2016 Sports Person of the Year: Phil Reed
A brown teddy bear that sits on Lorraine Reed’s bed is very much a part of her daily routine. Every night she talks to the bear and gives it a hug. The stuffed animal is important to her not so much for what it is as for who it reminds her of — her late husband, Phil Reed.
“That was my Phil, my big teddy bear,” she said as she showed off the bear in her East Islip home one cold December morning.
From a distance, Phil was an imposing figure, perhaps even an intimidating one to those who didn’t know him. But it wouldn’t take long after talking to him to realize that, in truth, he was a big softy with a kind heart that matched his beaming smile. This bear of a man was a teddy bear.
That heart and smile that could uplift spirits endeared him to Lorraine when they first met Sept. 18, 1981, at a nightclub in Ronkonkoma when he asked her for a dance.
What was her initial impression?
“He had a nice butt,” she said, laughing.
Of course, there was more.
“He was just the sweetest man from the moment I met him,” she said. “When I knew I was in love with him was when we went to see ‘E.T. [the Extra-Terrestrial’ movie] and you know the part when E.T. dies, or everybody thinks he dies? Phil was crying. Tears were running down his face. He was trying to turn his head and sniffling into his neck. So that was it for me. You know, I just said, ‘This is the one for me.’ ”
They got married on Aug. 30, 1986, and had a daughter, Jessica.
Lorraine knew going in that sports were part of the package. Phil played football and basketball for Islip High School, going on to become a football player for Cheyney University of Pennsylvania. His ambition to become a professional player didn’t materialize, but that didn’t prevent him from staying in sports. He worked as a referee and an umpire before transitioning into coaching. He had coached a number of sports — football, basketball, softball — at a variety of high schools — Bishop McGann-Mercy, Wyandanch, Hampton Bays and Southold — for over 30 years. Along the way, he made many friends, literally, hundreds of them.
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It was ironic that the heart of a man with so much heart ultimately failed him.
Phil, who most recently coached the Southold boys basketball team, had been dealing with health issues. On the morning of Nov. 9, 2015, Phil told Lorraine he was having trouble breathing. He refused to go to the hospital, she said.
Lorraine said Phil eventually saw doctors and underwent a number of procedures. Against doctor’s orders, though, he kept coaching last winter. “He wasn’t supposed to do anything because his heart was very, very weak, they said,” said Lorraine.
It didn’t stop Phil. He kept coaching the First Settlers as they made a desperate push to qualify for the playoffs. It was during that stretch when Southold scored an upset victory over defending state champion Bridgehampton.
“We really outworked them and kind of ran them out of the gym that night,” the current Southold coach, Lucas Grigonis, recalled, “and after the game Phil spoke and said that was his best coaching win of his career.”
Phil might have been feeling on top of the world the following night, Jan. 26, 2016. Pete Meehan, the Hampton Bays boys basketball and baseball coach who was one of Phil’s closest friends for over 30 years, is believed to be the last person to talk to Phil. Meehan had called Phil while Phil was driving home from practice that night.
“He sounded as good as he always sounded,” Meehan said. “He was very positive.”
By the following morning, the stunning news came that Phil had died. Suffolk County police confirmed that they had responded to an emergency medical call on the Long Island Expressway in Medford. Phil had suffered a heart attack, said Lorraine. He was 59.
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News of Phil’s death reverberated like shock waves.
Alex Sinclair, a former Southold basketball player, learned about it from a phone call from another ex-Southold player, Kenji Fujita. “It was heartbreaking,” Sinclair said. “I was at a loss for words.”
Former Southold basketball player Shayne Johnson was in a math class at Pace University when he received the news in the form of a text message. “It was tough to believe,” Johnson said. “I was just in denial.”
Within minutes, a bunch more texts followed. Johnson said, “I was just like, I got to leave class.”
Another ex-Southold basketball player, Matt McCarthy, was in his dorm room at SUNY/Albany when he woke up and found a deluge of text messages. “I’ve never had that many texts in my life,” he said. “It was a rough morning.”
Meanwhile, students, athletes, coaches and others at Southold High School were devastated.
Anthony Klavas, a senior on the basketball team, was home sick that day when he received a call telling him to come to school. “They said it was serious, so I come in and I see everyone crying,” he said. “It was terrible.”
The sound of silence stuck with Klavas. “The whole school was quiet,” he said. “That was the first time I’ve ever seen the school quiet. I could hear my thoughts when I was walking through the halls.”
The outpouring of grief and emotion was tremendous. Southold Superintendent David Gamberg described the difficult days that followed Phil’s death as “traumatic.”
Ashley Hilary, a pitcher for the Southold/Greenport softball team, had played for Phil when she was on the junior varsity team. She was moved to tears at the recollection of that day. There “was nothing worse that could have happened,” she said.
Grigonis said, “He had been dealing with a few health issues before that throughout the season, but no one was prepared for that type of shock.”
A large photo that is kept in Southold athletic director Steve Flanagan’s office captures the real Phil Reed — the one he showed to the world every day. Larger than life, he is surrounded by Southold softball players, wearing a softball helmet and his trademark smile.
“I can’t picture Phil without seeing that smile,” Meehan said. “That’s who he was.”
Phil had a way of bringing smiles out of people, too. Gamberg said Phil was a caring, compassionate man who strived for not only excellence, but goodness. “What was so remarkable was the consistency,” Gamberg said, “the fact that at any given time, every moment that a person would engage with Phil Reed, he came away a better person from that experience with him.”
In his four seasons as Southold’s boys basketball coach, Phil had a 28-40 record, but with him, it wasn’t about the numbers. What really mattered to him were his players. They came first.
“His kids were everything,” Lorraine said. “His players, they could do no wrong.”
That’s what was special about Phil. He was about much more than win-loss records and statistics. That is why The Suffolk Times has decided to honor him posthumously as its 2016 Sports Person of the Year.
Phil worked as a counselor at Maryhaven Center of Hope in Riverhead. He had a knack for providing guidance to young people and an extraordinarily tight bond with his players. They hugged him before heading home after games. He was known for his nightly phone calls to his players. He would chat about anything, how the player’s family was doing, what were they having for dinner.
“It was like, nine o’clock comes around and it’s like, all right, make sure you have everything done because you know you’re getting a call from Coach Reed, and it wouldn’t be like just a little five-minute conversation,” one of his former Southold basketball players, Liam Walker, said. “It’s like an hour conversation, so you’d talk about anything.”
From the star player to the last player on the bench, Phil had a way of connecting with each of them, said those who knew him. Phil’s interest in his players went beyond the playing field or court. “If you could like, morph a father, a mentor and a best friend into one person, it would definitely be Coach Reed,” said Sinclair.
Pat McFarland, a senior on the Southold boys basketball team, said, “Even if you didn’t know him as well, you loved him, because of just how he acted toward everybody.”
As with any coach, Phil was competitive, but he also liked to have fun. Stories are told of him, circled by his players in the locker room before a game, dancing. Johnson said it was like “someone get the music on because this guy wants to dance. And it got us fired up.”
How good of a dancer was he?
“It depends how you define good,” said Johnson, who called Phil one of the greatest people he ever met.
Klavas recalled one time during an open gym session when Phil walked into an equipment room and emerged, riding a tricycle around the basketball court while talking on a phone. “We can’t even focus, and he’s on the phone talking while he’s riding,” said Klavas.
Grigonis is in the rather unique position of having played for Phil as a senior in Phil’s first year at Southold as an assistant coach to Jeff Ellis before becoming a part of the Southold coaching staff himself, working alongside Phil.
“I think Phil had his biggest influence on players’ personal lives, not just what happened on the court,” said Grigonis.
Phil was an excellent recruiter, encouraging players to come out for a team and convincing those contemplating dropping a sport to stay with it. That smile and engaging personality made it hard for people to disappoint him.
Former Southold basketball player Anthony Siracusano said Phil was the one who convinced him to play. Siracusano remembers the first day of preseason practice his freshman year. “Coach Ellis just like ran us to the ground and it totally took me off-guard and I was just like throwing up everywhere,” he said. “I went to the bathroom. I had a migraine. I was a mess. But then Coach Reed comes along and he talked to me for like a half-hour. He was like, ‘I need you to play.’ He made it sound like he really needed you on the team to complete his plan [for] the season. That made me especially really want to play because I didn’t want to disappoint the guy.”
Sinclair said: “To say that he is one of a kind is an understatement because he is by far the most special coach there is. He wasn’t textbook. He did things that worked. I can’t tell you why, but they worked.”
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As well-loved and revered as he was, some self-doubt remained. Phil evidently harbored questions about how well he was doing and what others thought of him. One can hear the aggravation in Lorraine’s voice as she recounts the routine second-guessing Phil expressed to her.
“He wasn’t as secure as people would think,” she said. “He would come home to me and he’d be like, ‘I don’t know if I’m doing a good job. Do you really think that they like me or are they just going along with it?’ You know, he wasn’t as confident as he showed out there. You know, if something went wrong at a game or they didn’t win, he blamed himself.”
Following Phil’s death, the tributes flowed in, evidence of how many lives he had touched. Teams held pregame ceremonies in Phil’s honor, placing a single rose on his seat. His colleagues named him the League VIII coach of the year.
So, how many people did Phil have a positive influence on?
“It’s certainly hundreds,” Gamberg said. “And it becomes that thing where — and they touch others and they touch others.”
Siracusano said: “It gives me chills just, like, thinking about him because it’s like, I don’t think there’s ever going to be someone like him. It’s ridiculous how like just in the small town of Southold, a JV basketball coach could have such an impact on everyone he touched.”
Hilary said, “I don’t think he realized he made all of us a lot better people than we were before we met him.”
“He touched many, many more lives than he realized,” Meehan said. “It would have been wonderful for him to see the tributes that followed. He touched a lot of people. He certainly made his mark, more than he ever would have imagined.”
Miller Place girls basketball coach Joe Read lamented that Phil isn’t around to gain a full appreciation for what people thought of him. “If he could only be here to realize it,” Read said. “His love that he gave was tenfold coming back, but he isn’t here to know it. Somewhere, someplace, I’m hoping he’s getting this vibe because he certainly affected a lot of people.”
Perhaps the one impacted the most has constant reminders of Phil, including one in the form of a teddy bear.
“I loved the man to death,” Lorraine said. “I cry too much.”
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