By Jon Johnson
Suffering a knee injury a few weeks before last year’s USL2 playoffs and then being involved in an automobile accident isn’t how Ryan Holmes envisioned his first season with Dothan United ending.
But instead of considering it bad luck, Holmes chalked it up to believing things happen for a reason.
“I actually got injured on my birthday last year, the 5th of July,” Holmes said of a 3-0 win over Tallahassee SC in which he tallied a goal. “After I scored, it just didn’t feel right in my (left) knee.”
“It was a patella tendon injury. I couldn’t really tell you what caused it. I don’t think there was anything wrong with my mechanics with shooting, or the way I celebrated.”
Instead of staying with the team during its remarkable playoff run, which ended in the national semifinals, Holmes made the decision to head back to his college team – Georgia Southern – to begin rehabilitation and prepare for the approaching fall season.
What occurred next was almost tragic.
“I left here after getting the scan on my knee and understanding things weren’t right,” Holmes said. “I wanted to go back to school to get treatment and stuff like that. I was driving through this little town in Georgia, and about an hour-and-a-half into the drive, I got into a three-car wreck.”
“I was in the middle of it. The car in front of me was stopped and I was stopped, and the car behind me didn’t stop. They were going like 60 and I was completely stopped.”
Holmes, a native of England, was taken to a hospital in Blakely, Ga., thankfully without any major injuries.
“A little bit concussed, probably, sore back and sore neck, but realistically I got out lucky,” Holmes said. “It was the first big accident I’ve been in. My first call was to my girlfriend (in New York) because she’s American and in the right time zone and I knew she would be awake. Then we got in contact with my parents. It was fairly late back home (England).”
Holmes then called his host family in Dothan – Clint and Amanda Shelley – and after that contacted Kevin Woodcock, who is a pastor at Providence Baptist Church in Clayhatchee and also serves as a team chaplain along with Ken Tuck.
At the time, Woodcock was at a Dragons’ practice.
“I got a call from Ryan in the hospital and he said, ‘Kevin, I’ve been in an accident,’” Woodcock remembers. “I said, ‘Woah … how are you?’ And he goes, ‘Well I’m in the hospital at Blakely, Ga.’ I said, ‘You hold on … I’m going to be over there as quick as I can.’”
Woodcock informed the Dothan coaches of what had happened and then made the drive to the hospital in Blakely.
“When I walked in, he was emotional,” Woodcock said. “He described the accident to me and what had happened and I said, ‘God saved you, man. You could have died in that crash the way it happened.’
“I brought him back home (to Dothan) and he stayed with us, because he had already given his apartment up when he decided to go back to Georgia to rehab.”
Several days later, Holmes was ready to make the journey to Georgia Southern, which is located in Statesboro, Ga. Woodcock drove Holmes half of the way to where a friend of Holmes picked him up for the rest of the drive.
“When we were on the road to Georgia Southern, it gave us time to really spend some time together and he started asking me some questions about God,” Woodcock said. “I got him a book that we are using to study with at our church and I said, ‘You read this every day with your scripture.’ And he did. He told me he was carrying that book around in his backpack and reading it every day.”
Holmes has a deeper appreciation of life now.
“That’s what I mean when I say I feel like everything happens for a reason,” Holmes said. “I got in a wreck, yeah, but I got out of a wreck as well. I walked away from that when you could have argued that I shouldn’t have. It’s life experiences.”
Now fully healthy and back in Dothan for his second season with the Dragons, Holmes is a key part of the offense from his striker position.
He scored three goals in the first exhibition match and five goals in the next. In the regular season opener against Montgomery United FC last Saturday, Holmes assisted Tito Porter on the winning goal of a 2-1 victory.
“I just try to help the team in any way I can,” Holmes said. “Saturday night, I was able to affect the game with an assist, and it was the winning assist. If I can affect the game, that’s great. Obviously I want to score goals, but if I can get the ball to other attacking players and they can finish off, it’s just another tally for me.”
Holmes seems to have a knack for being at the right place at the right time for scoring opportunities, but there’s more to it than meets the eye.
“You just kind of got to be put in the situations to know where the ball is going to drop,” Holmes said. “I try to watch a lot of defenders and where they move, and why they move there. If I can understand why and where, I can do the opposite of what they’re doing and get the ball.”
“Or if I can understand what areas they are trying to clear the ball into, I can stand in the way, basically. So a lot of predicting and a little bit of luck.”
Holmes believes this year’s version of the Dragons has another chance to be special.
“Last year, we had a big, big presence at midfield,” Holmes said. “I feel like this year, that’s sort of shifted into a creative aspect of midfield, and I think it’s great.”
“The way Ricky (head coach Davey) sets us up is that we want to attack. As a striker, I love that. I mean, the more chances I get, the more chances I get to score goals.”
Holmes has played three years of college soccer – one at Savannah (Ga.) College of Art and Design (SCAD), where he was a teammate with his brother, James, and the last two at Georgia Southern. He has transferred to Lindenwood University in Missouri for his senior season this upcoming fall.
But for the time being, Holmes’ full attention is on helping the Dragons make a run at a second straight Southern Conference championship and hopefully contend for a national title.
Holmes is appreciative of the opportunity he’s been given in Dothan.
“I wanted to play in the summer and had a few other teams contact me, but it didn’t stick out like Dothan,” Holmes said of first landing in the Circle City. “Some people say there are more glamorous places to live, but what this place offers you, you’re not going to find anywhere else.”
The experience of playing on the United Soccer League Two level in Dothan has been more fulfilling than he anticipated.
“Coming here, I didn’t expect the crowds we’ve gotten,” Holmes said. “I didn’t expect the intensity of training every day.”
“It’s a professional environment. You train in the morning and you train hard, then the rest of the day you have to prepare for tomorrow. It definitely exceeded what I was expecting when I came here.”
Once his playing days are over, Holmes has aspirations of being a fashion designer. He’s taken college courses to prepare him for such.
“I want to work in New York for a big fashion brand,” Holmes said. “A lot of what I’m studying at the moment is forecasting stuff … understanding what trends are going to be next.”
“My whole first three years in school was learning to draw, learning to sew … learning all of the basics from the ground up. I never knew I wanted to go into it, but when I came to SCAD, I was like, ‘I can get into this.’ I always cared about the way I dressed and presented myself.’”
For now, however, Holmes’ design for a championship season is what’s on the drawing board.
