Ryan DeMeno doesn’t score a lot of goals as a hockey player. He’s not even the best player on the team.
And yet, his contributions to the Bayonne Hockey Association and life itself may be beyond anybody’s ability to measure.
Ryan, who is suffering autism, defied odds and dismal expectations to become not only a good hockey player, but earned a place in mainstream society.
For this reason, the Bayonne Hockey Association Inc. – as part of the Hockey Across America program – nominated Ryan for the “Local Hockey Heroes” program.
“Ryan was a perfect choice as our Local Hockey Hero.” – James Flynn
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“For all players, hockey is a sport about perseverance and overcoming obstacles, because just learning to skate well enough to play is quite a challenge,” said James Flynn, secretary/registrar of the Bayonne Hockey Association. “Ryan was a perfect choice as our Local Hockey Hero because that idea of overcoming obstacles and persevering is part of everything he does, on and off the ice, and all of our players can learn from his example, whether or not they know he has Asperger’s Syndrome or know what it is.”
A way to interact
Ryan started hockey when he was relatively young. His parents sought some means of social interaction, something that could give him a sense of belonging, and he succeeded beyond their most remote expectations.
Terri DeMeno – Ryan’s mother – said her son suffers from a developmental challenge known as Asperger’s Syndrome, which is among a number of ailments associated with autism.
Terri said she believes early intervention helped give her son a boost.
She and her husband, Randy, who had a previous child free of autism, didn’t think anything was wrong until they realized Ryan wasn’t talking.
“He couldn’t express himself,” Terri said.
When they got the diagnosis of Ryan, they began to realize they were in for the fight of their lives.
Some doctors suggested Ryan be put into an institution, and he wasn’t even yet 3 years old.
His parents buckled down for the long fight, calling in favors and seeking out professionals that would provide them with some path to recovery rather than the hopeless prognosis doctors were handing them.
Randy said they took Ryan to doctors and kept getting the idea that there was no hope, an unacceptable answer to both parents.
“We knew, however, if we didn’t do something about his speech, all bets were off,” he said.
One of the key people who came into Ryan’s life was Jeri Gramegna, a behavioral therapist who helped him work through many of the issues.
“Every case is different,” Gramegna said. “Each person has different abilities.”
The parents knew Ryan perceived the world, and reacted to it, but they needed to break through his wall of silence.
“When I asked Terri what she wanted, she said ‘I want Ryan to be able to say Mommy,’ and three months later, she got a Christmas present from him when he did,” Gramegna said.
Speech and social interaction are Ryan’s biggest challenges.
A lot of these challenges were in the communication area, most notably speech and social interaction. And to overcome these, he began 40 hours a week of therapy that included a significant amount of tutoring.
Getting mainstream
While Ryan did start out in a special school, his parents decided to move him to a regular public school. By age 7, he transitioned to a mainstreamed, regular public school, where he was aided by the team-teaching approach to education.
While Ryan has developed a good relationship with his two sisters – a sibling rivalry with his elder sister and a protective attitude toward his younger sister – his parents and Gramegna felt he needed something else to further integrate him into the community, a social activity that would bring him into contact with others so he could continue to learn to interact.
His parents learned something else in this long process – tough love. The theory is that many parents coddle their children, not realizing that they are actually holding their children back from achieving.
Terri said the hardest lesson she had to learn was to love Ryan enough to be hard, and so their house had strict rules, not only for Ryan, but also for his two sisters, as well.
About the time Ryan turned 8, Gramegna and Terri decided he needed some activity that would allow him social interaction with other people. But Randy, Ryan’s father, was a little startled when Ryan said he wanted to play hockey.
Avid fans of the New York Rangers professional hockey team, the family frequently took Ryan to games, from which he apparently got the idea.
Randy had no idea of what would happen when Ryan got out onto the ice. But if Ryan wanted to try it, Randy would support the effort, even if Ryan failed.
Ryan didn’t fail. He learned surprisingly quickly how to maneuver on the ice. Over the course of time, he became such a talented skater that he frustrated opponents, often literally skating in circles around them.
While his eye and hand coordination didn’t give him an advantage in scoring points, Ryan made an incredible defensive player and the coaches frequently put him against the other team’s best scorer.
By age 12, Ryan and a group of his friends from hockey (yes, hockey actually was a key reason Ryan made some long-term friendships) were part of a Travel-Rec team, even playing in a league.
This year, Ryan continues to play for the Bayonne Rangers Bantam B team in both checking and non-checking games.
Although he goes to school in Staten Island where he lives, he is among other teammates from the Bayonne league. On “dress down days,” he gets to walk through the halls wearing the uniformed shirt of the team to which he belongs.
“Other kids say hello to him when they see him in the halls,” Terri said. “And they mean it.”
At this point in his life, Ryan is focused on keeping up his grades so that he can go to college.
“He will go to college,” Terri said.
Ryan has an 89 grade point average in school, and though he struggles with math and science, he has the uncanny abilities of a savant. He never forgets an appointment (unless he chooses to), and if you tell him a date up to 10 years in the past or the future, he can tell you what day of the week it falls on.
What does he want to be?
Ryan at the moment said he is either going to be a zoo keeper or work for Disney.