senior and played college basketball, and his father Mike were unrelenting when they battled in the driveway. Matt would play one-on-one with Matt or “horse” with his dad.
Still, whether it was knocking down shots in horse or those intense games of one-on-one, Ryan would keep coming back and trying to win.
Now a senior at Abington Heights, Ryan is a shooting guard for the Comets and combines with Ross Danzig, Luke Peterson and Nathan Basalyga to run the offense.
“My brother definitely made me better by not taking it easy on me,” Ryan said. “As a kid, I used to get frustrated but especially my dad knew that it was good for me and it helped me later on in my career. It paid off.”
At this writing Vassil, a second-year-starter, is one of the Lackawanna League Division 1’s top scoring threats. He’s the Comets’ second-leading scorer (behind Danzig), averaging 12.5 points a game.
Despite his success, he never beat his brother at one-on-one or his father at horse.
“I could probably beat Matt at one-on-one now because he’s a little bit slower than he used to be,” Ryan joked about his 6-foot-5-inch, 24-year-old brother. “I was never able to beat my dad at horse either.”
Ryan said those games of horse certainly impacted his free-throw shooting abilities. From the line this year, he is 14 of 17, making him one of the league’s top free-throw shooters.
“My dad always told me no one’s guarding you, you should be able to make them all the time,” Ryan said. “I always try to practice them a lot.”

Prepping for college
On the court, Ryan isn’t the tallest player at 6-foot-0. However, he prides himself on his speed, ball handling and defensive abilities.
With plans to play in college, right now his focus is on releasing his shots quicker. He’s also starting to hit the weight room more in hopes of bulking up his lean 165-pound frame.
Ryan plans to major in business and is looking at colleges including Suffolk University, Bethany College, West Chester and West Liberty.
“I’m trying to prepare for college and trying to have a quicker release,” he said. “I’m a little bit undersized. I’m just trying to get stronger overall.”
He’s made basketball a major priority the past few years, giving up his spot on the Abington Heights golf team after his sophomore year so he could stay focused on the court all year round. He still plays golf for fun, but he wanted to commit fully to improving as a basketball player.
“I just wanted to focus more on basketball,” Ryan said. “I would golf all summer and AAU basketball goes all summer. It conflicted a lot. I just decided to stick to basketball.”

Spreading the misery
Ryan has been taking the misery his older brother and father taught him, and using it on his little brother.
Rather than feel bad for John, a sophomore on the jayvee team, and go easy on him in games of one-on-one, he tries to do what’s best for John: be unmerciful.
“After all the years of me getting beat up, I had to do the same to him,” Ryan said. “I’m trying to help John just like Matt helped me.”

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