Junior guard Ryan Williams is Malvern Prep’s self-made rising star

If a tree fell in the forest and nobody was around to hear it, perhaps it was because Ryan Williams and his father cut it down to build a basketball court.

The duo seems almost resourceful and determined enough to pull it off.

Last season, Williams, now a 6-foot-3 junior guard at Malvern Prep, led the Friars to a share of the Inter-Ac championship while also leading the league in scoring.

Not too shabby for someone who only played junior varsity as a freshman, lost some confidence, and briefly contemplated quitting.

“It was a rough situation, but he didn’t let it [keep] him down,” James Williams said of his son. “It says a lot about his character. Some people would choose the easy way out, but he stayed the course and worked even harder so it wouldn’t happen to him again.”

His extraordinary work ethic has helped Williams, who has several Division I scholarship offers, become one of the area’s best junior guards.

“As a parent,” James Williams said, “when you see your child working hard for something, that brings out a little extra pride. He won’t be given anything. He’s worked his behind off.”

Williams and his father have been waking up at 5 a.m. to work on shooting nearly every day since middle school. Typically, they go to the YMCA near the family’s home in Phoenixville.

When the pandemic first struck, however, they had to be resourceful.

After all, Williams was an eighth grader playing junior varsity on Malvern’s high school team and he was determined to earn varsity minutes as a freshman.

So around March, 2020, father and son had to improvise.

“It was crazy,” Ryan Williams said. “There were times in our car where there would be a basketball, gloves, and a shovel, just so we could go shoot.”

Most of the outdoor parks near their home didn’t have rims, so sometimes they drove around, searching, plotting. It could take 20 to 30 minutes, Williams said, to find a suitable court even if the weather allowed for only 30 minutes of work.

“We’d have to clean snow off the court,” James Williams said. “It was freezing. It was windy. But we still went out every day.”

Williams would wear gloves to protect his hands from the elements, but also because the gloves made it more difficult to dribble, a skill he wanted to perfect.

He also ran three miles nearly every day either outside or on a treadmill, focusing on what motivated him most.

“In the beginning, it was my dad,” he said. “Sometimes I would just think about him if I was having a bad workout, ‘Like, wow, this dude is really getting up at 5 a.m. just to rebound for me, helping me get better.’ Now, it’s just how close I am to playing college basketball, and that’s always been a dream of mine.”

Perhaps that is why, after all his hard work, Williams was devastated to learn he’d play JV again as a freshman.

COVID-19 had again scuttled sports seasons during Williams’ freshman year, but the Inter-Ac eventually managed an abbreviated league schedule in February.

Williams said John Harmatuk, Malvern’s coach at the time, explained that the upperclassmen would play the five-game season because the pandemic had already taken most of that — and the previous — season from them.

Via phone, Harmatuk also explained that quarantine rules meant the JV and varsity teams had separate practices, meaning Williams didn’t even get the benefit of playing against varsity players in practice.

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“It kind of destroyed his confidence,” James Williams said. “He didn’t want to play basketball.”

Ryan Williams, who said he now understands why the upperclassmen were prioritized, contemplated quitting that season to prepare instead for the AAU season.

AAU basketball, however, was also no guarantee. Williams was unknown on the sneaker circuits and few, if any, AAU coaches would attend JV games.

Ultimately, though, Williams stayed with Malvern and continued working.

“That was some adversity, but that [lasted] for like a weekend,” James Williams said. “And we said, ‘OK, we just have to adjust.’ He will let it fuel him for the rest of his high school career.”

Williams’ mother Tina had heard good things about the Philly Pride AAU organization, which plays on the Under Armour circuit. Philly Pride coach Brandon Williams (no relation), however, had never heard of her son.

So, he invited Williams to an open workout.

The coach, now entering his seventh season with Philly Pride, quickly saw Williams’ offensive potential, but learning of him late meant there wasn’t enough room on his top-tier squad.

Instead, Williams was invited to join Philly Pride’s “select” team, which functions as its “B team.”

Fatefully, a few days after Williams accepted the invitation, another guard left Philly Pride to join a new Nike-sponsored team in New Jersey.

Williams then joined the top squad, which plays against national competition.

Having only competed against JV players for two years, however, the freshman was unprepared to defend the nation’s best guards, at least temporarily.

“The only reason I made the AAU team was because somebody quit,” Williams said. “I swear there were 10 guys and I was the 10th guy. Then during that whole summer, even during the AAU season, I was working out like crazy.”

Williams hit a few shots in his first game. In the second, he exploded for 27 points off the bench.

By the end of that first tournament, Williams said, he was among the team’s leading scorers.

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His workout regimen, the 5 a.m. sessions, and his desire to improve also impressed his new coach.

“Who does that as a freshman — as a 14-year-old?” Brandon Williams said. “And then who does that after being told you’re not good enough? That’s tremendous maturity and tremendous focus on what you want to accomplish. Some kids would easily get discouraged.”

Williams played so well during the AAU season that Temple became the first to offer him a scholarship before he ever played a minute of varsity basketball last season.

Offers from Penn, Drexel, Albany, Fairfield, Towson, and Hampton eventually followed. More are likely on the way. His AAU coach said Williams’ academic prowess (a 4.1 grade point average) is also a major attraction for college coaches.

Malvern also hired a new coach last year. Harmatuk went to the Phelps School, where he is now the basketball coach and athletic director.

Paul Romanczuk, the former longtime coach at Archbishop Carroll, took over at Malvern.

“My early impressions were: ‘Man, he is a talent,’ ” Romanczuk said of Williams, who had worked even harder that offseason. He wanted to remove any doubt that he belonged with the varsity team.

Building an early bond with his new coach also helped.

“The amount of trust that [Romanczuk] had in me before the season and then going through games, I’ve never experienced that before because I went from not playing at all as a freshman to the last dude on my Philly Pride team going into that year,” Williams said, “so a coach having trust in me and knowing my ability for the first time in high school was really special to me. I felt like that really helped me have a pretty good sophomore season.”

All Williams did was lead the Inter-Ac in scoring and help the Friars share the title with Penn Charter.

This season, Romanczuk, a former standout player at Penn, has challenged Williams to play point guard. The results have been a mixture of progress and learning curves.

“We knew the journey wouldn’t be linear,” Romanczuk said. “Some kids grow up and it’s natural for them to set the table before they eat themselves, so to speak. He’s getting to learn that.”

Williams and senior forward Andrew Phillips, who also played JV during the shortened pandemic season, have the Friars (11-5, 3-1) in contention for another crown.

Despite Tuesday night’s 55-52 loss to visiting Penn Charter, Malvern could get revenge when the team’s meet again Feb. 7. Williams led all scorers with 18 points Tuesday. Phillips added 17.

Williams, who is superstitious about his game-day routine, will likely continue to rise before the sun for his daily workouts before school.

If in-game struggles arise along the way, he will probably hear his father’s most frequent refrain.

“His famous line is ‘trust your work,’ ” Williams said. “So whenever I’m in doubt, I just remember we’ve been shooting at 5 a.m. like every day. ‘Ryan, it’ll come to you.’ ”