Football Player From Iran Finds New Challenges in His New Country : INSULTS REPLACE BULLETS

If you look past the fact that Reza Mehdizadeh is 6-feet 2-inches tall with a chest like an elevated parking structure, or that, at 17, he has more gray hairs on his head than many members of the local Elks lodge, you still can’t help but notice how much older he seems than the other kids at Fountain Valley High School.

It all has very little to do with his looks and everything to do with what he has seen, what he knows.

Reza Mehdizadeh was born and raised in Tehran. He has lived through revolution in one country and prejudice in another. He lives every day with the knowledge that, at the same time, in a different place, he would be preparing to go to war.

Instead, like the other kids at Fountain Valley, he prepares for algebra exams and football games.

Mehdizadeh, a senior, weighs 220 pounds and plays defensive end for Fountain Valley. He was a first-team all-Sunset League player as a junior. College coaches send him letters, and high school coaches try to figure out ways to stop him from mauling their players.

His success is remarkable since Mehdizadeh learned the game less than three years ago.

“The first time I saw a football game, I told myself there was no way I was going to get in the middle of that,” he said. “It was chaos.”

Which brings us back to Tehran and 10-year-old Reza sitting in his family’s large house, wondering.

The streets outside had erupted in revolution. Reza stayed inside, frightened about the fate of his family and their home.

“He’s told me how scared he was as the revolution was going on,” said Brian Lenzkes, a friend and teammate. “His father was away, so Reza was the only man in the house. He was really scared they were going to storm into his house and take it away from his family. He said it happened all the time.”

Reza’s father, Mansour, had been a champion wrestler for Iran, placing fourth in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. He was also a successful businessman and traveled frequently.

When the decision was made about five years ago that Reza, his mother and his sister would leave Iran for the United States, they did so without Mansour, who stayed behind to guard the family’s land holdings.

The decision to leave Iran, in large part, had to do with the future of Reza and his sister, Nazi (pronounced Nah-see). Opportunities abounded in the United States; war did not.

“In Iran, you have no choice. You go to war when you are my age,” Reza said. “There were kids that my father coached that had great futures who went off to the war and got killed.

“I have friends in Iran fighting in the war. I don’t know what has happened to them.”

What happened to Reza is that he became the man of the household.

“Circumstances have made him handle things like a man,” said Mike Milner, Fountain Valley football coach.

If his mother, Shahrzad, was invited to a function, Reza would accompany her. By the time he was in high school, he had two jobs, one in a deli, the other at a gas station.

“I think he’s been forced to be older,” said John Rosales, who coaches Reza on the Fountain Valley wrestling team. “There’s been so much chaos in his life, he’s had to do it to survive.”

Survival in the United States first meant learning the language, then it meant learning to deal with the words that were being spit at him.

He’s embarrassed when he’s asked to repeat the derogatory names that have been shouted at him.

“I can’t say them,” he said.

The United States’ strained relationship with Iran made Reza a target for every kid who imitated his parents’ hate.

“Kids are the cruelest to each other,” Rosales said. “They said things that really cut right through him. You know they didn’t learn those things on their own. It usually comes from home.

“Why anyone would want to say that stuff about him, I just don’t know. He’s such a lovable kid. He’d come to me, almost in tears, and say, ‘It isn’t fair. They don’t even know me.’ ”

Mehdizadeh was a freshman when he met Rosales. He has wrestled for three years at Fountain Valley, and last winter placed second in the Southern Section’s 4-A at 194 pounds.

But it was as a freshman wrestler that he made his most important progress. It was then that he met people such as Lenzkes and Greg Munck, another teammate and friend.

“I was really having a tough time until then,” Mehdizadeh said. “I was nervous about meeting people because I didn’t speak English very well, and I was afraid of what they may say.”

Rosales said: “Those kids really helped bridge the gap for Reza. They helped him filter through.”

And now, as a senior, he is one of the most popular kids on campus. His English is exceptional.

But he still hears the jeers. Some things never change.

“He’s a 6-2, 220-pound target for any prejudiced jerk,” Milner said. “But he’s learning to deal with it.”

Mehdizadeh’s academic career looks bright. His grades have steadily improved, and he says he’s interested in the biomedical field once he gets to college.

“There are such great opportunities here,” he said. “I tell that to my friends all the time, but they don’t really listen. A lot of the kids think life is just for fun. Life isn’t always fun. I know.”