The road to victory has not been smooth. With three head coaches in four years it’s been difficult for the varsity, and it wasn’t going to get any easier for new coach Cesar Chaidez and his staff.

Born and raised in Salinas, Chaidez went to Salinas High, and later attended Hartnell. At Hartnell, he played two years of football and received a scholarship to play at Sacramento State. He came back to Salinas to become an elementary teacher, which he has been doing for 17 years. Currently he’s been teaching at Los Padres Elementary.

Chaidez has been coaching high school football for about 15 years now (on and off) and has experience coaching all 3 levels. “Being a 1st year head coach is being able to acclimate yourself to all the different elements of running a football team, making sure the kids are doing their work, ensuring they are getting the right grades for them to be good student athletes for our program,” said Chaidez. Many feel it is best to have coaches on campus but Chaidez disagrees. “It hasn’t been a problem because we get out at 2:20 pm, so I’m always here before the kids get out. I think I’m able to balance it out because of my flexible schedule.”

This year, like every year, the head coach has high expectations for the varsity team, starting with a program philosophy. “It’s basically teaching our kids that the foundation for any success, on or off the field, is established by understanding the essential characters of success and beyond that, it really is about establishing a different culture here at Alisal,” said Chaidez.

Although the Trojans haven’t won a game so far, it hasn’t stopped Chaidez and the team to keep persevering. Chaidez plans on finishing the season strong. “Before we have the ability to have a good football team to make to the playoffs we have to establish character traits to all our kids to be successful off the fields, those character traits and that discipline translates into success on the field.” So far the whole team has been making growth everyday according to Chaidez. “I tell my kids, you are who you are and you grow from there, and emphasize on the growth,” said Chaidez.

The players seemed to feel optimistic as well. “We have the talent and ability to play with playoff teams,” said running back/bandit, JC Maravillo. “Our main struggle is that we’re not as united as a team, there are people that are trying to be individuals,” said Javion Macias (running back and strong safety). Wide receiver Alfredo Ortega stated, “We were the better team (overall) we just didn’t execute, we made a lot of mistakes but we did learn a lot as well.”

As far as the rest of the season Chaidez said, “We’re putting in new systems and a new scheme on offense, a new scheme on defense, and new scheme on special teams, and we have many new coaches learning to work together. Kids are coming together; we’re very positive. We should have won Week 1 of league, but we just let it slip away. However, we definitely improved Week 1 of league, kids have been believing more and coaches have been making adjustments, we’re putting them in position to make plays.”