Football: Newport Harbor’s Riley Gaddis can see clearly now
A mom never forgets her child’s birthday.
The one that stands out the most to Mary Lynn Gaddis is her son Riley Gaddis’ second birthday. There wasn’t much to celebrate on that day 16 years ago.
On the day Riley turned 2, Mary Lynn learned her son couldn’t see in his left eye correctly. She had known all along that something was wrong with Riley’s vision. Whenever she fed Riley and his sister, Mackenzie, she used the airplane maneuver. Mackenzie followed the spoon with both eyes, while Riley couldn’t track the spoon with his left eye.
Mary Lynn learned why. The news of her son having amblyopia, also known as lazy eye, shook her up.
“I wanted to give my child one of my eyes,” said Mary Lynn, who still remembers holding Riley’s hand all the way to the elevator after her son’s appointment with the ophthalmologist ended. “I was scared my son wouldn’t be able to see and that he would grow up and say, ‘What did my mom do to me?’”
Mary Lynn never gave up on Riley. She was there for Riley, helping him strengthen his left eye. She followed whatever the ophthalmologist advised her to do, patch her son’s good eye 2 to 4 hours a day, and work on his fine motor skills. Riley played with building blocks and Legos, using his left eye, the one everything looked blurry to him.
“A 2-year-old is difficult enough,” Mary Lynn said, “but he would get so frustrated because his depth perception was off, and he would fall over easily.
“In layman’s terms, we needed to wake up the other eye.”
Mary Lynn received a rude awakening one day at the park with Riley. She and Riley were playing baseball, and a man noticed Riley wearing thick glasses. He told Mary Lynn that her son, 5 at the time, stood no chance in baseball with those glasses.
Mary Lynn ignored the man. She kept playing and working with Riley. A year later, his coordination and vision improved so much that by the time Riley was 6, there was no need to patch his eye anymore.
Maybe the man was right about Riley’s future in baseball. Riley chose to pursue another sport while growing up, not because of his vision. Yet in his senior year at Newport Harbor High, Riley is a home-run hitter on the football field.
Riley has a good eye for finding the end zone, scoring 14 touchdowns, eight on receptions, five on rushes and one on a kickoff return this season. His longest touchdowns came last week, when he returned a kickoff 72 yards for a touchdown and turned a short pass into a 70-yard touchdown catch.
The two scores came in the second half, and with the game on the line, Riley came through. Coach Jeff Brinkley trusts his 6-foot-1, 205-pound versatile player to make a play when the ball is in his hands.
Quarterback Cole Norris got the ball to Riley on a 34-yard pass play with nine seconds left, setting up the game-winning touchdown from the one. From there, fullback Trevor Shaw plunged into the end zone, with a little push from Riley, helping Newport Harbor top Fountain Valley, 34-33, on the final play of the Sunset League game.
Riley’s all-around performance, five catches for 126 yards and one touchdown as a wide receiver, 10 tackles as an outside linebacker and special teams player, and his first kickoff return for a touchdown, clinched the Sailors’ trip to the CIF Southern Section West Valley Division playoffs.
Riley has been involved in half a dozen thrilling comeback victories in the waning seconds during his three years on varsity, none like last week’s with a postseason berth on the line in the regular-season finale. A couple of days before the Sailors (5-5) traveled to play at No. 4-seeded Tesoro (8-2) in the first round on Friday at 7 p.m., Riley looked back at the wild finish against the Barons.
“That is one game I will never forget for the rest of my life,” said Riley, who in the final 34 seconds helped the Sailors go 66 yards in six plays, using every second to pull off a dramatic game-winning drive as time expired. “We were all piled up in the end zone, waiting for the referees to raise their arms and signal a touchdown. It seemed like it took forever, like time stopped.”
Those are the kind of moments Riley cherishes the most, his team roaring back to win late. He can recite all of the come-from-behind triumphs. There’s the 52-48 win against Huntington Beach in this year’s league opener, which saw Newport Harbor get the go-ahead touchdown with 29 seconds left.
Three times last year, the Sailors battled back. They beat Palos Verdes, 34-33, on Riley’s one-yard touchdown run with 45 seconds left in the nonleague contest. Four weeks later, there was the 27-24 overtime win against Los Alamitos in league, and then in the quarterfinals of the Southwest Division playoffs, Newport Harbor upset top-seeded La Habra, 49-48, by taking the lead with 40 seconds to go.
In Riley’s sophomore season, the Sailors pulled out a 27-26 win against rival Corona del Mar, producing a touchdown on fourth-and-goal from the 22 with 24 seconds remaining in the Battle of the Bay. Against Los Alamitos, Riley rushed for a two-point conversion with 20 seconds left in regulation, forcing overtime, and Newport Harbor prevailed, 31-28, in league.
Riley has played a role in the dramatic finishes going Newport Harbor’s way. He calls them miracles.
The real miracle to Mary Lynn is her son. The kid who had a hard time with his sight sees a bright future ahead. Riley said two Ivy League schools, the University of Pennsylvania and Brown, have shown some interest in him, as well as NCAA Division 3 schools like John Hopkins in Baltimore, Md., and Willamette in Salem, Ore.
“He’s come a long way and we’re so proud of him,” Mary Lynn said of Riley, who has performed on the field with 38 catches for 673 yards and eight touchdowns and in the classroom with a 3.5 grade-point average. “He used to be known as the kid who wore thick glasses, had an afro, and was shy.”
Riley is more confident, yet humble. He credits his upbringing, and his father, Alan Gaddis, and of course his mother, Mary Lynn, for always supporting him.
Alan and Mary Lynn aren’t Riley’s biological parents. They adopted Riley when he was 12 hours old. Riley is the first of four children the Gaddis family adopted, the others are Mackenzie, Zoey and Jake. Mary Lynn said she and her husband have a United Nations family, adding that their kids are part African American, Mexican, German, Trinidadian, Tobagonian, Portuguese and Chinese.
Riley and Mackenzie, born 34 days apart, are the closest in age. Their parents refer to them as twins.
“We don’t know what we’re going to do when they graduate this year from Newport Harbor,” said Mary Lynn, before being reminded that she and Alan still have two 11-year-olds, Zoey and Jake, running around the house.
The Gaddis family planned to have extra company at dinner on Thursday. It was Mary Lynn and Alan’s turn to feed the Newport Harbor football team. The two are members of the Newport Harbor booster club. Alan’s family has been committed to the Sailors since his playing days at the school.
Riley followed in his father’s and uncle Stuart Gaddis’ footsteps at Newport Harbor. Alan and Stuart, who are fraternal twins, played for the Sailors before they graduated in 1980. Back then, the mother, Pat Gaddis, of the two boys was heavily involved with the football program.
“It’s too bad she’s not here right now,” Alan said of his mom, who passed away seven years ago at 74. “She would’ve loved to have seen this stuff.”
Alan said the family saved all the newspaper clippings and photo albums his mother compiled on the Sailors from the 1970s and 1980s. There’s a lot of history there, and Pat shared some of it with Mary Lynn. She recalls Pat’s stories about her two boys, what she did for the football team, how much she enjoyed preparing meals and treats.
Mary Lynn is now in that same role as one of the team moms. What she had in store for Riley and his teammates after Thursday’s team dinner was certainly sweet.
“I promised the kids a chocolate fountain for winning last week,” Mary Lynn said. “They deserved it.”
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Riley Gaddis
Born: Oct. 20, 1996
Hometown: Newport Beach
Height: 6-foot-1
Weight: 205 pounds
Sport: Football
Year: Senior
Coach: Jeff Brinkley
Favorite food: Lobster
Favorite movie: “Step Brothers”
Favorite athletic moment: “Last week’s win against Fountain Valley was something special.”
Week in review: Gaddis scored twice in the second half, catching a 70-yard touchdown pass and returning a kickoff 72 yards for a touchdown, helping the Sailors rally to beat Fountain Valley, 34-33, and clinch the Sunset League’s No. 3 entry into the CIF Southern Section West Valley Division playoffs. Gaddis finished with five catches for 126 yards as a wide receiver, and 10 tackles as an outside linebacker and special teams player.