Journey To Jadwin - Ryan Schwieger
3/2/2021
A multi-time Ivy League Player of the Week. Princeton’s assist leader in 2019-20. Co-founder of the Poll Hero Project. Ryan Schwieger ’20 left a lasting legacy on and off the court at Princeton.
For the first five years of his life, Schwieger lived in Lincoln, Nebraska. At the age of five, Schwieger’s father changed jobs and the family moved to Weddington, North Carolina.
Despite growing up in the ‘Tar Heel State,’ Schwieger’s family bled purple and gold. The majority of his family lived in California and were Los Angeles Lakers fanatics, this pushed Schwieger to the game of basketball at an early age. He still remembers some of his earliest basketball memories well.
“I was at one of these little kid camps and they didn't know how good anyone was,” said Schwieger. “I was coming off the bench and when I got in, I made a really good play right away. I remember it was a reverse layup, when you're really young that's pretty impressive."
After I made it, everyone was like, ‘Whoa!’ I was like, ‘Okay, well maybe I'm good at this.’Ryan Schwieger
Given the Laker fandom that existed in his family, it’s only natural that Schwieger’s earliest basketball idols were Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant. He was also heavily influenced by one of his youth basketball coaches, Bill Carnahan.
“He coached me from when I was in middle school all the way until my junior year of high school for AAU,” proclaimed Schiweger. “I was a pretty tall kid, but he knew that the way I wanted to play was as a guard. He didn't make me be a big or anything like that, he just let me play and get better. If I think of one person who really made me fall in love with the game and helped me out, it was him."
Ironically, Carnahan’s son ended up going to Schwieger’s rival high school.
It wasn’t just NBA players and coaches who were influential in his development, but also a select group of his peers. One of the most influential of all was Timmy Havens, who met Schwieger in sixth grade. The duo went on to play together all through school, along with AAU.
Schwieger also met Sean Morrison in sixth grade, and while Morrison changed schools, he would play with Schwieger for years in AAU. Another was Casey, who also played AAU with Schwieger.
“I was a point guard,” proclaimed Schwieger. “If I was Magic, just because I was a big point guard, Timmy would have been James Worthy because he was forward who could shoot. My guy Casey would have been Byron Scott.”
Along with his “big three,” Schwieger experienced some early successes that accelerated his love of basketball. In middle school, you had to be exceptional as a seventh-grader to make the eighth-grade team.
“Me and boys Timmy and Sean made the team in seventh grade,” said Schwieger. “The older guys were like ‘hey, you guys aren't going to play, just get used to it.’ We ended up playing all the time, we were starters in middle school, it was a big deal."
We thought we were super-cool just because we were playing in seventh grade. That’s when I really, really fell in love with basketball and really thought I could be good.Ryan Schwieger
That momentum followed Schwieger to basketball powerhouse Weddington High School.
“In the summer we'd go lift then go out on the track and run and then go into the gym and do a workout,” said Schwieger. "For months out of every summer we did it and going through it was brutal. No one wants to put in that type of work during the summer but then during the season, we'd have the most fun because we had gotten so much better.”
At Weddington, Schwieger played point guard and looked to emulate one of his idols, Magic Johnson.
“We’d play a two-three zone and I'd be the guy under the basket,” explained Schwieger. “If they scored or we got a rebound, I’d turn around and take the ball up the court. I was a point guard, I was a scorer and I wasn't just passing all the time.”
Along with high school ball, Schwieger also played AAU. He started off playing for a local team until his last summer when he joined Pro Skills Basketball, now known as Team Curry. Schwieger looks back on his AAU days fondly. In his early AAU days, Schwieger’s team was not loaded with Division I talent but rather all-around athletes. Two of his teammates went on to play basketball at the Division II level, while several played football in college.
“It was such a fun team because we were all pretty good athletes and we played well together,” said Schwieger. “We loved playing together, had so many great memories and played in so many fun tournaments. We went to a national tournament, it wasn't the big nationals but it was some tournament that called itself nationals in the eighth grade. We went to that tournament three times in a row and lost every time."
In eighth grade we won and thought we were the national champions, even though it wasn't a real national tournament. We didn't know that and we totally thought we were the best team in the country.Ryan Schwieger
While he was making a name for himself on the court at both the high school and AAU levels, academics were also a priority. Schwieger’s mother was an English teacher and stressed the importance of getting good grades, doing your homework and the best you can in class. Despite this, attending an Ivy League school was not always on his radar.
“When I started getting recruited, I really had no idea where to go and hadn’t put that much thought into it,” said Schwieger. “I'd think about every school that would call me. Once the Ivy League schools started reaching out, Princeton especially, I realized that this is a special opportunity. Not everyone gets this opportunity so I knew that was something I really couldn't pass up.”
It was Associate Head Coach Brett MacConnell who made the first call to Schwieger, eventually getting him to visit campus. Princeton was one of three Ivy League schools he visited, but it was Princeton that made the biggest impact.
I really liked it between the current players and the coaches. I felt like it was just the place for me, I totally belonged.Ryan Schwieger
“I went up maybe twice unofficially with my dad,” said Schwieger. "The second time I went they were practicing before going to Italy that summer. I remember hanging out with the guys and thinking that this is what I could see myself doing, not just the basketball stuff. I remember we were watching Last Chance U in the dorm room, it was so much fun. I remember hanging out with Amir, Myles, Devin and all those guys. They were super-cool and I felt like this is a place for me.”
Schwieger has had an outstanding career at Princeton. Twice named the Ivy League Player of the Week, he led the Tigers in assists per game and was their third-leading scorer in 2019-20. He exits on a high-note against Princeton’s biggest rival, the University of Pennsylvania, as the Tigers have defeated the Quakers on four-straight occasions. Princeton fans will never forget Schwieger’s dismantling of Penn in the 2019-20 season, on January 4, 2020, he led the Tigers to victory with 27 points on 10-for-16 shooting then backed up on January 10, 2020, with 16 points and four rebounds.
Despite not getting to play his senior year and in the post-season of his junior year due to COVID-19, he accumulated 483 points, 168 rebounds and 101 assists throughout his career.
While there were plenty of individual highlights for Schwieger, it was the team accomplishments and moments spent with his brothers that mean the most to him.
My favorite game ever was when we played Dartmouth at Dartmouth my sophomore year.Ryan Schwieger
“Coach Henderson was sick, he had to leave but at first everything seemed normal," proclaimed Schwieger. "Jump went up then at the first media timeout Coach Henderson wasn’t there. We were confused because he was there the whole time and then right when the game started, he was throwing up in the bathroom and was really sick.
What I love about that was that everyone had to do something different. It felt like we were just all kind of figuring it out on the fly, everyone was involved. The guys who didn't play as much were standing up, helping B-Mac with calling out what play we were running and how to guard this and that. In timeouts, it was like there were 15 guys talking. It was one of the most fun games and we ended up winning, which clinched a spot in the Ivy League tournament.”
Schwieger also lists the team’s trip to California his freshman year as a treasured memory, and for good reason. Along with the team bonding experience that came with those trips, Princeton also defeated the University of Southern California, who were ranked top-10 in the AP National Preseason Rankings.
The Tigers also visited Hawaii Schwieger’s freshman year, and it was here that he had his most memorable off-court experiences.
“We had an off day with no practice and nothing scheduled all day,” explained Schwieger. We all rented these mopeds and were riding them all over one of the islands of Hawaii. Since we had nothing to do all day, this went on from 9 a.m. to dinner. We were just cruising around. It was certainly one of the most fun moments off the court, it was hilarious.”
That was far from the only adventure Schwieger and the Tigers experienced on that trip.
“We were going to go see this waterfall and dinner was in an hour,” said Schwieger. “We thought we weren’t too far from it, but we didn't know the waterfall was like a mile back into the woods. We thought it'd be right there. So, we started walking but we didn't realize it was so deep. By the time we got there, we realized like we were going to be late. It started raining and it was dark so we were running through these woods because we needed to get back to the hotel for dinner. Thankfully, we made it.”
It is safe to say Schwieger made the most of his opportunities on and off the court at Princeton. One of his most well-known off court endeavors was starting the Poll Hero Project, an all-volunteer organization with the sole purpose of recruiting more young people to work the polls on election day. He, and the other Princeton students involved, were inspired by Laura Wooten, a Wu dining hall employee who passed away earlier in 2020. She was the longest working poll worker in American history
Leadership and initiative.
— Princeton Basketball (@PrincetonMBB) August 13, 2020
Extremely proud of Ryan Schwieger for co-founding the @pollheroproject!
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Princeton is so good at giving its students everything they need to pursue whatever it is they want to pursue.Ryan Schwieger
“Often it’s through connections and through people," explained Schwieger. "For example, with Poll Hero, I remember Steve Mills was beyond helpful with reaching out to people in the NBA and connecting me with them. They made it easy and told me they’re there for whatever I needed help with.”
The Poll Hero Project garnered significant media attention, as it was covered by several prominent media outlets. Schwieger even appeared on Fox News.
The value of the Princeton network shone brighter than ever for Schwieger with the onset of COVID-19 and its accompanying challenges.
With anything we needed, those guys were the first ones to say that they're there for us. We’re incredibly lucky to have the Princeton network and especially the Princeton basketball network. I would have a hard time believing that other schools have the same network, so it's really, really helpful.Ryan Schwieger
Looking ahead, Schwieger will be doing a grad year at Loyola University-Chicago. Beyond that, he’d like to play professionally then coach once his playing days are over. Working in an NBA front office is also something appealing to him.
“I've had some really good coaches in my playing career,” said Schwieger. “I understand the impact they have on kids growing up and then young men. That's invaluable and I think if I could give that back and pass that along then I'd be doing something important.”
A deep thinker, it should come as no shock that Schwieger has been an avid reader since his high school days.
“I used to read all the classic books,” proclaimed Schwieger. “If it had a popular name, if it was old and sounded fancy, I would read it because I thought it would be cool. Now, the one genre I really love is biographies and autobiographies, those are my favorite.”
The brightest of futures lies ahead for Schwieger, but he will never forget his time at Princeton. The experiences he accumulated along with the relationships he built will last a lifetime, that’s what he is most thankful for.
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