If you play football, or if you are taking a business course at Aspen High School, you have probably met Ryan Triece. He is the new Entrepreneurship teacher at the school this year, and he is also an assistant coach for the football and baseball teams.

During this football season, his job was to sit up in the booth during home games and make suggestions over his headset to the coaches on the field.

“I watch out for specific things,” Triece said. “I’ll watch the linebackers and see what they’re doing, or how the front line is lining up. Are they over a guard or a tackle? I watch how we block. Or, if someone doesn’t go where they are supposed to, it’s my role to say, ‘Hey Joe, you didn’t go where you were supposed to go.”

Also, if Triece spots a weak guy on the other team he will relay that information down to the field.

Triece is known for being very relaxed and unhurried, especially for someone who coaches football and teaches business. He does not seem at all overstressed, super-competitive, or impatient.

“He’s really understanding, which makes him a great teacher,” sophomore Victor Zumerchick-Dunn said.

“I have met with him after school more than once to get a better understanding and he was more than willing to help,” freshman Juliette Woodrow said.

Triece went to Central Michigan University where he made it onto the football team as a walk-on. After graduation, he got a job as a catering sales manager in a big, fancy hotel in downtown Chicago, which meant he had to organize a lot of weddings.

“I didn’t really like setting up weddings, to be honest with you,” Triece said.

In 2007, he switched to teaching and moved to Colorado.  He got a job at Eagle Valley High School in Eagle, Colorado, where he taught business for four years. Then, in 2011, he moved back to his home state of Michigan to teach at a high school near Lansing, the state capital.  After two years in Michigan, though, he missed living in the mountains, partly because he is an avid snowboarder.  He is very happy to be living in Aspen now, and teaching in a school where he can look out the windows and watch the snow accumulating on the Highlands Bowl.

He said his students at AHS are among the most respectful he has ever taught and the athletes never give up. While playing against Faith Christian in the playoffs – a game Aspen lost – the Aspen football players were especially tenacious and tireless, according to Triece.

“They never quit,” Triece said. “They played to the whistle. In the second half, we lost by a touchdown, 21 to 14. They were just bigger, faster, stronger and sometimes that just happens.”

Triece has also brought a new club to Aspen High School: Future Business Leaders of America, also known as FBLA.  Right now, there are about forty students in the club, mostly upperclassmen.  Triece hopes to teach members of the club about leadership and what it takes to become an entrepreneur.

“The club is an enhancement to what we’re doing in class,” Triece said. “My goals are leadership skills, competition and enrichment.”

In February, the club travels to a competition at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction where students compete with each other in many business-related activities such as coming up with the best business idea, or solving a difficult business problem.  It sounds like an intense, high-pressure competition.

“It’s all behind closed doors,” Triece said. “It’s just you and a partner in front of the judges. It’s a good way to learn how to be a tough competitor. I think competition is a good thing.”

Triece is looking for more freshmen and sophmores to join the club so if you like to compete, or want to learn more about business and leadership, you should introduce yourself to him. He’s a really nice guy, and I’m sure he would love to talk to you about football, baseball, ideas for a new business, snowboarding, snow conditions, or even better, stock tips.