RESEDA — Practice has ended, but the work has not stopped for first-year head coach Reginald Tyson.
Tyson iced players’ knees and discussed the daily activities and struggles his athletes face on and off the field on a sweltering afternoon in early August.
He has only two players with youth football experience: junior linebacker Innis Marquez and senior running back Cristopher Santos. But Tyson believes he’ll turn a once popular football program at Reseda into a respected program.
“This sport means everything to me,” Santos said after receiving ice for his back and legs. “It’s all I got, and it’s amazing to have a coach that cares and is willing to put all his effort into the community.”
Reseda has struggled since losing longtime coach Alonso Arreola. Arreola coached Reseda between 2005-21. Arreola led the Regents to the CIF LA City Section Division I title in 2019 and first since Joel Schaeffer guided Reseda to its last championship in 1995. Arreola compiled 12 winning seasons in 16 years.
Reseda struggled to win after Arreola’s tenure ended. Tyson’s arrival in March means three different coaches have led in the past four years. The previous two combined for a record of 2-27.
“It’s been a factory reset,” Santos said.
Enter Tyson, who has been a figure in youth football across two decades in the San Fernando Valley. He played free safety and slot receiver for Ontario High School between 1980-83 before joining the Army, traveling the world and providing logistics support during Operation Desert Storm.
Service to both nation and community that brought Tyson from his life experiences in the Army and coaching the West Valley Eagles, Calabasas Ravens, and Valley G-Men to Reseda.
“Any team I coach and anything I do, I go in with both feet,” Tyson said. “I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity for me given the program’s situation and given my specialty and level of effort. A lot of coaches came in here and thought it was too much work. Rebuilding is part of my experience. I was part of the rebuild at Taft, and I’d rather come in and rebuild than slide into the driver’s seat on something someone else.”
And with Tyson comes a fresh start for Reseda with a man who has spent years training and learning under other head coaches. Now he’s coaching football and focusing on mastering fundamentals. Fundamentals like gripping the football properly to prevent fumbles, or tackling and lowering your hips to wrap up and drive a player rather than using shoulder pads or lowering the head, which put players at risk for neck and head injuries.
“The past coaches wanted us to magically know all the basics,” Marquez said. “But especially at Reseda, you don’t see a lot of that talent where you have youth football, and (Tyson) has implemented the film room. That’s not something we did a lot. But the first thing we did was watch film and work on the basics. Now with players like us who know more, he can trust us.”
Now he gets to be the leader of a program; a majority never played tackle football before high school. For some of the players, it was having parents who felt the sport carried too much injury risk, while others were asked to help with family businesses and households.
But enter high school, and the opportunity to make independent choices expands. Football enters the picture as either an outlet, a discovered passion, or simply wanting to join a team and make new friends.
While winning in the past has been the standard at Reseda, the expectations are different under Tyson. Maintaining grades and playing the sport with discipline and respect becomes tantamount to any wins or losses.
“(Tyson) doesn’t just focus on the game itself; he focuses on us personally,” Santos said. “He’s been taking care of our injuries, mentally, and talking to us about things outside of football.”
Tyson wants to see the sport thrive and get back to an era where the interest is high enough to warrant creating a junior varsity and frosh team.
For now, he’ll take the 25 players who showed up to practice with enthusiasm on hot afternoons, carrying enthusiasm and wanting to learn fundamentals of the sport.
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And Tyson says he’ll be at Reseda until he feels his mission is complete and starts a new tradition of winning. His goals: build the program, double the number of enrollees, and win a CIF LA City Section title.
“The formula is you have to have the time and commitment from the players, parents and coaches,” Tyson said. “You need support from all three points. And once that happens, everything is better. If the player starts to waver, then the parent steps in. All my coaching staff comes from the youth world, and I’ve either coached them, their sons, and been to my house and eaten at my table. I treat them like family.”