College Hoops and Asheville School Roots: Ryan Soulis ’23 Reflects on Life as a Collegiate Athlete

Asheville School’s Sports Communications program catches up with former standout student-athlete Ryan Soulis to discuss his journey and experiences as a college basketball player.
Sports Communications (SC): Do you have days where you have multiple classes, lifts, and practices and how do you manage days like that?
Ryan Soulis (RS): For me, it’s all three every Monday through Thursday. On Friday, I don’t have classes. I have a team lift at 7:30 am and then I have class between 9am-12pm or 9am-1pm, with two classes each day. We have practice from 2:00-4:00pm or 3:00 to 5:00pm. It’s pretty hard, because the early wake up for a 7:30 am lift gets to me. So, by the time afternoon practice comes around, or before class, I’m dozing off and about to go to sleep, so that’s hard. I have to get a good meal in and maybe take a nap in between my two classes–like a quick 20 minute nap. Once I get through all of it, I just doze off easily at night. I don’t do too much else, I just stay in my bed, but it is hard to get through the full day. I don’t know how I do it. It just happens. It is very challenging. It’s getting very repetitive this time of year, as it’s almost every day now on this schedule. I just got to eat a great lunch and go to sleep as early as possible the night before. Those are the two most important things that help me through it.
SC: How did your experiences at Asheville School help you prepare for your time at Richmond?
RS: It was so similar and my time at Asheville School couldn’t have prepared me better for my time in college, especially as a student-athlete with lifts, classes, and practices. It just helped me with time management, knowing what’s coming, being as productive as possible with what little time I get before something else comes up, sleeping early, and not taking that time for granted–because once the morning comes back around, it’s just nonstop. So, I’m just taking good care of myself. You get in the groove of it once it starts, so you’re just on autopilot, but it prepared me so well.
SC: Do you get any NIL (name, image, likeness)? And how does that work and where does your NIL go?
RS: Yes, I do. We have a collective. We call it a “Spider” collective and it’s a bunch of donors that are generous enough to donate to my teammates and me to help us out with stuff outside of the court. It is distributed. No one knows what each other makes; we all keep it to ourselves. That’s something that was negotiated a bit before I signed here. A lot of it just goes to ordering food online or just shopping once in a while. I’m keeping most of it in savings. I’m not doing much with it; just saving up for after I graduate.
SC: What’s your end goal for your time at Richmond?
A: My end goal is to graduate with a great degree from this great academic school. I want to be the best possible basketball player I can be–so I can set myself up for the best possible professional basketball career I can achieve… whether that is here in the US, hopefully in the NBA or in Europe, wherever it is. But hopefully I can set myself up for a great professional career in the sport of basketball.
SC: What’s the best thing playing college basketball has done for you?
RS: Exposure to the people that I’ve met, teammates, coaches, and even people that I play against or played as teammates alongside in high school that I see now and play against in college–all the people that I’ve met, and I still keep in touch with. All the seniors from last year who are now playing professional basketball overseas–I still keep in touch with them. Sometimes they come and visit. I built such great relationships with those guys and it gets me emotional when I see them again. It’s the strong relationships I’ve created, my roommates, everyone– because they will last for a lifetime. These relationships are going to last way after I graduate from here, so I think that’s the greatest thing college basketball has done for me for sure.
SC: What’s something that you now know that you think all the AS students who have aspirations to play athletics at the higher level would benefit from knowing? What is something our students can’t even think to ask you or aren’t even considering, that matters, or that you would be willing to share?
RS: I would say I wasn’t aware of how important it is to take care of yourself. Not just as an athlete, but physically and mentally as well. That is the most important thing because with classes, practice, and games, you have to be in the right state of mind. That includes socializing with your roommates, teammates, classmates, and having great interactions with people you’ve never met, maybe at the dining hall or around campus. Taking time for yourself is important. I just recently started reading, so I can have some time, quiet time, for myself each day. There are so many ups and downs, it can be inconsistent. And we just have to work through it. You just got to listen to your gut and have faith within yourself. You can’t listen to anyone else. You just have to know what you want and with that–you’ve got to make it work with your faith…you can’t listen to what other people say, or their opinions–because at the end of day, it does not matter one bit. So I’ll say again, it’s important to take care of yourself as much as possible, especially mentally and physically, and then it’s so important to have faith in yourself and not listen to anyone else.





Images provided courtesy of Ryan Soulis.