How Chot Reyes became a basketball coach.
Everyone by now knows Chot Reyes, the former coach of the Philippine national basketball team and the champion tactician of the TNT Tropang Giga. He was also the coach of the Ateneo Blue Eagles.
Apparently, the 59-year-old tactician has been doing this for most of his life, starting way back in college.
Reyes shared this story with PBA ballers Jared Dillinger, Sol Mercado, and Gabe Norwood, along with broadcast radio personality Tin Gamboa during the Let it Fly podcast published on Friday.
Reyes was in second year college back in Ateneo de Manila University when he already had a child with his now-wife Cherry. He had to find a way to support his family, even as a student.
At the time, he has been playing for Ateneo since high school.
"I needed to work. If I stopped playing, I would lose my athletic scholarship," Reyes shared during the podcast. "I was a working student from second year college. I would go here every single day in the morning right before lunch, go to college for class."
And then Reyes was offered to coach the high school squad, the very same team he played in.
"There was no coach available. I needed a job, already had a baby. We were already living on our own," he explained.
"I was paid a very exorbitant amount of 400 pesos a month in 1982 or 83. I was in second year college. That was my life for two years, playing in the varsity, coaching, and working at the same time."
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Check out the conversation here.
(CF)