By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
For the past 13 years, Ryan Zink has had one of the best seats in the house at Great Bend High School sporting events. Now he's headed toward a higher calling. The USD 428 Board of Education approved Zink's resignation as teacher and athletic trainer at the April 10 meeting.
"We are actually moving into the ministry," Zink said. "I've been praying about this for quite a while. We are actively looking at ways to grow and potentially serve in our denomination."
Zink grew up in Bushton, graduating from Quivira Heights High School before attending Barton Community College for two years. He became a certified trainer in 2002, then began working for the Great Bend district in 2010, first as outreach for his position at Advanced Therapy, then as a district employee three years later. Along with being the head trainer, Zink has taught sports medicine classes at GBHS for the past 10 years. He said it has been a privilege to help area athletes and coaches.
"It was definitely a way to stay involved with sports and to be able to give back and help individuals," he said. "That's one of the best things you can see is kids that are able to keep playing because of either something you did or helped with. It's been very rewarding."
Zink estimated he put in 55 hours during a regular week. With sporting events two, three, or sometimes more nights a week, those workweeks turned into 80-plus hours.
"My daughter's getting to be five and I'd like to be able to spend more time with her," he said. "High school is a good situation. You look at some colleges, and they're putting in way more hours, but then they also tend to have offseasons where we don't. It never seems to let up very much."
Zink is unsure where the future will take him now, perhaps even out of state, to serve his greater purpose. Wherever the road leads, he will miss working with students and coaches.
"The students are great, but it's probably going to be more the coaches," he said. "I take a load off coaches. That's where I get the most satisfaction from this job; when I can tell a coach this is what's going on with this kid, or I can tell them this really isn't that bad. We can go through some steps and get a kid back. The coaches, that's going to be the hardest step back is helping them. We do have a really good group here in Great Bend."