A Spartan Job : After Lean Years, Reynolds Puts Villa Park Back on Track

Kevin Reynolds looks back on the strange ride he has been on the last few years and manages a smile.

Reynolds, the seventh coach of the boys’ basketball team at Villa Park in the last 15 years, thought he had a head coaching job at Servite locked up for the 1994-95 season.

Not only had he moved up from assistant coach to take over for Coach Scott Hamilton, who was suspended for the season after an altercation with a referee, but he led the Friars to a 9-3 record down the stretch and into the Southern Section Division III-AA championship game.

But Servite reinstated Hamilton after the season, so Reynolds left, saying he wanted to spend more time on his two small businesses.

He didn’t coach at all last season, and many wondered what he was thinking this season when he took the job at Villa Park, where no coach had posted a winning season since the ‘70s.

But at 7:30 tonight, the Spartans (18-5) host Trabuco Hills (11-15) in the first round of the section Division II-AA playoffs, and Reynolds is getting credit for the team’s quick turnaround, which included a Century League championship. Last season, the Spartans were 10-14, and the year before, 3-20.

“Coach made us pay attention to details,” said Craig Boden, a 6-foot-3 senior forward. “He was no-nonsense. He taught us little things like how to pass the ball and how to receive a pass. You may think that is the easiest thing in the world, but there’s a right way and wrong way to do it and he taught us how.”

After combing through old game programs, Reynolds figured the team’s last winning season was in 1976, when they finished 19-5 and he was a 10-year-old in Fountain Valley. Dick Brunt, who has taught history at the school for 28 years, remembers it being more like 1979, but not by much more than a game or two.

Regardless, the enthusiasm brought to the campus this year by the team’s success has been welcome news for faculty and students.

“The kids are excited,” said Brunt, who was the announcer at basketball games until three years ago. “For the first time in 15 or 20 years people are talking about basketball, not like that lost decade of the 1980s, when they just made fun of it.”

Reynolds, who graduated from Mater Dei in 1984, was an assistant under Chris Burton at Fullerton High for three years beginning in 1988, helping the Indians reach the playoffs each season. He followed Burton to Villa Park for the 1991-92 season and the team finished a game under .500. When Burton took a job in Washington, Reynolds went to Servite.

But after taking the Friars to the championship game in 1994, Reynolds refused to take a back seat to Hamilton.

“It was a situation where you had two head coaches,” he said. “It just wasn’t going to work out and I had been coaching for a long time, I needed a break.”

Reynolds knew what type of players he was inheriting at Villa Park because he had watched them play several seasons earlier in area youth league games.

There was 7-foot junior Eric Chenowith, a mobile center whom a program could be built around. Guard Isaiah Cavaco, a transfer from Mater Dei, is quick and can drive or get the ball to Chenowith.

Cavaco is averaging six assists and Chenowith 16 points and 10.6 rebounds.

“There weren’t too many jobs that would have pulled me out of retirement,” Reynolds said. “But I felt comfortable with the parents and administrators and I certainly knew the kids. It was a really nice fit.”

The Spartans had a little luck along the way toward their league title. They lost both their games to Santa Ana Valley, but the Falcons forfeited five league victories, including one against Villa Park, for using an ineligible player. The Spartans finished four games ahead of the Falcons and a game ahead of runner-up Canyon.

Reynolds said the biggest challenge in resurrecting the basketball program was erasing the “we’re a bunch of losers” attitude. He told his players he would not accept being second best.

“It had kind of a domino effect,” Boden said. “No one really wanted to work hard for a losing program, but the coaches we have this year are the first coaches that really demanded that we work hard. We had the talent in the past, but all we really needed was good coaching.”