“Don’t leave Ronnie.”

Those three words and a crisp chest pass from All-American forward Evan Yates under the basket to Ronnie Steward beyond the 3-point line are an opposing team’s worst nightmare.

Yates is the scoring and rebounding machine who will most likely be the best player in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference this year and is the foundation that head coach John Ellenwood has built his team on for the last three seasons. You know him.

Steward, on the other hand, is the best player you might not recognize walking on campus.

At 5-feet, 11-inches tall, he is not an imposing figure. He smiles so broadly that it seems there is no way his face will be able to contain it, which could be why, invariably, you find yourself smiling too.

That is, unless you’re from Findlay, Tiffin, Hillsdale or any of the other places where his high-arcing jump shots make gyms go quiet.

Yates in the post and Steward on the wing. That’s the way it should be. It almost seems as if it was a match made in heaven.

So why did Steward have to go through basketball hell to get here?

• • •

Steward loves basketball.

It is a love affair that began with a father teaching his son. In a long line of athletes, Steward was just the next in line to pick up a ball and make it fly through a hoop.

But it was, and still is, so much more than that.

Basketball was how Steward identified himself. It was how he made friends, how he spent long, hot summer afternoons and how he made his presence felt in the large city of Columbus.

By the time he graduated from Eastmoor Academy, his reputation had grown. He was the most highly touted point guard in the state of Ohio.

He started all four years at Eastmoor, taking the team to heights it had not seen in close to 15 years, including an appearance in the city championship and a 19-4 record in 2007, his senior year.

“When I think of those times at Eastmoor it always makes me smile,” he said.

He finished his high school career with over 2,000 points. His senior year, he was named District 2 player of the year. The Columbus Dispatch also named him their area player of the year.

After the season, he accepted a scholarship to play college basketball at Division I Akron under head coach Keith Dambrot.

• • •

University of Akron.

It’s a name with a reputation. A reputation of Mid-American Conference championships and NCAA tournament berths—two in the past four seasons.

Steward saw that reputation first hand, but he saw most of it from the bench.

“There were good times and there were also some really, really low times,” he said.

He came in with high expectations. Dru Joyce III, who played alongside LeBron James in high school before becoming Akron’s floor general, had just graduated. Dambrot was looking to Steward to replace him.

“[Dambrot] came to me and he’s like, ‘I don’t need you to be a freshman. You need to be a senior by Friday,’” Steward said. “And this was Monday.”

He was ready. For the first time, however, his body betrayed him. Steward was the victim of a nagging hip injury that caused him to redshirt during the 2007-08 season.

“I stayed positive,” he said. “I stayed around the guys, stayed around the coaching staff, stayed on the dean’s list academically.”

The hip healed and Steward came back the next year prepared to begin his college career as Akron’s starting point guard. Dambrot tagged him as a leader of the team, and he averaged 18.8 minutes, 3.3 points and 2.7 assists for the first six games of the 2008-09 season.

• • •

On November 30, 2008, Steward scored five points and dished out four assists as Akron demolished Fairleigh Dickinson 85-41 in its sixth game of the season.

Afterwards, he noticed swelling and pain in his right leg.

“I’m thinking it’s just, you know, just leg swelling,” he said. “It’ll go down.”

He was taken to the emergency room and diagnosed with compartment syndrome. The situation was far worse than he could have imagined.

The leg is divided into four muscle compartments. Increased pressure in one can block blood flow and lead to nerve damage.

Steward was told that a pressure of between 32 and 45 percent denotes compartment syndrome, and that the pressure in his right leg was 89 percent.

He was also told that it was possible he could have his leg amputated.

“I’m like, ‘leg amputated? What’s going on? I don’t have any physical pain to the point where I’m crying or hurting or anything,’” he said.

Fortunately, Steward entered surgery just in time to save his leg. Another practice or game would have been the last of his career.

After another season of rehab and an offseason of preparation, he was again tabbed as a potential starter. Dambrot had not wavered in his belief that Steward could be a key piece to his team.

But before Steward could prove it, he got compartment syndrome again, this time in his left leg. Even though it was not as severe—Steward was able to return to the court less than halfway into the season—the time he missed was too great.

“I think I got kind of nabbed with the injury bug and they just moved on to the next person,” he said.

• • •

He decided to transfer from Akron. After all of the injuries, he just wanted to go to a place where he could play.

Ashland was that opportunity.

“Everything I was looking for across the board fit,” he said.

In 2010-11—his first year at Ashland—he dislocated his shoulder and had to miss the last eight games of the season.

The best game of Steward’s career did not happen in a MAC Championship or in an NCAA tournament game.

Instead, his best game happened at Kates Gymnasium on Jan. 5, when the Eagles beat No. 17 Findlay 94-80.

Listening to him talk about it, you’d think it was all of those games he dreamed of playing at Akron wrapped into one.

“It was one of those games you just don’t want to end,” he said.

He knew how big a win against Findlay could be for the program and how much it meant to Ellenwood, who had not beaten the rival Oilers in four tries.

“Ronnie really bought into it for that game,” Ellenwood said.

The night before the game, Steward remembers telling AU assistant coach Jared Ronai that something special was going to happen. He just had a feeling.

After getting kicked out of the gym by a security guard around 11 p.m. and combatting his sleeplessness by watching Chris Paul, Brandon Jennings and Kobe Bryant highlights in Patterson Hall, he woke up the next morning with the same feeling.

He came out on fire, drilling six of nine field goal attempts and 16 of 17 free throws on the way to a career-high 31 points.

When Findlay closed to within eight, at 69-61 with 7:15 left, Steward reeled off Ashland’s next eight points to build the lead back up to 14 and effectively seal the win.

“From that day forward we’re like, man, we’ve got a hell of a weapon on our hands,” Ellenwood said.

The victory gave the Eagles momentum. It was part of a seven-game win streak that helped propel them into the GLIAC tournament as the eighth seed.

Steward followed up his performance against Findlay with a 15-point outburst against Urbana and was named the conference player of the week.

For the first time in years, the game he loved so much loved him back.

“It wasn’t even about the points,” he said. “It was about just being out there and enjoying and having fun.”

• • •

Last season was Steward’s first injury-free season of college basketball. It was like he was making up for lost time. He led the GLIAC in minutes played (945), was third in free throw percentage (.889) and fifth in 3-point field goal percentage (.442).

At the end of the season, he was made a second team all-conference selection.

Yates, desperate for a sidekick at the beginning of the season, found exactly that in Steward near the end.

This year, Ashland returns all five starters. The Eagles will be one of the most experienced teams in the conference and they believe they can go far.

How far?

“Our main goal—it’s a really lofty goal—is to win a national championship,” Steward said.

Coming from anyone else, the statement might seem preposterous. While just about everyone in the country has the women’s team marked as the team to beat, the men were picked to finish third in the GLIAC South.

But Steward has a way of making it sound plausible.

After all, he is the emotional pillar of this Ashland team. When he has it going—like in the Findlay game—the feeling is contagious.

“When he’s smiling, I think everybody else is smiling,” Ellenwood said.

If everything goes according to plan, there should be a lot of smiles flashing across Kates this winter. None of them will be bigger than Steward’s. And no one deserves it more.