A BIG STEP TOWARD THE DREAM
The Dons have high hopes for the season
Progress for the West Las Vegas High School football team has been steady since Adrian Gonzales moved across town to take over the program. Now entering his fourth season, Gonzales believes the time is ripe to make a large advance.
“I would say they’re trending up,” he said. “I want to continue to climb. I said it would be baby steps and, hopefully, in year four, we’ll take a big step.”
The team went from three wins in his first season to four the next to six and a playoff berth last year for the first time in 13 years. Last season, however, was marred by a losing streak to end the year that did not sit well with the coaches or players.
“We didn’t like the way our season ended with four straight losses,” Gonzales said. “It left a bad our taste in our mouths. We know we’re better than we played in the four games.”
It’s also given the returning players motivation for this season.
“We just weren’t playing to our full potential,” said bruising senior lineman Cassius Trujillo. “It was an interesting year last year. Coming off of that win streak and then losing the last four of our games, it sure left a bitter taste in our mouths this year. We want to prove ourselves.”
There is plenty of room for optimism as players who filled 18 of the 22 starting slots are returning.
“I personally can’t wait for the season to start,” said Trujillo (6 foot, 280 pounds). “We are all excited. We know what we’re doing. We’re already adding new stuff and thinking of newer plays, in comparison to last year, we were still struggling with our breadand-butter plays. But not now. We all know them. We can finish up working in the weight room and go outside to run a couple of plays, and everybody knows what they’re doing.”
For the Dons, it all starts with their ability to run the ball, and Trujillo and his linemates will have the pleasure of opening holes for one of the best backs in the state in junior Darion Williams (5-5, 140), who finished with 1,376 rushing yards and 21 touchdowns.
“He’s pretty quick,” Gonzales said. “And he’s a strong kid, very strong for his size.”
There will be a slight change at quarterback as sophomore John Balizan (6-3, 175) will take over the duties full time after a timeshare last year with Robbie Alarcon (5-8, 155), who is moving to wide receiver for his senior year.
“He can sling the ball pretty good,” Gonzales said of Balizan.
And senior Alarcon will be joining leading receiver sophomore Estevan Gonzales (5-7, 145), who totaled 461 yards last season.
With so many weapons across the field, the Dons can be expected to put up plenty of points and coach Gonzales believes the team’s best units may be on the line on both sides of the ball.
“Our strong points are definitely going to be the offensive and defensive lines,” he said. “We have a lot of retuning kids that are strong and I think that’s going to be our core. We have some really strong linemen kids that we’re going to lean on heavily.”
It all leads to high hopes for the season.
“Honestly, my expectations are I’m planning on being in the championships and getting that ring,” Williams said. “That would be a dream come true.”
Simply having that playoff experience of a year ago should help that cause immensely, he said.
“I feel like that gave us a little bit of experience, how you have to play to get it done,” Williams said. “It was new to us. We didn’t know what to expect and now we know. I feel like we’re going to go in more prepared and ready to play.”