FORT WORTH, Texas — Eli Reinhart is the maestro behind the record-setting offense for the North Crowley football team.
The Panthers offensive coordinator has guided them to 55.6 points per game entering their state semifinal against Duncanville.
“I feel like I have a chip on my shoulder, because there's always something to prove," Reinhart said.
It's a feeling that comes from being one of the few Asian American coaches on football sidelines, anywhere.
"Maybe I'm not taken as seriously by some of the other colleagues that I have because it's different," Reinhart said. “From my personal experience, it's always been just kind of the seriousness of it. How much knowledge does he really have?”
But to discredit Reinhart's football knowledge based on his race would overlook the upbringing that shaped him.
Eli was born in Seoul, South Korea, and then adopted as a baby to the Reinhart family in small-town Michigan.
“I was probably one of two Asian people in the entire community," Reinhart said.
But it just so happened that the Reinharts were a football family.
“Eli, along with my other two sons, were all raised up here on the practice field," said Eli's dad, Dennis Reinhart. “Eli would play quarterback and hand the ball off to the other two, and they'd hit the dummies with each other and go through the ropes.”
Dennis has been the head coach at Hill-McCloy High School in Montrose, Michigan, for almost three decades, meaning Eli was fully immersed in the game from a young age.
“We were playing in the state championship game in 1998, so Eli would have been 5 years old," Dennis Reinhart said. "As I'm leaving the house, he hands me these four or five sheets of paper. He says, 'Dad, I've got some plays drawn up for you.'”
Eli played varsity receiver and defensive back for his dad. After his playing career was over, he joined his coaching staff while he was still in college.
“He was constantly studying and working, and learning the game inside-out," Dennis Reinhart said.
His knowledge of the game eventually took him to the college level. It was there when the realities of looking different came back.
“Interviewing and not getting the job, feeling like you're overqualified, or that this should be something you'd be able to do," Reinhart said.
The frustration put his coaching career at a crossroads.
"If I would have stepped away from coaching because I didn't look like a lot of the other coaches, I felt like I would have always missed it," Reinhart said.
He decided to move to Texas and get back in the high school ranks. After a year at Anderson High School in Austin, he got his shot at North Crowley in 2022.
“Coming out of the interview, it was a no-brainer," said Panthers head coach Ray Gates.
Reinhart said he wants his success with the Panthers to be an example to any minority who's thinking about being a football coach.
"It’s important to give people some hope," Reinhart said. "To see that there’s other people having success and you don’t have to be worried about climbing the ladder and having issues getting where you want to be, because of what you look like.”
"He is blazing his own path," Gates said. "I think he just needs to continue to be who he is. He's a genuine guy. He's going to do well in our profession.”
An offensive maestro who's earned his place on the sidelines.
"You've got to shed that victim mentality," Reinhart said. "Really put your head down and go to work and prove to people why you should be in these places.”
