After four quarters of football on Friday, head coach Luis
Espinoza found himself drenched in water.
SAN JUAN BAUTISTA
After four quarters of football on Friday, head coach Luis Espinoza found himself drenched in water.
Kneeling down, the emotions overcame the first year coach.
As the Anzar Hawks players retell the story, smiles come across their face. To them – more than scoring 30 points or the final score of 30-14 – their coach kneeling down was the most memorable moment from the program’s first win.
“It was amazing to see coach like that,” Sam Jimenez said. “After the game, we dumped the water on coach and we just to listen to him talk … That was the most memorable thing – him telling us how good we’ve gotten and how much we’ve progressed.”
After a summer full of practices, and nearly two years of trying to develop the program, the Anzar Hawks were victorious for the first time Friday on the road against an 0-2 Cornerstone Christian team.
And being on the road might have been one the biggest motivations playing into the win – nobody wanted to take the three-hour drive back to Anzar having experienced a loss.
“I didn’t’ want to drive back three hours with a loss on our shoulders,” team captain Daniel Modic said. “I didn’t want to think how bad it would be if we had lost.”
But now comes the hard part for the nearly 25 players – repeating that success and giving San Juan Bautista a party they’ll never forget.
“We want to win here,” team captain Daniel Modic said. “Winning on the road was great but we want to do it here. It’s not the same to win when there isn’t many people on the sideline, but we are going to have a lot of people on our sideline cheering for us. We are going to go out hard and try to get that win.”
To do that, the Hawks will take on Woodside Priory on Friday in their third home game of the year. So far through every game, the Hawks have gotten better and better – accomplishing each game’s goal.
The goals started out small this year – get a first down and score a touchdown – but have eventually grown to getting 300 yards of total offense and, of course, getting that first home win.
“We expect to be a winning team now,” Jimenez said. “We know know we can do it. If we were to have played Trinity the way we played Cornerstone it would have been a better game and maybe we would have won.”
That expectation has been building with every accomplishment and practice.
“(On) day one, I remember tackling drills … we did tackling drill every day for the first week of practice,” Jimenez said. “If we would do team (drills) and someone would get a great hit the coaches would get excited, but now if you get a great hit it’s just whatever now. They expect it now.”
And it’s all because of the coaching, quarterback Jeremy Cedeno said.
“The growth has been amazing,” he said. “Coach took us from little baby infants up to where we are now. From here it’s only going to get better. Hopefully, the seniors will leave here knowing they left something great for the freshmen coming in.”
Regardless of what happens the rest of the season, the players and coaches will always have the huddle after the game Friday.
“The feeling … it can not be described,” Cedeno said. “I’m just really glad we came together as a team so now it’s just take that win, and that skill level we played at, and build on it.”
