After three decades as an assistant cross country coach at Oak Park and River Forest High School, Abel Reyes was finally recognized as one of the state’s top assistants.
On January 8 at the Carleton Hotel, he received the 2016 Assistant Coach Achievement Award from the Illinois Track & Cross Country Coaches Association.
He was nominated by his longtime colleague, Jose Sosa, and his coaching peers concurred.
Although Reyes wasn’t seeking recognition for all his hard work, the award meant a lot to him. In fact, it was such a special evening that Reyes wore a bow tie for the first time in memory.
Speaking of memories, Reyes got off to an unlikely start with the sport he grew to love. He was attending Harrison High School in Chicago, with his brother, Fernando, when a teacher approached them about starting a cross country team.
“I thought it meant traveling across the country,” Reyes recalled.
He and Fernando went home and dutifully packed small suitcases. Their mother provided them with spending money and sandwiches for the trip.
When they showed up with suitcases the next day, the teacher cracked up. He told them the sport involved running long distances. The Reyes brothers were soon running laps around Douglas Park until they were exhausted. They ate their sandwiches on the way home.
Fernando became one of the team’s top runners, while his brother brought up the rear.
Reyes was slowed by an unfortunate running style, he calls “shuffling.” He inspired his teammates, though, with his dedication.
After graduation, Reyes continued to motivate distance runners at UIC (University of Illinois at Chicago), where he assisted in coaching the women’s team. To complicate matters, one of his runners was also his girlfriend, the future Julia Reyes.
Not all of the female runners were crazy about Reyes’ coaching style.
“I trained them as athletes,” Reyes said. “I would demand of them what I would demand of myself.”
The gains the women made were spectacular. Their times would stand for many years.
Besides finding coaching success at UIC, Reyes found a friend in Sosa. When there was a job opening at OPRF, where Sosa worked, Reyes was hired to work there with autistic students.
He also volunteered to coach the distance runners before being named assistant coach. He served as an assistant with the track team as well.
 “I worked with the field athletes, shot put, etc. It was fun,” Reyes said.
Sosa and Reyes were together for so long, the latter likened their relationship to a “married couple.”
Away from the high school, they socialized and joined up for marathon bike rides and other extreme training exercises. Sosa has retired as the OPRF cross country coach but is back coaching track.
“We’re still giving it to each other,” Reyes said with a smile.
Looking back at his long tenure, Reyes is thankful for the opportunity to coach so many wonderful athletes.
 “I’ve worked with a lot of great kids,” Reyes said. “They listen and they are hard-working. Regardless of success, they put out effort.”
Reyes didn’t just work with the elite runners. He concentrated on those who had struggled like him.
“Everybody counts 1 through 20. If you do the right thing, you send them out with better means to survive,” Reyes said. “They become better people in general.”
Over his 33 years, Reyes has coached thousands of runners, including three of his own children. He finds that cross country teaches life lessons to runners about persevering past their pain and finishing what they started.
“They come back to visit and they’re good providers and good family people,” he said. “I’m more proud of that than what they did in high school.”
Many of Reyes’ runners did enjoy success at OPRF and went on to enjoy successful college careers.
“Jim Westphal became an All-American at Loyola and qualified for the Olympic Trials,” Reyes said. “We had state champion track teams in the 80’s.”
 His most notable runner was Malachy Schrobilgen, who is enjoying a sensational career at the University of Wisconsin. Schrobilgen has won the Big Ten championship twice.
Schrobilgen was a reluctant runner when he met Reyes, but the coach talked him into switching from soccer to cross country.
 “He was a very talented runner; one of the best in the state,” Reyes said. “He did everything we asked of him. He was intelligent, strong and had great mental toughness.
“Running is a war within yourself. You’re telling yourself to get over the hill when your legs feel like rubber. You need to forget the elements and the terrain. It leads them to become really good students. One of my runners told me the toughness he developed helped him through medical school.”
It wasn’t just the runners who improved. The sport has evolved from the days when a coach blew a whistle and watched his team circle a park.
“There have been tremendous advancements in training and preventing injuries,” Reyes said, “Exercise programs provide overall strengthening that make the runners less vulnerable to injury. We take a holistic approach to runners, to find out what they need. We help them with their form. We help them psychologically to convince them they can overcome challenges. We nurture their confidence, until it blossoms.”
During meets, Reyes covers almost as much ground as his runners, sprinting to strategic spots on the course to cheer them on. After a meet, his legs are sore and his voice is hoarse.
Besides coaching at the high school, he also organized a summer running club in Oak Park, which is open to everyone from 5th grade to senior year in high school. They meet three times a week. The club helps feed runners into the OPRF program.
The school has had talented teams over the years but unfortunately they compete in one of the toughest conferences in the country, which has been dominated through the years by York High School.
Nevertheless, Reyes is proud of his runners past and present.
“I don’t coach for anything but the love of the kids and love of the sport,” Reyes said. “The sense of fulfillment I get from coaching is hard to describe. Every new kid is a new challenge, in a good way. I hope they will become someone special.”
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