Rick Perez was angry and hurt during those troubled days in 2002. His relationships with his family and his girlfriend were strained. He was using drugs.
“My life was in limbo,” he said. “I was suffering. I had been dilly-dallying in some at-risk behaviors. I really lost myself. I wasn’t performing well in school. I had been removed from the basketball team at West Chester. I left to go to Kutztown and things didn’t work out for me there.
“I was in an identity funk.”
That was until he ran into Brian Ellison, who offered him a chance to coach basketball with his AAU team.
“Between coaching with him and getting a job at the Olivet Boys & Girls Club, being around kids really saved me,” Perez said. “From that point on, I cleaned things up. That was a life-saving opportunity.”
Twenty years later, he has achieved tremendous success as Reading High boys basketball coach. Now in his 11th season, he has guided the Red Knights to their first two state championships, four District 3 titles, five Berks Conference crowns and 249 wins.
He can move within one of the school record of 251 held by legendary coach Jim Gano if Reading (26-3) beats Archbishop Wood (18-7) in a PIAA Class 6A second-round game Sunday at 1 p.m. at Easton Area Middle School.
“So many people batter his name and batter his coaching,” said Muhlenberg coach Matt Flowers, a former Reading assistant and one of Perez’s best friends. “People need to start putting respect on his name because he’s doing things that not many head coaches can do.
“The gold medals are the kids. Wins and losses are great, but getting a kid to college, being a father figure to a kid, crying with a kid, holding a kid, going to eat at that kid’s house or finding a kid a home are more important.”
Perez has always been compassionate and caring, according to those closest to him, even when he was 20 and appeared to be at a crossroads in his life.
“I was concerned for his mental well-being,” said Wanda Baker, Perez’s mother. “I knew the desire and the fervor he had inside him. I knew that even during the times he was under the influence. It was always there. I could see that in him.
“My fear was that it would be a waste of talent.”
Back then, Flowers said he and Perez “would be out and about running and going to clubs.”
“It’s part of the process of life,” said Daniel Boone football coach Rob Flowers, Matt’s brother and another one of Perez’s best friends. “Some people will do drugs. Some people will gamble. Some people will do negative criminal things.
“We’ve all had our own things that we did that were out of character, that were not in line with our core values. He was able to bounce back because the core values he learned were intact.”
His mother said “it took a village” to help Perez, now 40, turn his life around. She played a huge role, along with her late second husband, Joe Baker; her late parents, Alfonso and Carmen Clemente; the Flowers brothers and their parents, Robert and Karen Flowers; Kristin, Rick’s wife who has known him since eighth grade; and Ellison, who died in 2020.
“My parents had their hands full, man,” Perez said. “Having Mr. and Mrs. Flowers come into my life and help me with different voices, I really needed all those people. My mom was doing the best she could. My dad (Jose Perez) was doing the best he could.
“I was battling some things. For some reason, I’ve always been blessed with a set of wings with those people and that village. Those people loved me unconditionally. They never judged me at all. They danced with me as I grew. They knew it wasn’t going to be perfect.”
Once he started coaching with Ellison and working at the Olivet Club, Perez’s family and friends saw a change in him. They described it as quick, but not sudden.
“That lit a fire in his belly,” his mother said. “It just did. Him being able to mentor and be a part of those young men’s lives, it just lit a fire in him. It was his desire. It was, ‘This is what I want to do. This is my calling. This is my passion.’
“It was teaching valuable life experiences and hoping they don’t have to walk the same paths he did. But if they did, he wanted to be someone those boys could come and talk to.”
Then-Reading coach Richard Reyes hired Perez as a junior varsity assistant in 2003. He moved up to JV coach and left when Reyes resigned after the 2008 season when the Red Knights won their first 30 games before losing to Souderton in the first round of states.
“My loyalty was to Coach Reyes,” Perez said. “I didn’t like the way things went down after that state loss.”
He joined Matt Coldren’s staff at Wilson, where he had graduated, for one season before returning to Reading as Tim Redding’s varsity assistant. After Redding resigned two years later, Perez was hired as head coach for the 2011-12 season.
“Rick had to make a lot of life-changing choices to be where he is now,” Matt Flowers said. “The one thing he did that was very powerful, he started to put his faith and trust in God. When Rick turned to God, God started to use Rick in a different way.
“You saw a different person. Rick started to lean on his family and us. He separated himself from the immature lifestyle. It became all about what the program stands for now: family, loyalty and commitment.”
The Red Knights struggled in Perez’s first three seasons, by the program’s high standards. They went 50-33 but without a Berks or District 3 title. But starting with the 2014-15 season, they’re 199-49 with all those championships.
“I’m just extremely proud,” Kristin Perez said. “Not only am I proud, but I’m grateful to be part of his journey. The love and the passion that man has for coaching basketball, Reading High basketball … there was no doubt in my mind this is where he would be right now.”
Spend time around the Reading program or watch a few minutes of a practice or a game, and it’s clear that Rick Perez connects with his players. He and Kristin often open their Muhlenberg Township home to them.
They have three children between the ages of 11 and 14. Kristin recalled one night at their home when she saw Lonnie Walker IV, Oenis Medina and Khary Mauras sitting with their then 5-year-old daughter and playing with Barbie dolls.
“I can’t say enough how proud I am of the culture he has built there,” she said, “and the young men who have gone through that program and who are still part of our lives. It’s absolutely amazing.
“Over the years there have been a few who needed a little bit more of Rick in their lives, not just as a coach but as a man with a family who showed them love and appreciation and let them know it’s OK to make mistakes.”
He was troubled once, like some of his players have been over the last 11 years. Coaching basketball allowed him to save his life and some of theirs, too.
“Rick’s a very intelligent man, a very caring man, but I don’t know if his life would be where it is now without coaching,” Matt Flowers said. “Coaching does so much to a person. I know what it has done for me.
“When a parent drops off their kid, they know their kid is going to be in the hands of a man of God and a man who’s going to love their son. That carries so much more weight than wins and losses.”
Source: Berkshire mont
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