After 25 years of being an assistant coach for the varsity football team, Coach Reynard Elzey was elevated to the position of Head Coach. Five new assistant coaches were also hired, Elzey said.
Elzey was the wide receiver coach for the past 25 years under former Head Coach Kelly King, who retired last year. Elzey brought on all five of the newly hired coaches, Elzey said.
“(They) all went here (MHS) at some point when it was late ‘80s, early ‘90s, early 2000s,” he said. “All are alumni; all of them played here.”
Kicking coach James Sampson is one of the new coaches, hired to improve the team’s kicking game. Sampson has extensive background soccer after coaching for several years which he translates over to football, Sampson said.
“I’ve taught all the way from rec, all the way up through high school, a total of a decade and a half,” he said. “(Coached) for a year (at MHS) and five years at Rancho.”
The kickers are now more consistent and confident and are able to kick from further compared to the beginning of the season, Sampson said.
“(The kickers are) a lot more consistent on the kickoff because that’s one of the things that his coach wanted them to work on,” Sampson said. “The varsity (kicker) is a lot more consistent. He can make an extra point at least from the 30 yard line.”
The football team is 3-1 in the preseason; last year the team was not nearly as good, Elzey said. The improvement is due to the player’s more experience, he added.
“We have seniors in the right spots for us this year,” Elzey said. “We had a lot of these guys that have been on varsity for three years. This year’s team, there’s a lot of guys that were with us as sophomores. They’ve been through the grind and know what it takes to play and win, but that experience is now kicked in.”
CCS playoffs begin in the second week of November and teams qualify by placing in the top three in the league during the league season to advance to playoffs, Elzey said.
“I believe we have a great chance of making it to the playoffs this year,” he said. “But with football, everything is a week-by-week thing and staying healthy. So if we can stay healthy week-to-week, I really believe we have a good chance of making the playoffs this year.”
Junior and defensive end Elias Merza thinks Coach Rey is more fun (than previous coaches) and creates a more enjoyable environment during practice, Merza said.
“He makes jokes, he’s funny, and he doesn’t make us run as much,” he said. “And we actually practice well.”
Another feature of the new season is the team’s use of technology. It uses an AI app that one of the football teams created to keep track of stats during the game along with other technology, Elzey said.
“We have the iPads and we can see plays in real time,” he said. “We can put our plays up that we just ran on the TV, so kids can go back and look at that. We can correct mistakes, show them what they did right, show them what they did wrong.”
The football team welcomes the introduction of AI or more technology that could improve the dynamics of the football team, Sampson said.
“It would cut down the time that coaches would have to watch film and try to break it down to what they want,” Sampson said. “If AI could do that, then it could help the coaches a lot, and they can have a lot more spare time for reviewing certain things or preparing for the game.”
Merza thinks the team is different from years before and believes that it will be able to surpass last year’s team, he said.
“I think we have a really good team, and our coaches are really hardworking, and I feel like we really got something this year,” Merza said.
