When Ryan calls the detective to report Josh's crime, he resolves his inner conflict. He decides to be truthful to himself, rather than to be part of the team. When he was younger, he'd thought he was a star ball player; but when that dream was crushed after his accident, he lost sense of who he was. He didn't have any dreams.

Instead, he let things slide by him, didn't participate, and didn't even determine his own interests: he hiked with his father because his father said he would. He told Monica he thought his life would always be average.

Meeting Josh gives Ryan the momentum he needs. He realizes that he can still be successful at sports; he pushes himself at school and sees that he can be successful there too, but only because he needed something better to do than sit with Josh's crowd and feel silly. Yet he realized that he was feeling silly sitting with the jocks, and that he needs to be himself.

The first decision Ryan makes for himself is to separate from the jock crowd in the cafeteria. It's the first hint that Ryan will be strong enough to defeat his biggest obstacle: his desire to be part of the team.

In the end, he pays a huge price for his decision to report Josh: he won't be part of a winning team; he won't get to take home the state title; he won't have a chance to play professional ball. But he will be honest. He will be true to himself.

He feels empty after he finishes the final, losing ball game, but realizes that his life isn't over. That's when he decides to go to the college and sign up for a course, and play on the college ball team. At the beginning of the novel, he didn't have any idea what he would do after high school. At the end, he knows what to do next, and he is proud of what he has done.