University of North Carolina Athletics
COUNTDOWN TO KICKOFF: Mick: Being Dexter Reid
August 22, 2002 | Football
Aug. 22, 2002
The following is excerpted from a recent issue of Tar Heel Monthly, the premier monthly magazine devoted to the stories and personalities behind UNC sports. To subscribe to the publication, click here.
"It is the spirit of the man who leads that gains the victory. To win battles you do not beat weapons, you beat the soul of the enemy man."
George Smith Patton, June 6, 1944
By Mick Mixon, Tar Heel Sports Network
Just three weeks ago their quiet march began again, their cleats drumming out a clattery cadence on the path from Kenan Stadium to Carolina's steamy practice fields. These young men chose this life. They are well conditioned and accustomed to the violence of football, but still there's not much talk. Instead, each was perhaps occupied with the private questions that two-a-days ask.
Are you good enough? Do you know your assignments? Are everyone else's legs this dead? Pace yourself to survive or go all out to make an impression?
Stretching prior to practice, "flex" the period is called, one shrill, high-pitched voice pierces the air, immune to the tedium, the drudgery and the heat.
"YEEEAAAAAAHHHHHH!!! Here we go, baby!!! Another day to get better!" junior free safety Dexter Reid calls out to his teammates. Behind the facemasks, smiles break out. Some chuckle, a few more holler back at Reid, and once again the tension is broken and a tone is set.
"He's got this crazy, western kind of a cowboy yell he'll do at practice every day," said his close friend and fellow defensive back Michael "Rabbit" Waddell. "It kind of goes like, 'yeeeeeaaaaaahhhhhhh', real loud. It gets me and the other guys laughing. Dexter is gonna speak his mind. He doesn't bite his tongue, and if you are the sensitive kind you can get your feelings hurt around him because he's gonna say how he feels, plus some more. But that's just his attitude. He's a leader on our football team and his attitude makes him even more respected."
Reid came to Carolina out of Granby High School in Norfolk, Virginia with the reputation of being a gifted athlete, a fierce competitor and a hard worker on the field, an honor roll student in the classroom, and something of a party child when the sun went down. He still likes to have his fun, but he seems to have turned a maturity corner lately and is channeling his energies in a positive direction.
"All my life, I've been in a leadership role," he said. "From when I first started playing sports at age 7, to high school football, basketball, baseball and track. I definitely think more now about difference situations before they occur. I might refrain from going out to make sure I don't get where there could be a predicament.
"My mom (Kim Reid) has always been hard on me and she brought me up strict. She showed me the right way to handle things. And I've had a few talks with Coach
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"If you had to pick a guy to go with you down that dark alley, pick him. You wouldn't have to do much. He'd take care of it."
-- Former UNC kicker Jeff Reed on Dexter Reid
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"Just the other day I congratulated Dexter on the great job he's done with the leadership of this squad," said Coach Bunting recently. "He has really come around and he's going to be a special, special player for us the next two years."
Reid's biological father, also named Dexter, played basketball at Virginia Tech but for the last three years he has not been an active participant in his son's life.
"I don't want to go into much detail, but my mom has pretty much played both roles for me all these years," Dexter said. Besides his mother, another of Reid's heroes was his godmother, Doris "Gody" Washington, who passed away when Dexter was 12.
"That was my first funeral." Reid is speaking slowly now as the memory of the event drifts over him. "It was shocking to see somebody laying in a coffin. My first tattoo was her on my arm, 'Rest In Peace, Gody' between two tigers. I feel that characterizes my personality, my demeanor."
"I was pretty close to him the last two years," said kicker Jeff Reed, who is now trying to make the New Orleans Saints. "We were interviewed a lot together, you know, 'Reed', 'Reid', and if you didn't know him you might think Dexter was a talented player who didn't work hard. But that isn't the case at all. He makes all the meetings on time, he believes in himself, and he can push up the most weight I've ever seen in just about every exercise.
"If you had to pick a guy to go with you down that dark alley, pick him. You wouldn't have to do much. He'd take care of it."
"I just love hitting," Reid said. "My philosophy is hit or be hit. Some people think I play with an attitude about me that comes across as mean, but I don't want to come across as nice out there. Off the field, I'm pretty laid back. I like to relax, play dominos and hang out with my friends."
"You gotta watch him," tight end Zach Hilton said with a smile. "Sometimes when we are going half speed at practice he'll come up and give you a little jolt, like he's saying, 'This is a little sample of what it would have been like if we had been going full speed.'"
"Oh yeah, he's even got me a couple of times!" said Waddell. "I'm making a tackle and then here he comes. He's smashed a big body on any number of occasions."
But there is much more to Dexter Reid than his ability to deliver a blow. He is also a film room junkie who makes a habit out of studying the tendencies of Carolina's opponents.
"That came from when I was a quarterback in high school," said Reid. "I'd watch to see what the defense was doing on a particular play and how they were playing me, then I could react and adjust. Plus the younger guys see me watching film and it rubs off on them."
On the surface, they make an odd pair; the cornrowed, tattooed Dexter Reid and his old-school head coach, John Bunting, yet the two are actually much more alike than they are dissimilar.
Reid, raised mostly by women, appreciates, needs and respects Bunting's tough love and discipline, and Bunting sees in his starting free safety a strength, a drive, a courage and a fighting spirit much like his own, and he is honored to be his head coach and lead him into gridiron battle.
Mick Mixon joined the Tar Heel Sports Network in 1989 and has served alongside Woody Durham on radio broadcasts of men's basketball and football games ever since as a color analyst. In addition to his colorful commentary on TarHeelBlue.com, Mick is a regular contributor to Tar Heel Monthly, Basketball America and ACCToday.com. Email Mick at mmixon@tarheelsports.com.
