“I hope I do good,” the newly-hired head coach for the Dulce High School football team, Dennis Garcia, said.
He took a fresh, powder-blue helmet out of a cardboard box and worked to fit it on one of his player’s heads. The practice, Aug. 7, was Dulce’s first with helmets. Before they begin full practices, they have to play two days with helmets and then three days with pads.
The players took a warm up jog up the hill adjacent to the football field, sporting their new helmets, and Garcia explained his predicament at the moment.
He knows little of the team of which he recently took charge and is learning more about his squad depth every day, as players begin to show up. Right now, he has around 15 players at his disposal, but is hoping to recruit more when school officially starts.
Garcia added that when he played football at Dulce, where he graduated in 1994, he played on a team that had 13 players and they went 12-2. So, he knows the size of the team is not the most worrisome.
What he has deduced is that his team will not be a brutish, blocking force. He only has a couple of players that make it over the 200-pound mark. So, he is hoping to create some schemes that will allow the speedy side of the team take charge of a game.
He did know that last year, the Hawks generally operated out of an “I” or wishbone formation, both of which are run-heavy. But, he is excited to put his own touch on the team’s strategy.
The team has been doing strength and conditioning practices for the last month, with as many football players as can attend Garcia’s sessions. He said at times it could get depressing, with only three or four players showing up to practice. He even had doubts as to whether he would be able to field a full team of 11 players on the field at all times.
For the most part, Garcia will be working with a relatively inexperienced group of players. Only a handful are returning to the team and even fewer are returning starters.
“We lost about eight seniors, including our whole backfield for defense,” sophomore running back Marvin Reval said.
“We lost our quarterback too,” junior safety Jaron James added.
Reval and James are two of those returning players, and they have found themselves in a difficult situation, attempting to keep the younger players focused and lend a helping hand to those new to the Hawks football program.
“We’re just trying to keep people in place, and let the little guys look up to us and then try to push ourselves and everybody else,” Reval said.
As a new coach, Garcia will have little pressure to produce a winning football unit this year, as last year the team only won three games. The Hawks finished their 2016 season with a 3-7 overall record, going 1-3 in their district and finishing second to last in that 3A district.
With the inexperience and new coach comes doubts, but also a hopeful uncertainty among the players.
Reval and James were confident their team could finish with a better record than last season, especially since they feel they are under better coaching guidance than they had prior.
The pair liked Garcia significantly better than their past coaches, saying he has a real knack for motivating the players and providing them with self-confidence.
They said last year, they lacked quite a bit of discipline and self-confidence, being unable to fight back and try to win a game when they were losing.
For the first game of the season, Sept. 1, Dulce will be playing Tohatchi High School before they head to play Escalante High School, Sept. 8.
Last season, the Hawks lost to Escalante via mercy rule, 50-0, and one of the main goals for Dulce this season will be to go the distance with the Lobos. If they are able to achieve that in the second game of the season, then they will already be on their way to a more successful season than last.