VERMONT SPORTS HALL OF FAME

Photo Credit- Hockey East/Bob Ellis

David Hakins Inductee

Media-sportswriting

Shelburne

Inducted 2020

Ted Ryan of Shelburne has been a major figure for more than 50 years in both writing about Vermont sports and directing the coverage at the state’s top two media outlets.  He is the 2022 David Hakins Inductee, for exceptional promotion and development of sports and athletics in the Green Mountain State.

Ryan wrote his first bylined sports story for the Rutland Herald while a high school student in the fall of 1964- a Rutland High cross country race that September. He later did a stint on the news desk with politics, car crashes, a murder and features before realizing sports was where his heart would be for the rest of his life.  Ryan continued writing sports any chance he could for the Herald while attending the University of Vermont before graduating in 1969, then was hired full-time by Herald Sports Editor Dave Morse (a VSHOF inductee), joining a Herald staff that also included Mal Boright, another VSHOF inductee.  

Ryan eventually became the Herald’s sports editor and remained there until recruited by the Burlington Free Press in 1975 when the newspaper began its Sunday edition. Ryan has written about every sport – in all kinds of weather --  for every high school and college in Vermont, while also covering national sports, including the several Stanley Cup finals for the Free Press, USA Today and other newspapers.  He always managed to juggle covering stories with his administrative duties and helped oversee the laying out and editing of the sports pages. Ryan retired in the fall of 2008, but even then he could not stay away.  By winter he was brought back to cover UVM hockey and freelanced many other sports stories as needed until finally retiring in 2019.  

Ryan served a couple of stints as sports editor at the Free Press.  His co-workers repeatedly said there was no better sports editor to work for because he was fair, honest and a real team player. Ryan with his ‘can do’ attitude never asked reporters to cover events that he was not doing himself. in his own words, ‘I enjoyed 55 years of covering everything from Little League to Stanley Cup championships.’

Ryan and the Free Press have been honored for his exemplary work in many ways, including by the Vermont and New England Press Associations and as a five-time Vermont Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association (1974, 1978, 1985, 1998 and 2009).  The Vermont Principals’ Association inducted Ryan into its hall of fame in 2006, while Norwich University selected Ryan as its honoree at its annual Media Day in 2005. He was honored by the ECAC Sports Information directors with its ECAC-SIDA Media Award in 2009. Hockey East presented Ryan its Joe Concannon Media Award in 2016 for his longstanding work in college hockey. 

Ryan served as a charter member of the Vermont Sports Hall of Fame board of directors, and along with Hakins was one of the VSHOF's founders. He also was the chair of the nominations committee, until stepping down from the board in 2021.