Head Coach Jose Ramos was more determined than ever to take the MBL Championship. The Trojans started the season strong, going 9-2. Among those wins was a victory over Monterey, a team Alisal had not defeated in eight years.

It is easy to see how Ramos has been the greatest contributor to the team’s success. Although he has only been coach for the Alisal team for four years, he has given the program a complete makeover. Having started coaching with this year’s seniors growing together has bonded them strongly. Senior Middle Blocker Daniel Diaz said, “We’ve been playing together since freshman year and we’re like a family.”

In order to help them play together, Ramos started the Salinas Valley Volleyball Club to help develop the program. The SVVC was able to push all the players to their limits with hard practices and tournaments almost every weekend. Not only were they improving their skills but as well they were increasing their communication skills one of the hardest things to obtain in any team. Senior setter, Eduardo Tapia added, ““I think if we didn’t have Chep (Coach Ramos) as coach, things would’ve been way different. Chep brought us together.”

Great coaching really helped this year’s Trojans obtain success, including Jose M. Ramos, the JV volleyball coach, who is an expert in increasing the team’s endurance. Senior Fabian Hernandez, adds, “It was so hard having to condition for long hours and not having breaks made it almost impossible to bear and then again having to do it the next day but it really helped us, we could be in the fifth set and still be at 110% when the other team could hardly breathe.”  Many of the players can agree that their endurance and ability to move around the court has greatly improved thanks to these intense workouts provided by Coach Ramos.

This year’s Trojans have a strong mind set in taking this year’s MBL Championship but it will not be an easy task. Due to their two losses, Palma is now placed ahead of them. However there is some hope they can still take league, if Palma were to lose one game and if the Trojans win the next three games they will take league.  As for CCS this year, Ramos said, “We need to take it one game at a time.” For now his main goal was to take the league champs title.