DENNIS SILVA II | STAFF WRITER
MISSION — A gifted runner since he was in sixth grade, GJ Reyna thought he had it all figured out when he entered high school as a freshman four years ago.
He was going to do things his way, he told himself. The best way he knew.
It wasn’t long thereafter that Reyna understood that wouldn’t be the case. Not if he was to be successful.
“I learned to listen,” Reyna said. “When I was a freshman, I had a problem with that. It wasn’t until my sophomore year that I started listening to my coaches and I started to figure out that was the way to go. Just listening and paying attention really was big.”
It’s paid off for the Mission Veterans Memorial senior. Reyna is making his second consecutive trip to the UIL state track and field meet later this week. He qualified by winning the 3200-meter run with a time of 9:17.81 at regionals in San Antonio earlier this month.
“The coaches knew what they were talking about, and as we moved on you could see the difference in the workouts they had me do and my training,” Reyna said. “I was getting results.”
After making state as a third-place wild card qualifier last season, Reyna heads to Austin as a regional champ with a new tweak.
Before the District 31-5A meet earlier this season, Patriots coach David Longoria had Reyna go from a variation workout format to one that harped on different intervals and times for one distance.
That allowed racing to become more of a muscle memory for Reyna. The pace of the workouts was more intense than that for meets.
“It seems really simple, but it works well,” Reyna said.
It was a pleasant sight for Longoria.
“Physically, he’s the same guy. But it’s the mental part we were hoping to conquer,” Longoria said. “We wanted him to get over that hump of the threshold of fear. That’s when runners realize that it doesn’t matter what they think, the body will do. It will go.
“He found that and he embraced it.”
Though the workouts were more strenuous, the results were clear. Reyna won the district’s 3200 meter run and then prevailed again at regionals.
“It’s a tough thing for a 17-year-old or 18-year-old to find,” Longoria said of the “threshold of fear.” “We here at Vets have a pretty good group of distance runners, but only one survivor. And it has to deal with the maturity and the mental aspect that GJ has. There is a price to pay, and he is willing to pay it.”
After this week’s meet, Reyna will close a terrific high school cross country and track and field career. But he won’t be finished running. He will start competing for the University of Houston next fall.
Reyna still smiles when he thinks back on it all, from a cocky freshman to a humbled sophomore who realized running could be his ticket to a free college education if he kept his mind right.
“From there, it became a goal,” Reyna said. “That’s what I wanted to do, continue my career at the next level. Junior year, I got a little more serious, got a little closer to that goal. That’s when it became reality.
“Now I’m focused on just winning. I went into state last year just wanting to experience it, do my best and let the rest fall into place. This year I have more of a goal. We know exactly what we’re going to do. The goal is to get on that podium and medal.”
It can be assured Reyna will be ready for it all, willing to listen and do whatever it takes.