Gazette Athlete of the Year; Cloverleaf's Riley Evans as known for her kindness of the field as her accomplishments on it

"Put aside all her statistics and accomplishments and talk about her personality. She is one in a million. She is a gem of a kid." — Guillermo Porras Cloverleaf girls soccer coach Cloverleaf's Riley Evans was a slam-dunk choice when it came to picking The Gazette's 2024 Senior Female Athlete of the Year. A first-team Division II all-district and second-team All-Ohio choice as a senior, Evans lettered four years in soccer, registered 72 goals and 40 assists, was honorable mention All-Gazette as a sophomore, a first-team choice as a junior and senior and earned a scholarship to continue her career at Northern Kentucky University. On the track, the 5-foot-5, 120-pound Evans won a D-I state championship in the 400-meter dash as a senior after finishing second as a sophomore and sixth as a junior, earned three straight Gazette MVP awards and four All-Gazette selections, set school records in the 100, 200, 400, 4x200 relay and 800 medley relay and captured 16 Metro Athletic Conference titles — four each in the 100, 200, 400 and 4x2 — as the Colts brought home four straight league crowns. It's the kind of résumé that puts Evans solidly in the mix when it comes to the best female athlete in school history — her 400 title was the first by a Cloverleaf girl since the state meet originated in 1975 — but her coaches and teammates are quick to point out the 18-year-old is an even better person. "We all have those moments where we can get frustrated, but you don't really see that a lot with Riley," said 16-year-old sister Addie, who had the opportunity to move up from the junior varsity a few times as a sophomore and share the soccer field with her sibling. "I don't see her as my big sister. She's more like my best friend. If she tells me something, it's purely out of helpfulness. "She's just so kind and sweet and humble. I don't think she would even mention sports if someone didn't ask. All that really matters to her is to be kind and genuine." Having compiled a 4.45 grade-point average at Cloverleaf, Evans plans to major in biology at Northern Kentucky and become an optometrist. Though she doesn't wear glasses or contacts, she became interested in the profession after a checkup with Dr. Timothy Earley. "He was talking it up that day," she said. "He mentioned he really enjoyed the job because it's a profession where people leave feeling better than they did before they came in, and that kind of fits my personality. Plus, I don't like a lot of blood and gore, so that rules out a lot of other jobs in the medical profession." PERFECT PICTURE Outgoing and funny but also extremely thoughtful and considerate, a great example of Evans' caring nature is how the photo illustration that accompanies this story came to be published. Two days after winning her 400 state title by 0.01 seconds, Evans was traveling to her college orientation at Northern Kentucky with parents Matt and Jen. She was exchanging text messages with a reporter, who was trying to make it so her Gazette photo shoots for girls track MVP and athlete of the year could be done on the same day. A few minutes after agreeing to bring her track and soccer uniforms, as well as cleats and a soccer ball, she sent the following text: "I was wondering, my parents and I were talking and I would like to be able to honor Ron Schwane if possible. My (track and field) team wore black hair ribbons this postseason to honor him. I really enjoyed getting to know him the last few years. He took my senior pictures and this one that I bought off of him could possibly work for the athlete of the year." Attached was the perfect photo illustration taken by Schwane, who worked as a freelance photographer for the Gazette sports department for more than 30 years but died suddenly of a heart attack on May 17 at the age of 58. With Evans standing in front of the word "Cloverleaf" that is above the entrance to Gene Clark Stadium, it showed her high-fiving herself while wearing her track uniform on the left side of the picture and her soccer uniform and hot pink cleats on the right. "He said, 'I have this idea, but I don't know if it's going to work,'" Evans said of Schwane. "I said, 'Whatever. It sounds cool.'" Schwane, who had taken Evans' Gazette MVP photos for girls track when she was a sophomore and junior, took the soccer picture first while using a line in the cement walkway as a reference point. Then, while Evans quickly changed into her track uniform, he had her mom come in and hold her hand at the proper height opposite the soccer picture. "He gave us over 400 pictures to look through," Evans said. "He took us to all these difference places and just made it a really cool experience. When he sent us the one of me high-fiving myself he said, 'It isn't perfect,' but we're like, 'Oh, my gosh, we're buying that.' I love it so much. It really displays my dual sports. It's like I have a twin." Evans learned of Schwane's death when she saw a post on social media about the Cleveland Guardians' plans to honor him prior to their next game. She had just won four events at the Brunswick District, but her thoughts immediately turned to how she could pay tribute to him. "I honestly didn't believe what I was reading was real," she said. "I sent it to my mom right away and said, 'Did you see this? Is this real?' We were literally about to email him because he had just taken some more pictures of me and Addie." After talking with her mom, Evans suggested to her Cloverleaf track teammates that they wear black hair ribbons in Schwane's honor at the regional and state meets. They quickly agreed. "I had a personal connection with Ron and (teammate) Sarah Kelly grew up knowing him through horse shows," Evans said. "He came and took all our headshots for The Gazette, so he was involved with our sports and we thought we should honor him in some way. "He was such a nice person and he had a lot of stories. I was really nervous my sophomore year (at the MVP shoot), but he was really kind and welcoming. It was so smooth and natural and there wasn't anything I had to worry about." PERFECT PITCH Evans started playing soccer when she was 5 years old, but the only thing she remembers about her early years is getting to eat orange slices at halftime. Later dabbling in basketball, swimming and cross country, she loved the sport immediately. "As much as I love track, I've been doing soccer way longer," she said. "It's always been a part of my life. I really like the team aspect because I like to contribute to that and pursue something as a group." With Evans leading the way — she would never say that — the Colts won a MAC title in 2022, when she had 26 goals and 13 assists as a junior, and finished second in her senior season, when she had 21 goals and 15 assists while always drawing extra defensive attention. "She was the fastest kid on the field just about every single game," Porras said. "She was double-teamed and triple-teamed. Everybody knew who Riley Evans was. "That's where her athleticism came in. She was just such a stellar athlete that she could get around one or two defenders — sometimes an entire defense — and either score or create a goal-scoring opportunity for one of her teammates." Evans already was hard to miss on the pitch due to her outstanding speed, but add her hot pink shoes, which she bought for the going rate of $110 prior to her senior season, and it was impossible not to notice her. "I wasn't trying to make myself stand out," she said. "I was just thinking, 'Pink cleats are fun and I want to have fun in my senior year.' That's why I got them." An opposing player or two may have mistaken the cleats for showboating, but no one who knew Evans did. "She is going to be missed not just because of her athletic prowess on the field, but because of her leadership, her personality, her positive energy and her work ethic," Porras said. "She is going to be missed by everyone, not just me." The feeling is mutual with Evans, but she's looking forward to continuing her career at NCAA D-I Northern Kentucky, which has approximately 10,000 undergraduate students and is located in Highland Heights, which has a population of 6,500 and is considered a suburb of Cincinnati. "It's not super huge or super small," she said of the university. "The campus is really nice and so are the athletic facilities. After meeting with the team and the coach (Bob Sheehan), it just seemed like a really positive environment that I wanted to be a part of." PERFECT FINISH The best race of Evans' career was her last, as she ran the 400 in a school-record 55.56 seconds at the University of Dayton's Welcome Stadium to edge Beavercreek's Kayleigh Keyes (55.57), Gahanna Lincoln's Keena Sanders (55.62) and Twinsburg's Savannah Swanda (56.31). After trailing by more than 20 meters on the backstretch, she passed all three runners on the homestretch to win in a photo finish. It took nearly a minute for the winner's name to be posted. "Oh, my gosh, it felt like 10 minutes for the photo finish," sister Addie said. "It was crazy close. She literally won by her nose, that's how close it was. When it finally showed up on the board that she had won, me and my mom started freaking out a little bit. I was crying and shaking so I had to sit down, and the woman behind me was rubbing my shoulders. I was really proud of Riley. She gave it her all." Evans also finished 13th in the 100 in a school-record 12.20 seconds and helped a 4x2 that included Callee Gibson, Kayla Shook and Kelly — the quartet ran a school-record 1:42.75 the previous week at the Port Clinton Regional — place 15th. In addition, Evans owns Cloverleaf records in the 200 (25.32) and 800 medley relay (1:48.74), which ran the fastest time in the state this season. "She's just insane," said Kelly, a junior who had broken Evans' 100 school mark earlier in the postseason. "I don't even know how to explain it. Running with her has been a great experience. She puts all of her heart into the relays, too, because it's more fun to be with everyone else. She was excited to have us there with her (at the state meet)." As great as Evans was on the track, she was even better off it. "She's a competitor, but she does it in a loving way," Colts track and field coach Garth Gucker said. "She'll give you everything she has and lay it out there, but if she gets beat she'll be the first one to congratulate her competitors. You can't help but admire that. "She wants the school to be successful and she wants her teammates to be successful. Having her run the relays was detrimental to the individual numbers she could have put up, but she wanted it no other way. She is just a phenomenal person that engages with the people around her." To Evans, that is a much bigger compliment than praising her athletic ability. "I think it's really important to be kind to others," she said. "You don't know what they're going through and being mean doesn't accomplish anything. Plus, it's more fun to be nice and you make better connections, which I think is very important. I'm pretty empathetic. I hate when I'm upset, so I want everyone to be happy and comfortable. I'd rather try to boost them up than bring them down. "My personality is something that is going to carry through my entire life. At some point I'll be old and not as athletic, but my personality is something I will always want to be seen as good." Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4046 or rnoland@medina-gazette.com. Follow him @RickNoland on X.