Coral Reef’s Ryan Sarafoglu is the Herald’s Miami-Dade Boys’ Scholar-Athlete of the Year

At this time a year ago, the only way Coral Reef senior Ryan Sarafoglu could see the track at the state championships was on his laptop watching the livestream of the event.

Sarafoglu, an accomplished cross-country and distance runner, had been forced to shut it down a couple of months earlier due to a tumor that developed in his left femur.

While luckily the tumor was benign, the setback gave Sarafoglu perspective and only reinforced something he knew already.

Sarafoglu is much more than just a runner.

While focusing even more on his academics and community service projects, Sarafoglu would soon make it back on the course while earning a scholarship to attend Georgetown University.

Sarafoglu, a former first-team All-Dade runner, will compete for a state championship this weekend in the 1,600 meters at the state meet in Jacksonville and earned that chance while maintaining a 5.464 weighted GPA and scoring a 1470 on the SAT.

That academic and athletic balance is why Sarafoglu is this year’s Miami Herald Boys’ Scholar-Athlete of the Year for Miami-Dade County.

Sarafoglu, who ranks in the top 2 percent of his senior class of over 800 at Coral Reef, hopes his running career will continue well beyond this weekend’s meet as he plans to walk-on and eventually earn a spot on Georgetown’s prestigious cross country and track teams.

Sarafoglu needed about four months of recovery time before he returned to running last fall.

But once he did, he still didn’t feel the same.

“Slowly over the summer I was able to build back up and I bounced back pretty quickly, but I wasn’t able to run to the standard I wanted to so that was disappointing,” Sarafoglu said. “In track season, I feel like I got my mojo back and I feel like I’m racing even better than I was before and I’m just extremely grateful for that.”

Sarafoglu enters this weekend’s Class 4A state meet with the fourth-fastest time in the 1600 meters and is hoping to at least earn a medal for a top 3 finish.

But regardless of what happens, his college future is set thanks to an accomplished resume off the track.

Besides his strong grades, Sarafoglu started a non-profit organization called Athletes for Access in January of 2021, which raises awareness for inclusion of athletes with intellectual disabilities in high school sports. This includes organizing a 5k run/walk that raised several thousand dollars for students and a track meet with adaptive heats.

Both Sarafoglu’s father, Alex, who has coached him the past two seasons at Coral Reef, and his older sister attended Georgetown so he has already followed one family tradition.

Sarafoglu, who plans to study government, said he could also end up trying to become an attorney like his father, and mother, Heather.

“You never know when your running career is over,” Alex Sarafoglu said. “For him to be honored this way, I’d put that right up there with any of his other accomplishments.”