WHERE ARE THEY NOW: ERIC REYNOLDS : Injuries Put Premature Wrap on Running Career

As an account manager for a financial company in Westlake Village, Eric Reynolds doesn’t fancy himself an author.

But should he decide to write a book, the topic would be easy: No one is more of an expert on high school athletes trying to live up to other people’s expectations.

The 29-year old Ventura resident was the most-highly recruited high school distance runner in the country as a senior at Camarillo High in 1983. He chose UCLA, but a multitude of injuries prevented him from ever tapping into his vast potential in college.

Herb Potter, Reynolds’ primary coach in high school, attributes his protege’s injury woes to increased training mileage at UCLA, but Reynolds disagrees.

Reynolds says his mileage--approximately 60 miles a week--changed little in college. Rather, numerous factors, ranging from coming back from injuries too soon, to running frequently on pavement, to physical characteristics such as high arches and tightly strung muscles and Achilles’ tendons, made him susceptible to leg and foot maladies.

“I did everything I could to try and beat it,” Reynolds said. “I took time off. I worked out in the pool at UCLA. I did a lot of (cycling). I went through who knows how many different kinds of shoes.

“I went to four or five different podiatrists and wore several different pairs of (inserts), but nothing worked. (The injuries) were just something that would always reoccur.”

Despite undergoing surgeries on his left shin and his right knee, and suffering “three or four” stress fractures during his college career, Reynolds doesn’t blame anyone for his woes.

In fact, he has fond memories of UCLA.

He points out that there he met his wife, the former Nancy Brown, made a lot of friends and received a free education.

Perhaps most importantly, the injuries helped him become “Eric Reynolds, the person, instead of Eric Reynolds, the distance runner.”

Although the phenom label weighed heavily on Reynolds in his senior year at Camarillo, he had earned the distinction.

After running 10 minutes 5 seconds for 3,200 meters as a freshman, he timed a superb 9:00.71 to finish ninth in the 1981 State championships as a sophomore.

As a junior, he ran poorly in the 1981 Southern Section 4-A Division cross-country championships due to an illness, but bounced back to finish sixth in the Kinney West regional and third in the Kinney national championships.

In track, he lowered his personal best to 8:52.92 in the 3,200 to finish second in the State championships behind Harold Kuphaldt (8:51.99) of Fair Oaks Bella Vista.

Which set the stage for Reynolds’ senior year.

Mike Smith, who took over Camarillo’s cross-country program in 1982, recalls vividly words veteran Simi Valley Coach Jim McCullough said about Reynolds at a preseason coaches meeting that year.

“You know, you could coach your whole life and never get a kid like that,” McCullough said wistfully to Smith.

“Jim was one of the most respected coaches around so when I heard that, I realized just how good Eric must be,” Smith said.

Nonetheless, Reynolds exceeded Smith’s expectations during an undefeated cross-country campaign that was capped with victories in the Southern Section 4-A Division, Kinney West regional and Kinney national championships.

Reynolds’ 14-second victory margin in the national championships is the third-largest in the 15-year history of the meet.

“The amazing thing about that year is that Eric was never really challenged,” Smith said. “He could have run faster, but he basically ran every race alone after the 1 1/2-mile mark.”

Although he wasn’t quite as dominant during the 1983 track season--Reynolds was beaten by Jeff Cannada of Greenway (Ariz.) High in a two-mile in the Sunkist Invitational in January--he posted some superb times.

He ran 8:54.75 or faster five times in the 3,200, topped by a clocking of 8:44.0 to place sixth in the open two-mile--which is 18 meters longer than the 3,200--in the Pepsi Invitational at UCLA.

The time moved Reynolds to fourth on the all-time national high school performer list behind Jeff Nelson of Burbank (8:36.3 in 1979), Craig Virgin of Lebanon, Ill. (8:40.9 in 1973) and Steve Prefontaine of Marshfield, Ore. (8:41.5 in 1969). The effort also underscored his ability to maintain an even pace--he ran 4:22 for each mile.

“Eric just did not fatigue the way a normal human being fatigues,” Smith said. “He had the most unusual physiological makeup I’ve ever seen. There were runners on the team who were faster than Eric over (400 meters), but they didn’t have the cardiovascular capacity that he did. He was amazing.”

Reynolds went on to win the State championship in 8:54.75--his 9.91 second margin of victory remains the largest in meet history--but he was “totally burned out” when he won the 3,000 in the Golden West Invitational a week later. He concluded the season with a disappointing third-place time of 9:01.52 in the two-mile in the International Prep meet.

By that time, running had become less enjoyable to Reynolds. He had basically trained by himself for the last two years of high school because there was no one at Camarillo who could keep up with him.

“That was very hard and there was pressure too,” he said. “People just weren’t expecting me to win. They thought I should be breaking some record every time I stepped on the track. If I didn’t set a (personal record) every race, they thought something was wrong.”

The burned-out feeling was followed by something even more ominous: injuries.

Although he trained lightly for six weeks after the International Prep meet in order to recharge his batteries, he hurt his left shin in August and the injury forced him to redshirt his first year at UCLA.

“That was the most frustrating time to me,” he said. “When I went to UCLA, it was a completely different environment than what I was used to. I went from being someone who everyone on the Camarillo campus knew to nobody knowing who I was at UCLA and nobody caring if they knew me.

“The other athletes on the team were older than me and many of them weren’t real accepting because they looked at you as someone who might take their spot,” he said. “So it was just very, very lonely the first couple of quarters.”

Reynolds underwent surgery on his shin in the summer of 1984, but he never went longer than three months after that without an injury interrupting his training.

UCLA Coach Bob Larsen figured that with Reynolds’ talent, he could be a very good college runner if he could get his training mileage up to even 50 miles a week on a consistent basis. Unfortunately, that never happened.

“It was very, very frustrating,” Larsen said. “Because he wasn’t just a good athlete, he was an extremely talented athlete.”

After failing to shake injuries for three years, Reynolds appeared healthy in the fall of 1987, his senior year. But after being the No. 1 runner on the Bruins’ cross-country team for the first half of the season, he pulled a hamstring and that injury was followed by a stress fracture in his leg.

“Besides my freshman year, that was the only other time I got really frustrated,” he said. “I was so close to being all the way back.”

After graduating from UCLA in 1988 with a degree in economics, Reynolds ran 29:58 in a 10,000-meter road race in Camarillo that summer, but never seriously contemplated another comeback.

“I knew that in order for me to ever be serious again, I would have to get my injuries problems taken care of,” he said. “But after five years of trying unsuccessfully, I just didn’t see that happening.”

Shortly thereafter, he began work as a real estate agent for a Northridge-based firm owned by Syd Leibovitch, a teammate of Reynolds at UCLA and a former standout at Chatsworth High.

He worked there for five years before starting at Hamilton Financial Corp. nine months ago.

Although the job requires him to spend a lot of time on the road in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, it has allowed Reynolds and his wife to move from Northridge to Ventura, which is closer to his parents in Somis.

Somis, a small agricultural-based community, is where Reynolds lived during his glory days at Camarillo High. But he does not dwell on those times.

“I’m very proud of what I accomplished in high school, but quite honestly, what I accomplished in high school has no effect on my life now,” Reynolds said. “There are a few people in Camarillo who still recognize my name, but other than that, I don’t talk much about it.”