Three years ago Sammis Reyes became the first Chilean-born player to compete in the NFL. Since then his reach, passion for the sport, and desire to grow the game have only intensified. Reyes, who is currently a tight end on the practice squad for the Minnesota Vikings, is a product of the NFL’s International Player Pathway program. He shares his experiences of moving to the U.S. alone at 14 years old, why it took him so long to start playing football, the significance of representing Chile and Latin America, and the greater vision he has for both himself and the sport in the conversation below.
*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Let’s start at the beginning of your sports journey. You moved to the U.S. when you were just 14 after receiving a basketball scholarship, but you came here alone, and did not speak a lot of English at the time. Take me back to the day you said goodbye to your parents at the airport. What do you remember feeling?
Sammis Reyes: Yeah, I was young so it was hard, but I had a dream. I had promised my parents I was going to make the NBA and that was my dream. I started playing basketball since [as long] as I can remember. My dad played basketball, my mom played basketball so they were kind of like grooming me. I knew if got an opportunity to go somewhere, I was going to take it and I got one pretty early.
We were in a tournament in Texas and they offered me a scholarship to come [to the U.S.] when I was 14. I had to beg [my parents] but they said yes and then I took off. That moment in the airport was difficult. Because I didn’t speak English, I had to start from scratch out here but it was the best decision I ever made.
What was life like growing up in Chile and why did you leave?
Reyes: It was tough. My mom is a P.E. teacher. My dad had various jobs at the time. We grew up pretty poor so it was difficult but my parents blessed me with great values, even though they’re not together anymore. My dad taught me how to work hard and my mom had unconditional love for me. That’s all I needed really to make something for myself.
I read that when you talked to your parents on the phone when you were in the U.S., you would tell them everything was going great, but you were actually really struggling. What are some of the difficulties you experienced?
Reyes: My parents sent me about $50 bucks a month when I first got here for the first couple of years. It wasn’t easy to survive in the U.S. with 50 bucks, as you can imagine, but I always found a way to figure it out. I was very resourceful. I didn’t know many people—I didn’t really know anybody—but I just had to tell them everything was fine.
At one point, the school that initially offered me a scholarship shut down the basketball program, so everyone kind of went their own way. It was a prep school, so everyone was older. They were 18,19-year-olds, doing their fifth year in high school. I was 14, so I was really the youngest. Once the school [shut] down, I just stayed there by myself. Everyone went back to their home state, but I wasn’t going to go back to Chile, so I stayed there on my own. I had to do what I had to do to figure it out.
One day, out of nowhere, a coach saw me playing in the park, and that’s when I got a chance to play AAU basketball for “Each One Teach One”, which was Amar’e Stoudemire’s [organization]. That was my shot to get seen by somebody and I took it. The rest is history.
You came with the dream of becoming a professional basketball player, and you were good at, but it seems like everyone told you you were built for football. Why did you stick with basketball for so long?
Reyes: When you don’t have much guidance, like how I did, you kind of just do what your gut tells you to do. You make a lot of decisions based on emotion, especially at the ages of 14, 15, and 16. It was so impactful in my life for me to leave home and the promise was so vivid in my head that it was impossible for me to think about anything else outside of fulfilling the promise that I made my parents, which was to make the NBA. So when everyone came to me telling me to play football, I didn’t really know anything about it.
We don’t play football in Chile—mainly the sport hasn’t reached there yet. [Football] is a very expensive sport, if you really think about it. In South America, the majority of people play soccer because it’s very cheap to play. All you need is a ball. You can use whatever as a goal and you start playing. In football, you need pads and all these different things. So I didn’t really understand the game. I had never seen it. I think I had watched probably one Super Bowl my whole life for maybe five minutes.
I wanted to fulfill the promise that I made to my parents and I think that was the biggest thing in my heart that made me stick with basketball for so long.
What led to your decision to finally give football a shot and then at what point did you realize hey, I belong in this sport?
Reyes: Steve Rifkind became my legal guardian when I was 16 or 17 and he was the one that put me into football. He tried to convince me to play and [at first] I told him I didn’t want to because I wanted to play basketball. But I always kept football in the back of my head, in case I didn’t make the NBA.
Something that makes me very at peace with basketball is that I gave it everything I had. Once I got older and I realized the NBA wasn’t going to happen, I told myself, I’m just going to give it everything I’ve got and then I can live with that.
To this day I can say I gave it my best—I gave basketball everything I had. It didn’t happen, but I have no regrets because I poured my whole career and energy into that for so many years.
After a dinner with a sports agent, I decided that I was going to give football a try. I really didn’t know anything about it. When I think about it now, four years into the NFL and maybe five years playing football, I don’t know how it happened. During [the pandemic] I was running routes in the street. A coach gave me a jugs machine and that’s all I had. I didn’t really have anybody to help me. So it was a rocky road, especially during [the pandemic].
I found an agent, Tabitha Plummer, and she helped me get in contact with the NFL International Player Pathway program. We sent them my basketball highlights and some of my athletic abilities in just a random video. They were like, ‘Wow, who is this guy?” We connected and then I got accepted into the program. I remember just being so excited about it. It was like a dream come true to me at the time.
I love that. How would you say the International Player Pathway Program has changed your life?
Reyes: When I think about what they’ve done for me and for a lot of people—even some of the guys that are having a lot of success in the NFL now, like Jordan Mailata—they’re really doing everything they can to find the best talent in the world. If it wasn’t for the IPP I would never have gotten a chance. They changed my life. I could have never done any of this without them and that’s because the game is intended to grow. The NFL wants to grow internationally and I think that’s a great aspect of the game that they need to continue pursuing. Will Bryce, James Cook—all of those guys who work for the NFL IPP program— they really changed my life!
What does it mean to you to represent Chile in the NFL and to be the league’s first Chilean-born player?
Reyes: It’s crazy because like you said, we’ve never had a Chilean guy in the NFL and to think of something like that, it was just impossible for us. We’re a small country, we’re very far from the U.S. The closest point from Chile to the U.S. is probably eight hours if you take a direct flight from Santiago to Miami so it’s not like we’re across the border.
So it feels special. I had a chance to assume the responsibility of being the first, but not the last. I could have said, “Hey, I just want to do my own thing and not have any influence on the next generation,” but I just don’t think like that. I wasn’t raised like that. So hopefully I get to open the doors for the next group of Chileans that come out here and get a chance to play at the highest level. But I know it’s hard. I know it’s unlikely in the next couple of years but I want to change that. I want to find a way to help grow the game internationally and change that, not only in Chile but also in the rest of Latin America. I think that we are a very tight-knit community.
When you’re an immigrant in a different country and you speak a different language when you first get here, all of those things kind of bring you together, because we all go through the same struggles of being from a Latin American country—having an accent and all those things. Maybe I can be a person who speaks out about it and wears that with pride, which is what I try to do every single day.
What do you think that seeing your journey unfold has meant to your parents? I know you guys all had the initial dream of basketball but how special is it for them to see you achieve something even bigger than they imagined?
Reyes: I think it’s very special. I like to think that they’re very proud of me. We’ve had a lot of conversations. My mom, she’s a scholar, she’s a teacher, so her values are very aligned with everything that I try to embody every single day as a man. My dad is one of the people in the whole world that I know that works the hardest. So it’s just very cool to be able to be here and represent them, and help my mom with whatever she needs—to take care of her. I take care of my grandmas and a lot of people back home so it feels good.
Earlier on, you mentioned wanting to be the first, but not the last. When you think of your personal journey and the growth of the game and how far you’ve come, what did it mean to you to see the NFL play its first game in South America at the start of the season in Brazil?
Reyes: I think it was great! I know a lot of Chileans who actually went to the game—I’m talking about hundreds! I think it’s a great initiative. I think we have to continue expanding the global market for the NFL. It’s a beautiful sport that provides a lot of opportunities for people. If you think about scholarships, for example, I would have never had the education that I had if it wasn’t for sports. Kids out there can see it and say maybe if I play football, I can get a scholarship and come to the U.S. and get a good education. That can change a lot of people’s lives. Having that goal for a lot of kids is going to be huge.
Even now with flag football, I’m a global ambassador for [the sport] and I love that because it’s a mixed [gender] sport, so anybody can play flag football. It will be in the Olympics in LA 2028 so that’s cool as well!
Chile is going to have a men’s and women’s national team which is amazing. So they’re going to try and come out here and do something to represent Chile, and that’s awesome. It’s a very unique way to expand the game and I’m proud to be the Latin American face of that.
What kind of messages do you receive from young fans who see your example and see your journey and want to be just like you too?
Reyes: I get a lot of very deep and emotional messages. Whenever I get a minute off, which is not very often, I try to do my best to respond to as many people as I can. It’s emotional because I know what a lot of these kids are going through. Even when I look back at the neighborhood where I grew up, I know how hard it is. It’s really hard. I feel like here in the U.S., if you pick a sport and you become very good at it, you can find a way out but out there, if you don’t find a way out through soccer, there’s nothing else. So it’s very different. I think in the U.S., we’re very blessed to have the type of opportunities that we have. I try to keep hope in the people who follow me, whether it’s kids or grown people.
It’s not easy to be away from home and from your culture, but you’re doing your best to represent and carry it with you in every step that you take. With that being said, what would it mean for you to see Chile have a football team, a national football team?
Reyes: It would be amazing! That would be a dream come true. Hopefully we can make that happen one day. I know we are still kind of far away from that. I think we have to continue making progress to make it. Flag football is going to become an Olympic sport but hopefully football can be an Olympic sport one day. That’ll be amazing. But even with flag football, I think it’s a great step towards the goal of every country having a football team.
I know there is work being done right now but maybe they just don’t get enough [attention] but we have to put those groups and organizations more in the spotlight so they can shine a little bit more. Hopefully, I can help Chile get a national team one day and maybe get them to a World Cup or the Olympics.
How do you stay connected to your Chilean roots?
Reyes: I have a group of six best friends. Three are from the U.S. and three are from Chile. I mix all of them together and we do things together. It’s really easy for me. My parents don’t speak English. No one in my family speaks English. I have a huge family of probably 140 people so it’s easy for me, [to stay connected] because now I have the ability to travel there a lot more.
My first couple of years here, I could never go there. I remember I didn’t see my parents for about two years so that was hard. I told myself if I ever had enough money to be able to see them, I’ll either bring them here or I’d go there. That’s what I’m able to do now. I just purchased a house in Chile so I get to go home for real now. So it’s easy for me to stay connected because I just have such a love and passion for my community out there.
Looking back, what do you think life would have looked like for you if you never made the move to the U.S.?
Reyes: It would have been hard. That’s a tough question because I wasn’t always the greatest kid growing up. I didn’t always have the opportunity to have great people around me. You don’t get to pick the environment you’re put in, sometimes you’re just there and you pick up on a lot of tendencies that people around you have. So I always tell people now that you are a reflection of the people that are closest to you and the people that were closest to me at the time weren’t the greatest.
That’s what it was like to grow up outside of the U.S. I don’t know where I’d be. I think my heart would have always taken me down the right path. My mom would have always taken me on the right path. My dad would have always [corrected me] if I was doing things that I wasn’t supposed to do. But I wouldn’t be in the position that I am today if I didn’t come to the U.S. So I am very thankful to be here.
Where do you think you would be if you never discovered football?
Reyes: Running a business somewhere. I’m very business-passionate, I own a few companies, so I’d probably be running a business. But again, I wouldn’t have that knowledge without being in the U.S. You know, I was lucky enough to go to Tulane. I got a management degree from the A.B. Freeman School of Business. I haven’t been able to really say that I use my degree per se in a normal type of career, but the connections that I made there, and the practical knowledge that I got from that university is what has enabled me to start businesses and have some success with that.
If you could go back in time, what would you tell 14-year-old Sammis Reyes?
Reyes: I’ll tell him to never stop believing in the vision that you have. Kids want to be all these great things but as they get older, experiences and failure kind of beat them down. But I think failure is the way to success. You have to fail as fast as you can and as often as you can to find the right answers. If you have the stomach to accept failure as a positive outcome and you’re not afraid to fail, then your future is bright.
I can probably say that I failed at basketball. My goal was to make the NBA. I failed at becoming an NBA player but that led me to playing in the NFL. I trained so hard at basketball that my physical abilities allowed me to get another opportunity—one that I love more than the initial option. That’s life and that’s what I would tell my 14-year-old self.
What vision do you have for yourself now with football and beyond?
Reyes: I want to be able to contribute to the Minnesota Vikings in the best way that I can, whatever my role is. Hopefully, I get to pick up a larger role as the season progresses but I’m on a very special team right now and I think everyone in this building knows that. So it will be great to go to the Super Bowl and win. Outside of the game, I think it’s to continue growing businesses and continue fostering the friendships that I’ve been able to foster.
“For more on the NFL’s “Por La Cultura” campaign, click here. The league’s Latino Youth Honors program recognizes outstanding Latino high school tackle and flag football athletes from around the country for their academic and athletic excellence, and helps recognize the next generation of Latino players in the U.S.”