Mark Rego’s never been short on words, especially when talking about the sport he’s coached for 28 years in Evergreen Public Schools.
Between the stories shared to football players he coaches, or reminiscing of past tales on the turf, they’re all told through, in Rego’s words, a new kind of picture frame now that he’s cancer-free.
And he shares that wisdom with his players — this season more than ever.
“I see life in a whole different aspect now,” said Rego, 57. “Enjoy where you’re at and what you’re going through. Enjoy the journey, because that’s the stuff you’re going to remember.”
Rego is Union High School’s offensive line coach, and the longest-tenured football coach on the Titans’ staff. He’s coached hundreds of athletes, worked under four head coaches at two schools. Although at one time years ago he aspired to be a head coach, he now relishes in the role of assistant who Union players cherish.
“We all look up to him. The whole line looks up to him,” senior left guard Giovanny Rojo said. “He’s gone through everything.
“It’s a good reason to wake up everyday to play for him.”
Faith, family, and football kept Rego going through a recent Stage 3 tongue cancer diagnosis. It resulted in a partial glossectomy — surgery to remove the tongue — and removal of 27 lymph nodes April 9. Then came 30 days of radiation treatment.
Rego estimates cancer cost more than 25 percent of his tongue, but never his spirit, drive and fight to get back to where he is today: starting his 12th season at Union and member of the inaugural staff when the school opened in 2007. Union faces district-rival Mountain View at 7:30 p.m. Friday to open the season at McKenzie Stadium, giving season No. 28 of coaching high school football special in its own sense, Rego said.
Tumor found
Rego isn’t a smoker nor a chewer, which made March’s carcinoma diagnosis even more puzzling for him and his family, including wife of 32 years, Kimberlee, and children, Bridgette and Gabe.
A biopsy originally for a tongue ulcer that hadn’t healed instead revealed a cancerous tumor elsewhere on the tongue.
“It was a good-sized tumor,” he said. “It was bigger than (the specialists) thought.”
Days later, he spent 10 hours in surgery at Oregon Health Sciences University, where surgeons removed a portion of tongue and the lymph nodes where the cancer spread.
Some of the side effects still reside, like taste bud sensitivity and lack of saliva production. Also, treatment and diet change led to nearly 100 pounds lost. Right-arm scars show where skin grafts were made for the tongue, and an artery that now supplies blood at the neck.
Also an assistant track and field coach, Rego missed this spring’s season after spring break, but returning in time for spring football practices — in the midst of daily radiation treatments — helped him regain a sense of normalcy.
“I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to get through this,’ ” Rego said. “I felt like I wasn’t over the hump, but definitely on the verge of hitting the peak of the mountain. That’s when I felt things were going to be on the uptick and get better, and they did.”
Coaching start
Jon Eagle, now Camas’ head coach, remembers an eager, energetic guy he brought on as a volunteer coach to his Evergreen football staff in 1989.
Nearly 30, Rego hadn’t coached high school football before returning to his high school alma mater. His previous football-coaching experience was in area youth leagues, but Rego credits Eagle for jump-starting a coaching career that’s now spanned four decades.
Rego quickly moved up the ranks to become Eagle’s offensive line coach, a position he played in high school and Wenatchee Valley College. He later coached Calie Piland at Evergreen then Union when the school opened in 2007, and later at Union under Gary McGarvie and now Rory Rosenbach.
“A lot of coaches are all about being on the sidelines, but don’t want to put in the other hours,” Eagle said. “Mark is all about putting in other hours.”
Eagle went a step further, acknowledging his friend’s enthusiasm and knowledge — variables that should ring true for all coaches — but what separates Rego goes beyond that, he added.
“His players want to play hard for him,” Eagle said.
It was true then, and true now. Union left tackle Dumitru Salagor appreciates Rego’s old-school approach.
“The way he talks to us,” Salagor said, “I like it. … “He’s got bad knees, but still shows us really good technique. He never gives up and he’s always positive. I like that a lot.”
It’s players like Salagor and his teammates for why Rego, also a district security officer at Union, doesn’t plan to slow down now that he views football and life through a new picture frame.
“The kids keep me going,” he said.
