Mundelein's Sawvell dishes out pain for a change

Right now, the count stands at 20 broken bones, 110 stitches, 14 screws, 3 metal plates and a four-hour surgery.

That's Ryan Sawvell's medical history in a nutshell, and he's knocking on wood that history doesn't repeat itself any time soon.

The Mundelein senior center has certainly had his fair share of injuries in his young life.

There was the time he fell off a treadmill when he was in fifth grade and needed 38 stitches to sew up the gash in his leg. When he was even younger, he broke his arm at a playground when he was trying to imitate a fireman by sliding down one of the poles that held up a slide.

In middle school, Sawvell broke his ankle. He's done that two more times since.

Perhaps his most serious injury came just last spring when he knocked heads with a defender in a pick-up game and essentially shattered the entire right side of his face. He busted his sinus cavity, broke his orbital socket in six places and suffered temporary nerve damage in the area.

Surgery for the repairs lasted four hours and doctors inserted 14 screws and three metal plates into his face. They will stay there forever.

“Any time I go down in a game, my mom is always sitting there worrying, thinking the worst. Probably because I've had so many weird things happen to me,” Sawvell said. “I guess you could say I've been a bit injury prone.”

Maybe so. But, this season, in what could be considered a bit of poetic justice, it's been Sawvell who has been putting the hurt on the competition.

Totally healthy and injury-free, Sawvell is racking up numbers on the basketball court that are as stunning as the numbers in his medical file.

The 6-foot-8 Sawvell has carried Mundelein to one of its best seasons in years — a 19-2 record and a 13-game winning streak — by averaging 20 points, 13 rebounds and 2.5 blocks per game. He's also shooting around 60 percent from the field.

Best yet, Sawvell, who has already signed a Division I letter of intent with the University of Evansville, tends to put up his very best numbers in the biggest games, and when his teammates need him the most.

Earlier this month against Zion-Benton, a perennial power in Lake County, Sawvell rolled up 26 points, 18 rebounds and 7 blocks to help the Mustangs get a victory, their first on the road at Zion-Benton since head coach Dick Knar took over seven years ago.

The night also belonged to Sawvell back in December against Lake Forest. He hit the game-winner on a last-second shot to finish with 27 points, 19 rebounds and 4 blocks.

“He's just putting up ridiculous numbers,” Knar said of Sawvell. “Ryan is having one of the best seasons of any kid I've ever coached. And the thing is, his ceiling keeps going and going and going. I think Ryan is just going to get better and better.”

Knar insists that Sawvell hasn't even scratched the surface yet. And that's mostly because Sawvell was too busy scratching the itch he used to have for baseball.

Actually, it was more than an itch. It was an obsession.

Sawvell didn't start playing basketball until seventh grade. Before that, he was all baseball, all the time.

A talented pitcher and catcher, Sawvell played on all kinds of travel baseball teams and was having so much fun that he never even bothered to consider basketball as an option.

“Both of my older brothers (Ray and Adam) played baseball so I started playing it too and it just really grew on me,” Sawvell said. “It was really fun until about seventh grade. Then, I started growing really fast.”

That year, Sawvell stood 6-foot-2, a head or two taller than all of his teammates.

“I was a good pitcher because I was tall, but I could barely hit the ball anymore because I just wasn't swinging right,” Sawvell said. “I was starting to get frustrated. Right around that time is when I met Coach Knar.”

Sawvell says that Knar happened to attend one of his baseball games and asked him afterwards why a tall kid like him wasn't playing basketball.

“Coach Knar has a way with words,” Sawvell laughed. “He can talk people into doing almost anything and he just encouraged me to try basketball. I had never really thought about it before because I had always been so focused on baseball.

“But after talking with him, I wanted to do it.”

Sawvell started with a feeder basketball team and then joined the travel program at Joy of the Game in Deerfield.

The game seemed to come to him as quickly as he was growing. By eighth grade, Sawvell was 6-foot-5.

“There were four teams at Joy of the Game when Ryan was a seventh grader and he was on the fourth team when he started,” Knar said. “By his eighth grade year, he was starting on the first team and they were winning all kinds of championships because of him.

“His improvement was fast and drastic.”

Sawvell was moved up to the varsity at the end of his freshman season at Mundelein, and by the summer, he was already making a name for himself with college coaches.

“That summer, my Joy of the Game team went to this really good tournament in Wisconsin called NY2LA, meaning there were teams there (from coast to coast),” Sawvell said. “There were a bunch of college coaches there and I had a few good games, a few 20-plus rebounding games. Then we went to a tournament in Orlando and all kinds of college coaches were there and I had a few games where I scored 30 or 35 points.

“From there, I started getting a lot of phone calls.”

Sawvell narrowed down his college choices to Evansville, Central Michigan, Illinois State, Valparaiso and Loyola. It was on his visit to Valparaiso, while playing in a scrimmage, that he suffered the injury to his face that required the long surgery and the metal plates.

“A lot of people ask me if that's why I didn't choose Valpo,” Sawvell laughed. “That wasn't a great moment, but it really had nothing to do with it. I just knew that Evansville was the right place for me.

“I love the town and the school and the campus, and basketball-wise, it doesn't seem like a big transition. The head coach there is a lot like Coach Knar. They play a great schedule every year and they've got this great new stadium. It's a great situation.”

Sawvell hopes to make a great situation even better by working more on his 3-point shooting, his ball-handling and his body.

Somewhat thin and lanky now, he figures he needs to add a significant amount of weight and muscle in order to withstand the rigors of Division I college basketball.

“I definitely need to add a lot of strength,” Sawvell said. “I mean, at that level, you might be going against big 7-footers in the paint. It's going to be rough inside.”

Then again, rough and Sawvell are already very well acquainted. Perhaps even a little too well acquainted.