When Ryson Nunez was in the seventh grade, the football coaches called his parents into the office and told them their son wouldn’t play quarterback for them. Or anyone else. Sure, he had a rocket right arm, but the coaches were concerned with the left one that wasn’t there, cut off at the elbow since birth.

“They were blatantly honest and said he would never play high school football as a quarterback, so we were kind of wasting our time,” Ryson’s mother, Krystal, said.

Ryson’s left forearm was amputated in the womb from a tear in the amniotic sac, a rare condition known as amniotic band syndrome.

But his parents didn’t swoop in to coddle him through the condition in the early stages of his life, whether it was crawling, opening markers or putting on a baseball glove. He even learned how to shoot pool on the family table. It didn’t matter that his form wasn’t like his parents’, only that he figured it out himself.

“That was our biggest thing with him from birth, that he wasn’t a victim,” Krystal said.  

Although he never considered himself a victim, Ryson sometimes felt insecure in elementary school. He didn’t like the other kids gawking at him or trying to touch his arm. Yet he wanted all eyes on him in competition. He wanted the baseball when the bases were loaded with two outs and his team needed a strikeout. That drew him to football and the quarterback position, where he could be the team leader in Texas’ favorite sport. Because then they’d see what he could do, not what he didn’t have. 

So he looked those coaches who told him he needed to switch positions in the eye and went out for quarterback tryouts that following Monday anyway. His coaches were just another team lined up across from him. When he played cornerback, the offense always threw it his way on the first play of the game, assuming his one arm made him an easy mark. And Ryson always picked it off. 

“I feel like everyone sees it as a disadvantage,” Ryson said. “But then, by the second half, it’s not.”

New Waverly High School assistant coach Easton Droddy attended the tryout, watching his future high schoolers. Halfway through the practice, Droddy called Ryson over and told him he was the best quarterback out there. Go take his spot.

Empowered by the varsity coach’s vote of confidence when no one else gave it, Ryson won the starting quarterback job and has lost one game in two years. 

Ryson started off as the JV quarterback this fall as a freshman. Then, two-year starter Cade Garrett sustained a rib injury that sidelined him, and the New Waverly coaches called Ryson up as the backup quarterback against Woodville. But after a solid week of practice, the offensive staff came to a decision.

They were going to give the freshman some action against Kountze. 

In a District 12-3A DII with powerhouses Newton and Woodville, Kountze and New Waverly have blossomed into a district rivalry with massive playoff implications, as the two programs typically fight for the final two spots. If New Waverly lost this game, their playoff hopes were toast. But if they won, they all but sealed a bid.

These were the stakes the freshman Ryson walked into, and facing fourth-and-8 from his own 40-yard-line, his offensive coordinator, Droddy, decided it was a good time for his first varsity passing attempt. Droddy knew Ryson relished the big moments ever since he watched him at that seventh-grade quarterback tryout. He was the one coach who’d believed in Ryson then, and he’d prepared him to make this throw for two years. 

Ryson completed a 40-yard pass on a mesh route, his first throw of a 6-for-11 passing performance for 133 yards and a touchdown, leading New Waverly to a 35-16 victory and a playoff berth. 

This once-insecure kid is confident on the varsity stage because he’s realized his purpose - to carry the torch for the next aspiring athlete who looks like him.

“I truly believe that God doesn’t make mistakes and everything happens for a reason,” Ryson said. “I think He wanted me to help other young athletes, to show them it doesn’t matter.”

Droddy has a child on the way, and impending fatherhood has him looking differently at life. He sees Ryson’s first pass as so much more than a first down.

“You can be a quarterback on the varsity level in Texas in a must-win game, and get thrown in cold off the bench on fourth-and-8, and get the first down that we need,” Droddy said. “It’s a big deal to me.” 

As he’s saying this, he looks at his young quarterback with admiration, but then his eyebrows furrow as he realizes something.

“I’ve never actually asked him how he doesn’t have a left hand,” Droddy said.

Frankly, he never saw it.