‘Ryno’ loves to help
As Newport Harbor High principal Sean Boulton read the name of the Classified Employee of the Year, voted on by the students, everyone in attendance looked toward the corner of the gym, where Ryan O’Donnell walked to accept the award.
O’Donnell, a 6-foot-4 gentle giant, walked slowly. With each step the applause seem to grow louder. All the students got out of their seat to give their favorite equipment manager a standing ovation three months ago at the school’s end-of-the-year pep assembly.
O’Donnell, who started working at the school as a volunteer for the football team as a sophomore in 1994, acknowledged with a wave and a smile. Throughout his time at Newport Harbor, it’s easy to see he loves the school.
So many of his days the past 21 years have been filled with devoted work for the high school that is less than a five-minute-walk from his house.
The cheers and the award made him happy, but he would continue to work with the same passion regardless.
“I’m mostly here to do the best I can and serve the students,” O’Donnell said. “But it’s nice occasionally to get your time in the light.”
O’Donnell is familiar with the high respect felt when given a standing ovation. Just last week at the football team’s kickoff dinner event, the players stood up and applauded when Brinkley announced the man he nicknamed, “Ryno.” Mostly everyone calls him that now.
Ryno also received a standing ovation as a sophomore at the end of the 1994 season when everybody couldn’t help but love the extremely shy kid who only wanted to help.
That was his first year with the program and that was when people sometimes called him a good luck charm because the Sailors won their first CIF Southern Section championship and finished the season undefeated.
Who would’ve thought quiet, big Ryno would want to stay at the school all these years? He opened up eventually and the shyness withered.
He received his varsity letter, and also has three CIF championship rings. At the following end-of-the-season football banquets, Brinkley usually referred to Ryno as his right-hand man.
People such as Brinkley and his coaching staff have become very fond of Ryno and have become like family to him.
“He’s been very supportive,” Ryno, 37, says of Brinkley. “I’ve benefited a lot from when I first started here. I was really shy and didn’t talk a whole lot. I didn’t converse with others. Eventually I started opening up.”
Ryno disregarded his shyness during the summer before his sophomore year when he approached Brinkley and asked if he could help the football team he loves so dearly in anyway he could.
“We’re fortunate that it has lasted this long,” Brinkley said of Ryno’s time with Newport Harbor Football and the school’s athletic program. “Hopefully he’s here till I’m done and long after. I know all these coaches they love him and they respect what he does for the program. He’s very dedicated. Loves the school and loves the athletic program. Every coach who has ever worked with him loves him. He’s just a great guy.”
Ryno grew up in Newport Beach, where he attended Newport Heights Elementary and Ensign Intermediate before going to Newport Harbor. He lives with his father, Mike, and mother, Rochelle, who reside in the same home they started living in 42 years ago.
Ryno and his younger brother, Shawn, were born in Hoag Hospital. Ryno loves the community, but make no mistake, his allegiance is to the football team that wears the American flag on its helmet.
He attended Newport Harbor football games while growing up in Newport Beach. He said he came up with the idea to work for the football team while he was in his adaptive physical education class as a freshman.
Ryno is blind in his left eye and his vision is not fair in his right. He also has a hearing deficiency. Because of the disabilities, he said, he’s not able to have a driver’s license. Fortunately, his job site is less than a block away from his house.
“He’s really made a home for himself there,” Mike O’Donnell said. “He loves the school, everything about it. He just doesn’t do football. He does everything.”
After graduating from Newport Harbor, Ryno went to Orange Coast College, where he eventually earned an Associate of Arts degree. During that time, he worked at Newport Harbor as a volunteer. He earned stipend pay from time to time, but he loved to work there not only for the money, putting in mostly past 40 hours a week.
In 2002, he became a Newport-Mesa Unified School District employee and officially Newport Harbor’s equipment manager. Usually, he’ll still work off the clock because he’s so dedicated to his job.
He arrives at the campus at 6 a.m. He tends to begin with locker room maintenance. He then makes his way to the weight room or out to the athletic fields to prepare those if there are upcoming games. During the day, in addition to his other myriad duties he’ll help mostly anyone, students especially, with whatever they might need.
He has a background in information technology and he’s able to help around the school with computers in need of his touch and savvy.
“He’s never considered himself disabled,” Rochelle O’Donnell said. “He never considers himself handicapped. He just does what he can do and does it the best he can.”
Everyone who knows Ryno knows that his best is delivered with a strong love for the school and a deep passion for contributing.
He’s quiet yet he somehow finds a way to make each person feel special.
He lives a rather simple life, yet it is filled with so much meaning.
“He works unbelievably hard,” said Shawn O’Donnell, who is two years younger than Ryno and played football at Newport Harbor. “He’s such a quiet role model. He doesn’t do the obvious things that you would think in terms of someone who’s being a leader and setting an example. He does things so quietly and in such an admirable way.”
Shawn says his older brother has been a role model for him. He wrote a college essay about Ryno and the strong impact he has made in his life.
Shawn graduated from UCLA and earned a Master’s degree in Australia. Now he’s home in Newport Beach working on his dissertation to earn his PhD at University of Cambridge University in the U.K. this year. He now studies archaeobotany.
“On our recent trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming,” Shawn says. “We hear someone say, ‘Hey Ryan!’ and it was one of the Newport Harbor football parents. A lot of people know him. He’s sort of a mascot that epitomizes the whole program there.”
The football players and their parents respect Ryno. They love him, as does Brinkley, who says Ryno’s the only person other than his family that is listed on his “favorites” in his cellphone.
“He doesn’t yell at anyone,” Brinkley said. “He’s a kind man who is always willing to help. People respect that.”