TAMPA, Fla. – Funny how things happen sometimes. The pandemic could not slow Mudia Reuben, though it certainly altered what sport he would play and the college he would attend.
“I was all set to go to St. Louis University,” he said, reflecting on how he felt as a sophomore soccer player at Park Hill South High School, about seven miles north of Kansas City.
The pandemic, of course, halted much of life as we knew it. That included shutting down Reuben’s travel soccer clubs. Understandably restless, he picked up a football. Just like that, he switched fields of play.
“I wanted to attend showcases and see how I lined up against real guys,” he said, thinking he might be a bit behind kids who had been playing for at least a couple of years.
As it turned out, Reuben was the real guy, receiving an offer from Kansas without having put on the pads. He still played club soccer, but it was football that occupied most of his time at Park Hill South effective his junior year.
Palo Alto to Tampa
As a senior at Park South, Reuben was named the Otis Taylor Award winner as the top high school receiver in Kansas City. (Taylor caught 410 passes in an 11-year career with the Chiefs in the 1960s and 1970s.)
Instead of attending St. Louis University to play soccer, Rueben chose Stanford over Vanderbilt and Kansas State to play football. The academic profiles of Stanford and Vandy were appealing, and so was coach Chris Klieman and his staff in the Little Apple, about two hours from home.
The Cardinal won out, though, and Reuben spent his first three years of college in Palo Alto playing under David Shaw, who resigned after the 2022 season, and Troy Taylor. His best season on the field was his sophomore year of 2023, when he caught 15 passes. Off the field, he won an award for community outreach and received an undergraduate degree in life and health sciences in three years.
After Taylor was dismissed in March amid allegations of misconduct with staff members, Reuben, who played only three games in 2024 while battling leg injuries, felt it might be time to move on. Little could he have known that when he entered the transfer portal in the spring that he would hear from a youth soccer teammate.
“He shot me a text and, at first, I didn’t realize it was him,” said Reuben, whose parents, Gladys and Francis, are from Nigeria. “I saw it was an 816 number. I clicked and zoomed in on his face, and I thought, ‘No way that it could be the same Dylan Douglas.’”
It was the same Dylan Douglas he played soccer with in Kansas City and was reaching out to him as a member of USF’s recruiting department.
READ: Inside The Numbers: Byrum Brown’s Awesome Senior Season At USF
“That laid the foundation,” said Reuben, whose former Stanford teammate, offensive lineman and Tampa native Connor McLaughlin, transferred to USF in the winter and was “in his ear” during the receiver’s campus visit.
The visit tipped the scales in USF’s favor as Reuben chose the Bulls over North Carolina and West Virginia. The Tar Heels were intriguing because of who was hired to take over the program.
“I was leaning toward going to UNC,” he said. “There was a lot of hype surrounding Bill Belichick. After my campus visits and meeting everyone, I knew (USF) felt right.”
It was a choice that coach Alex Golesh, wanting a bigger and powerful slot receiver, was hoping the 6-foot-2 and 210-pound Reuben would make. Not that absorbing a Golesh-coached offense is an easy task. Rather, it can be quite a learning curve, especially for a player who was in two systems — West Coast and pro-style — at another school.
“It takes time to play receiver in this offense, time to get comfortable and build chemistry, and it takes time to get used to the tempo,” said the third-year coach. “Mudia is a high-level intelligent human being who takes coaching well. He is physically dynamic and different than a normal slot receiver,”
After catching 22 passes for 170 yards and one touchdown in the first eight games he played for the Bulls – he sat out the South Carolina State game due to injury — Reuben piled up nine receptions for 235 yards and three TDs the past two weeks against UAB and Navy. He established career highs last week against the Blazers with 5-174-2, and his touchdowns covered 60 and 59 yards.
“He is really confident now,” said Golesh. “He is healthy and has practiced incredibly well. He is a unique player, unique with the ball in his hands. He’s hard to tackle.”
Upbeat personality
Golesh pointed out that Reuben, who has an older brother, Etinosa, and older sister, Lyenoma, is always smiling and has a “contagious personality.”
“You don’t see Mudia having a tough day,” he said. “If he is, he’s not showing it.”
He does his part to make sure teammates are holding their heads high even when things may not be going so well on the practice field or in the room.
“It’s making sure that everyone knows that things are not as bad as they could be,” said Reuben, citing Etinosa, who was a defensive lineman at Clemson, Georgia Tech and UMass, for his unwavering support. “A situation is not that bad, not that difficult, not that deep. No need to stress through everything.”
It is a nice life message from a young man with citizenship in the U.S., Nigeria and Canada – Gladys also lived outside Toronto – and will complete his master’s in pharmaceutical nanotechnology next December.
When he is able to wiggle free of football and academics, Reuben likes to put the fishing rods in his car, drive to Gandy Boulevard, and drop a line into the bay. He also enjoys tinkering with what he has learned in college. An example would be what he described as a remote-controlled physiotherapeutic device that serves as a leg compress.
“When I was in the portal during the spring, I had a good amount of time because I was not doing anything with football,” he said. “So, I put my (educational) background to use with coding and putting things together.”
That is right up his alley.
“I like the innovation side and the creative side of medicine where you can make ideas become reality, make groundbreaking things,” he said.
With another year of eligibility, Reuben desires to keep breaking ground at USF.
“It’s been great,” he said. “I obviously made the perfect choice.”
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