Finding His Way

He’s here because of a mother’s love, a stranger’s devotion and his own love for the sport.

“I probably wouldn’t even be around if it wasn’t for wrestling,” said Rafael Reynolds, a two-time defending City Section champion from San Fernando.

“I was a bad kid when I was younger.... Without wrestling, I probably would have ended up somewhere I shouldn’t be.”

Raised by a single mother and with an absentee father whom he barely knew, he developed behavior problems at a young age. But the kindness of a stranger helped to change that.

Today, Reynolds, a junior, has seemingly not only beaten the odds, but has also proved to be the dominant wrestler in the City Section, in two weight classes.

Reynolds is heavily favored to win his third City championship at the individual finals Saturday at Chatsworth.

He normally wrestles at 152 pounds, but in the City duals last Friday, Reynolds competed in the 160-pound division. He faced Bell’s two-time defending City champion, Ruben Pivaral, in a semifinal and won, 4-1.

Reynolds finished 3-0 in the competition with two first-period pins to lead the Tigers to a third-place finish.

By season’s end, Reynolds could end up advancing further in the postseason than any San Fernando wrestler before him.

That’s quite a turnabout for a youngster who often found himself getting into trouble at school.

“If he didn’t get something right, he would get upset,” his mother, Mora Pyburn, said. “I saw the difference in him when he started wrestling. He was able to express [that anger] in a different way.”

Said Reynolds: “Wrestling taught me to take my anger out on the mat instead of off of it.”

Reynolds’ path changed at age 8, when he was “play wrestling” with his younger brother, Rashaad, on a sandlot. That’s when John Paez, a volunteer with the Boys and Girls Club of San Fernando, spotted the two and offered each a spot on the club’s wrestling team.

“He [Paez] asked me if I wanted to wrestle,” Reynolds said. “And I was like, ‘yeah.’ So he talked to my mom and I went [to the club] that Wednesday. I’ve been wrestling ever since.”

Reynolds’ transformation into a disciplined athlete didn’t happen overnight.

“When we first got Raffy, he had a very bad temper,” Paez said. “When he would lose, he would get so mad he would try and fight [the opposing player] afterward and throw rocks and things.

“But as time went on, he would learn to control it and deal with both the victories and the agony of defeats.”

Paez, an airline mechanic, has volunteered at the Boys and Girls Club two days a week since he graduated from high school in 1977.

He also grew up without a father and wrestled for San Fernando, qualifying for the state meet as a heavyweight his senior year. He said it was then-coach Sam DeJohn who saved him from going in the wrong direction.

“That’s why we take these kids under our wing,” Paez said. “We want them to be somebody, and Rafael is going to be somebody.”

Reynolds is still a work in progress. He let his grades slip this year, making him academically ineligible for the majority of the season.

“It was the biggest eye-opener in the world to me,” Reynolds said. “For them to say, ‘You can’t wrestle,’ it was like a shock.... I almost started crying because I love the sport so much.”

Reynolds took the steps to correct his mistake.

“I’ve never worked so hard at something in my life,” he said. “I stayed up nights working until 2 in the morning sometimes.

“I’m normally an A and B student, but this year my head was just somewhere else. I messed up. I won’t do that again.”

Because of his ineligibility, Reynolds’ record is only 11-1. He lost to Redlands East Valley’s Mike O’Hara, ranked No. 1 in the state by the California Wrestling Assn., in December.

So Saturday, the question isn’t so much whether Reynolds will win, but at which weight class.

His team would benefit if he wrestles at 160, where he would probably face Pivaral again.

But some believe if he stays at 152, he has a chance to advance further at the state level than Joaquin Robledo, who finished a school-best sixth in state in 1986.

Last year, Reynolds had three pins in three City individual championship matches at 135 pounds, but then went 2-2 in the state finals and failed to place. As a freshman, he was also 3-0 in the City meet, but went 0-2 at state.

“One positive thing about Raffy’s shortened season is, he’s not banged up,” San Fernando Coach Fernando Gonzalez said. “[What weight he wrestles] is a decision I’m going to have to make on the day.

“We’re three-time City champions and we need to defend that. On the other hand, Raffy has a chance to go far in state.”

Regardless of how far Reynolds goes this year in wrestling, it’s clear how far he has come as a person. He says he too expects to help young people when he’s older.

But he has already made quite a difference for one youngster, his 13-year-old brother, Rashaad, who sees Reynolds as the male role model the two boys never had.

“I just look up to him now because of how hard he’s worked, and I see what he’s done,” Rashaad said. “I used to see him throw his tantrums when he was younger when he would lose, and then I saw him learn to control his head.

“Now when he gets on the mat, he controls everyone he faces.”