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Twenty years after his death, Paul Reyna still gives life to Boise State football

BOISE, Idaho — His face is the last thing Boise State players see before they step onto the blue turf at Albertsons Stadium on game day.

No current Bronco ever met him, and many weren’t even born yet when he died.

Paul Reyna only spent two weeks at Boise State, but his impact is rivaled by few others. Reyna died 20 years ago Friday, the result of a head injury he suffered in a preseason scrimmage.

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At the end of the hallway outside the Broncos’ locker room, players touch a plaque with his face that features a quote from his mother, Carolyn Gusman: “Be Not Afraid … Go Out And Win Championships.”

“Paul is someone I admire,” Boise State junior cornerback Avery Williams said. “He gave everything, literally, on the blue. You see his face and you want to honor his memory.”

Gusman’s words, which she spoke to the team the day after her son was declared braindead, have proven not only inspiring but prophetic.

Boise State played in its first bowl game at the end of that 1999 season and has appeared in 18 others since. The Broncos have won, played for or shared 13 conference titles in the 20 years since Reyna’s death.

“What Paul was, what happened,” Boise State strength and conditioning coach Jeff Pitman said, “it was the match that ignited this program as it stood.”

The third of Gusman’s four children, Paul Reyna was an athlete as soon as he could walk. After playing multiple sports as a kid, he blossomed into a big, strong defensive lineman, starring since his sophomore year at Bishop Amat High in La Puente, Calif.

“He was an altar boy at church, he had the biggest, friendliest smile you’ve seen,” said former Bishop Amat and Boise State teammate Jason Turner. “But when he was serious, man, he was one of the most physically imposing people I’ve seen.”

Reyna took a handful of college visits, some officially and some paid for by the family. Gusman told him not to commit while on the trips but to come back home and make a list of pros and cons. Every trip, she said, he would return uncertain about where his future lay.

“Except for Boise State,” Gusman said. “As soon as I picked him up, I knew it was a done deal. He kept his word, and we made that list, but I knew what he wanted to do.”

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Gusman had an inkling before her son even returned home. Then-coach Dirk Koetter had said he would be “honored” if Reyna visited, and that word stuck with her. So did the phone call Reyna made to her while on his visit.

Standing almost 1,000 feet above Boise is Table Rock, a plateau easily visible from the football stadium. At night, a 60-foot cross on it lights up, seemingly floating in the sky.

Reyna took it as a sign. He had liked everything on his visit, but that sealed it. He excitedly called his mom to tell her what he had seen. His headstone at Queen Of Heaven Cemetery in Rowland Heights, Calif., has an etching of Table Rock and its cross.

“You look out up there, you see that cross, and you can’t help but think of him, because after he died, things changed,” said Boise State coach Bryan Harsin, who was a senior quarterback on the 1999 team.

(Dave Southorn / The Athletic)

The dates are forever etched in Gusman’s mind: She flew up with Reyna to Boise on Aug. 7, 1999. They spent five days together before she had to return home, five days she has replayed so many times.

One day, she watched a practice along with other parents underneath a shaded part of what was then Bronco Stadium. She decided to change spots and sit in one of the end zones, near where the defensive line was working. It was a typical August afternoon in Boise, with temperatures nearing triple digits.

“I stuck out like a sore thumb in that heat, by myself,” Gusman said. “But I got to see him up close, living his dream.”

Pitman remembers Gusman, in those pre-cellphone camera days, following Reyna around to capture life in his new place, taking photos in his dorm, in practice and even the weight room.

“She had this big old lens camera,” Pitman said. “I tested him in the vertical jump and he got a cramp. So, he’s rolling around on the floor and Carolyn’s there snapping photos. I was like, ‘Well, this is unique.’ ”

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Gusman and Reyna met every day for lunch in the student union building. They sat at the same table each time, with Table Rock visible outside the window.

When his mom had to fly back home on Aug. 11, Reyna asked Koetter if he could ride with her to the airport. His coach allowed it, and they spent every last possible minute together. Gusman asked the gate attendant if she could be the last to board.

“I had already seen two children leave the house, so I had been through those tough goodbyes, but I kept saying to myself, ‘Carolyn, don’t break down,’ ” Gusman said. “But when it came time for me to board, it was Paul that broke down.”

When she got back home, Gusman received a phone call from Koetter promising her that her son was doing better than when she left him. It made her feel better, but she could not have known that the boarding time at the airport would be last time she would see him outside of a hospital bed.

Boise State held its first scrimmage of the 1999 preseason on the blue turf on Aug. 18, and it was a chance for Reyna to make an impression. He had injured his hand before camp but was practicing with a cast.

The Broncos went on to field a solid defense that season, and Reyna probably was ticketed to redshirt, but he was still fighting for a potential spot.

During the scrimmage, Reyna tripped over a tight end and fell backward. He hit his head on the turf and got up under his own power, but he immediately went to the sideline.

“It happened right in front of me, I was watching him, and it seemed like a play you’ve seen a bunch of times before,” said Pitman, a former Boise State offensive lineman who was in his first season on the staff. “I knew something was bad. I looked to our trainer and our team doctor, I could tell on their faces … he sat on the bench a few minutes, then he just kind of slumped over.”

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An ambulance quickly took Reyna to the hospital for emergency surgery. He had suffered a torn blood vessel between his brain and skull, and the bleeding was turning into a blood clot. He never regained consciousness.

Gusman flew up immediately, back to the same airport where she had a tearful goodbye with her son a week earlier. The 72 hours after the injury would be pivotal, she was told, but his condition worsened.

Turner, an offensive lineman for the Broncos and Reyna’s roommate, was pulled out of his first college class to say goodbye to his friend.

Reyna was as big a reason as any that Turner had come to Boise State. He held a scholarship offer from Iowa, and he kept in his back pocket as the recruiting cycle went on. However, Hawkeyes coach Hayden Fry retired and Kirk Ferentz took over. Ferentz pulled the offer in December, and Turner had to scramble. Reyna told Boise State’s coaches about it, and Turner was sold after he took his own visit.

“I walked into that hospital room, and my knees just got weak, I could hardly stand up,” Turner recalled this week. “Koetter said to be strong, but that’s hard to do as a young guy when you experience that.”

At 3:20 p.m. MT on Monday, Aug. 23, 1999, Reyna was declared braindead. He was 19.

“Five days … the fighter he was, he held on for five days,” Pitman said.

Gusman put her head on his chest after doctors said there was nothing else that could be done.

“I could still hear his heart beating,” Gusman said.

Amid their grief, the family had decided to donate Reyna’s organs. Gusman spoke with the media the next day, telling them they were being harvested as she spoke.

Multiple organs were taken, including his heart.

She never met the recipient, but Gusman was told a little about him.

“He was a father of three children,” she said.

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Reyna’s headstone, in addition to the Table Rock etching, has the date of his birth (July 1, 1980) and two other dates — Aug. 23 and 24, 1999.

(Courtesy Carolyn Gusman)

Somehow, Gusman found the strength to speak at that news conference the day after she knew her son wasn’t coming back. Immediately after, she walked to a memorial service in the student union building where she had been with her son earlier that month.

Gusman wasn’t planning on speaking to the crowd of about 650 people, most of them strangers. But she sat there, holding a Boise State helmet, and could hear her son’s teammates sobbing behind her. She felt compelled to speak. And she did — words that have inspired two decades of Broncos.

“Those boys had to go back out and do exactly what my son was when he got hurt,” Gusman said. “I had to say something to them.”

Last Sunday, the 2019 Boise State football team hiked up Table Rock. At the top, Harsin and Pitman spoke about Reyna, telling his story, what he means 20 years later, and what the landmark meant to him. Pitman held a photo of Reyna in his hand as he spoke.

There is another plaque with Reyna’s photo and his mother’s words, slightly different than the one that sits outside the locker room. Pitman has it in his office, right by the door. It used to hang in the office of Scott Huff, who was a redshirt freshman in 1999 and later coached at Boise State from 2006 to 2016. Huff is now Washington’s offensive line coach.

“I tell our guys I keep it up there that every moment we are here, it’s important,” said Pitman, whose son, Nicholai, is a senior long snapper for the Broncos. “They could get hurt on the field, they could get in a car accident. Sometimes I’ll get pissed at a guy, you have 100 of them, it happens, but always it’s a reminder to keep it positive.”

Pitman also told the team Sunday about Gusman, her ability to inspire the team and her care for the community that supported the family in such a difficult time.

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He also dropped a big piece of news: She was going to be back in Boise again soon.

Gusman and her children plan to visit for Boise State’s home opener Sept. 6 against Marshall. It will be three days shy of 20 years from the last time she was at a Boise State game, when she was an honorary captain for the Broncos’ 1999 opener at UCLA. That could have been a homecoming for Reyna, but Gusman and Paul’s father, Art, made the emotional walk to midfield of the Rose Bowl in his honor for the coin toss.

Last fall, Turner realized it was coming up on 20 years since Reyna had died. He made an initial attempt to ask Boise State to organize something with Gusman to little avail, but in December, he and former lineman Rob Vian spoke about Reyna on Turner’s Bronco Alumni Show podcast, reigniting the idea.

Turner got in touch with football administrators, and according to Pitman, when Harsin heard the plan, he simply said, “Hell yeah.”

“To have that family be here, to have Carolyn pass along that fire she started in 1999 to this 2019 team, I think it would be really good to remind them of the culture that was created,” Turner said.

Like that UCLA game, if Gusman takes in any pregame festivities, she won’t stick around. Her children probably will watch the game, but she hasn’t watched an extended part of a football game since her son died.

Before Reyna left for Boise State, he convinced Gusman to stay involved at his high school. She organizes the football team meal before each game and works the pass gate before every home game.

“I put on every Boise State game, but I just listen, it’s too hard to watch,” Gusman said. “I still help out at (Bishop Amat), I hear the crowd, but that’s all. I may try to go out onto the (blue) turf when nobody else is there. I’ll probably walk to the dorm where Paul lived.”

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There also is a planned visit to the cross at Table Rock, where Gusman placed flowers for Reyna after the memorial. She also hopes her family can float down the Boise River, something Reyna had excitedly told her the team planned to do before the scrimmage, but weather prevented him from ever going.

Near the grotto where the team prays, a mural of Reyna painted on the side of a storage shed still remains. His family and former teammates will meet there Saturday to remember him.

“I remember exactly what he said, and it really sticks with me,” Gusman said. “(Paul) said, ‘It’ll get you through.’ I know what he meant then, but it means even more now. I thought I’d do it for a year, and it’s turned into 20.”

(Christopher Hanewinckel / USA TODAY Sports)

Harsin recalls having a brief conversation with Reyna, and he says that Boise State is one of many schools that have made it more and more of a point for all players to get to know one another as much as possible, regardless of class.

He said he’s gained more of an appreciation for the connection players have to a program they choose to play for and the effort coaches put in to get the players to Boise. He will never forget seeing the look on Koetter’s face when he told the team Reyna had died. In 2004, while coaching at Arizona State, Koetter told the Seattle Times, “I look back on that as probably the hardest single experience of my life.”

Shortly after Reyna’s death, a woman was visiting his older sister’s office and walked past her cubicle. She saw a picture of Paul and said, “I know that kid.” It would be hard to forget the 270-pound guy with the shaved head, but it was much more than that.

The woman told a story that a few months earlier during a rainstorm, she was struggling to get her car unlocked after leaving a grocery store. Reyna saw it, ran over and helped her load the car.

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“Paul didn’t live a long life, but he lived a full life,” Gusman said. “That hyphen on a headstone … that’s small, but it’s what matters. It’s what you do with those 19 or 90 years.”

Considering that life still inspires, Gusman’s words once again ring true.

(Top photo: Dave Southorn / The Athletic)

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Jenniffer Sheldon

Update: 2024-06-22