How weekday car rides in high school gave Clemson QB Uiagalelei another father figure
Around 7 a.m. on Jan. 9, 2020, Christmas break was over and Paul Diaz was leaving his Diamond Bar home in California to make the trip to St. John Bosco in Bellflower. For the first time in 3½ years, the Braves’ defensive line coach could no longer take the carpool lane for the nearly 30-mile trek in the famous Southern California traffic.
He turned on Sirius XM’s ESPNU channel to listen to “Full Ride,” which has become part of his morning routine. As he put the key in the ignition and left his driveway, the only voice he heard in the black Honda Pilot was show host Chris Childers — and it finally sunk in.
D.J. Uiagalelei wasn’t there.
The quarterback who evolved into one of the nation’s top recruits and rode shotgun with Diaz in the Honda every weekday had graduated from St. John Bosco in December 2019 and enrolled at Clemson a month later.
Uiagalelei earned his first two career starts as a true freshman that fall. As a sophomore this year, he’s the full-time starter for the Tigers. Anyone who watched his games against top-tier competition in high school and the two-game sampler in 2020 will be excited about what’s to come.
“He’s special,” St. John Bosco head football coach Jason Negro said. “This is not just your normal, you know, just high-level college athlete. This guy is focused on being the greatest that he can be and representing himself the best way that he can.”
Thousands of miles and three time zones away from the Upstate of South Carolina, the Diaz family will be rooting on Uiagalelei, who Diaz now considers like a son. Uiagalelei returned the sentiment, calling Diaz a father figure.
“I probably spent more time with him than probably any other coach,” the Tigers’ sophomore signal caller said. “We just had many talks, so me and coach Diaz are super close. Love Coach Diaz.”
Carpool buddies
In 2015, St. John Bosco was taking on Bishop Amat during the state semifinals when Diaz noticed what he thought was a high school student.
He couldn’t take his eyes off the presumed defensive end, so he asked some of the other coaches about him. It took Diaz several moments to process that DJ Uiagalelei, then standing around 6-foot-2, was only an eighth-grader and a quarterback for Bosco’s youth program.
A few months later, Diaz found out that Uiagalelei wanted to attend Bosco, a national football powerhouse and an all-boys school. But there was a problem: Uiagalelei lived in the Inland Empire area, which was more than an hour away.
Diaz agreed to take Uiagalelei to school every day.
“I’m always about trying to help somebody out if it’s possible, so I was like sure, let’s try it,” said Diaz, who had offered the same help to another player in the past.
Once the fall rolled around, either Uiagalelei’s mother, Tausha, or his father, David “Big Dave” Sr., would drop their son off at the Diaz residence around 6:30 a.m., a drive that was less than 20 miles from their home in the Inland Empire. From there, the two would take Diaz’s youngest daughter, Makena, to her school before heading to Bellflower.
For the first couple of weeks, those rides probably felt more like an interview for Uiagalelei. Like Makena, who sat in the back seat, the high school freshman was cordial but on the quiet side. He was welcoming but not one to overshare. As a result, Diaz facilitated the conversations and would ask about Uiagalelei’s interests: favorite teams, video games and anything that might interest the average 14-year-old boy.
Soon enough, they bonded over a love for the Los Angeles Lakers and Uiagalelei began to open up more. There was some Braves football talk here and there. Diaz didn’t want to meddle in offensive coordinator Steven Lo’s game plan, but gave Uiagalelei little nuggets of information here and there. He’d watch film of opponents’ defensive lines and share his perspective with the teen.
“I would say, ‘This guy likes this particular move,’ ” Diaz said. “Just little small things like that. Nothing really big that would obviously alter his game plan, just little things that I thought were relevant. ‘Hey, these guys like to do this or this player has this certain, particular trait,’ or something like that.”
Outside of football, what Uiagalelei learned from Diaz was largely around how the coach conducted himself. There was never a time where Diaz got off the phone with wife Sandra where he didn’t say, “I love you.” He was also an attentive girl dad to his daughters — Danielle, now 26, and Makena, 9. Tausha told Diaz how much it meant to Uiagalelei to see those interactions, a sentiment the now 20-year-old echoed recently.
“I think just observing, I think some of the best advice is how to be a good husband, how to be a good father, how to treat your kids, how to be a good husband, how to treat your wife,” Uiagalelei said. “I think that’s some examples like that.”
Family has always been important to D.J. Uiagalelei, who has a tattoo of his last name encapsulated by Polynesian tribal patterns on his right forearm. While Diaz was taking calls from his wife, Uiagalelei would often get calls from his younger brother, Matayo. He would ask when D.J. was coming home and the older brother would assure the middle-schooler, who’s now at Bosco and one of the country’s top-rated recruits, he’d be there soon.
“It was just something that, in its own way, was a cute thing,” Diaz recalled. “You would just hear this special bond.”
Playing Diaz’s team
Diaz is a born and raised Southern Californian but has always loved Notre Dame. It was something about seeing the golden helmets on TV that attracted a young kid coming up in Pico Rivera in the 1970s.
Many years later during a car ride — and before Uiagalelei had made his college decision — Diaz joked that the only time he wouldn’t root for Uiagalelei is if Clemson played Notre Dame. The good-natured jesting turned into a bit of a conundrum when the Fighting Irish appeared on Clemson’s schedule in 2020 and would be Uiagalelei’s second-ever start.
“I ended up talking to Tausha that week of the game and she said ... of all the things he could’ve told me, he tells me, ‘Oh my God, mom, I’m playing against coach Diaz’s team,’ ” Diaz laughed. “She’s like: I wonder who he’s going to root for.”
Diaz sent Uiagalelei encouraging texts that week but was still torn at kickoff that Saturday night. The Fighting Irish ended up pulling off the overtime victory, 47-40, with Uiagalelei throwing for 439 yards and two touchdowns. It was the most passing yards ever given up by the Fighting Irish, replacing University of Southern California quarterback Carson Palmer’s 425-yard performance in 2002.
Diaz called it the saddest Notre Dame win he’d ever experienced.
“After that I was able to connect with him and told him I was proud of him,” Diaz said. “I never would have imagined I was going to watch my boy here play against my favorite team ever. It was just kind of a dream.”
It wasn’t the first time Uiagalelei had suffered a disappointing loss. In 2017, Uiagalelei was a sophomore and had beat out a senior Iowa State commit, Re-al Mitchell, for Bosco’s starting job under center.
“It took him a few weeks or a few months, I guess I can say, in order to gain that necessary experience on how to watch film, how to translate what you watch from film onto the practice field and then eventually in games,” Negro said, “and by the time we got to the fifth game, or sixth game of the season, he had played just starting to surpass the other kid and took over the job.”
That year, the Braves went 11-3 with two of those losses coming to Mater Dei: once in league play and again in the Division 1 state championship. The Monarchs were led by current Georgia quarterback JT Daniels, then a senior.
Despite the losses, four years ago and now, Diaz said he’s never seen Uiagalelei in a bad mood. No matter what’s happening on and off the field, the quarterback always shows resilience.
By the time he was a senior at Bosco, he was in his third year and second full season as the starting signal caller. He’d grown to a height of 6-4½ and had become the No. 1 pro-style quarterback in the country. Uiagalelei capped off his high school years by getting his revenge on Mater Dei, Bosco’s arch rival, beating Bryce Young, now the quarterback at Alabama, and the Monarchs for a state championship 39-34.
Final days
Before Bosco’s title run in the fall of 2019, Diaz knew Uiagalelei had made his mind up about where he’d go to college. Clemson was the clear choice.
Still, Uiagalelei had to go through the process of getting to know schools and talking to their coaches.
Diaz would sit and listen, then discuss the conversations with Uiagalelei after he got off the phone. Some were more memorable than others. One call included a school, which Diaz kept confidential, singing happy birthday to Uiagalelei on his birthday.
The Tigers had Uiagalelei’s heart, though, and it was time to make it official. While joking around in the car one day, Diaz suggested Uiagalelei reach out to “Full Ride” radio show to talk about his decision to commit to Clemson once he made it public.
The show had become a go-to listen on the ride to school. Making an appearance would be perfect, Diaz thought.
Uiagalelei laughed it off but took the idea seriously enough to find contact information and get in touch with the program. Just as Diaz thought, the show’s organizers were more than willing to have Uiagalelei on. He did the segment in the car as Diaz beamed with pride in the driver’s seat as they made the routine trek to Bellflower.
What neither realized at the time was that surreal day in May marked the beginning of the end of their carpooling tenure.
Seven months later, Bosco would end the season downing Mater Dei on Nov. 30 then De La Salle, 49-28, for the CIF Open Division state championship two weeks later heading into the Christmas break.
Riding alone
After the 2019 holidays, Uiagalelei arrived on Clemson’s campus Jan. 5. Diaz was back to the solitude of driving to work alone four days later.
The Braves assistant coach still sees Uiagalelei from time to time. The two and Tausha grabbed lunch together a couple of months ago when the Tiger was home.
Most recently when Uiagalelei was in California, he went out to a few of Bosco’s practices and spoke with Diaz in passing.
“DJ is a very special individual not only to me personally but to our entire program and community here,” Bosco coach Jason Negro said. “I just cannot be more proud of him and I cannot say enough good things about his development over the time that we’ve had the opportunity to work with him. When he comes back here, it’s a special time.”
Still, the banter about the Lakers or college coaches’ recruiting pitches heading to or from Bellflower are now memories. Diaz can no longer use the carpool lane on the freeway, either.
“It just felt weird not having him in the car with me anymore,” Diaz said. “It was like this transition back to what used to be my normal and what’s again now my normal routine of being by myself. I remember being sad that that was it because I felt like we enjoyed each other’s company so much and it just developed so much.”
This story was originally published August 12, 2021 at 6:10 AM.
