By Tim Peterson
(La Puente) – Bassett named Martin Soto head football coach this week school sources confirmed. Soto, a former assistant coach at Garfield, takes over for Chris Long, who stepped down earlier this year.
Soto was just cleared and hosted the first team meeting Thursday. The Olympians went 2-8 last year and 0-4 in the Miramonte League.
Coach Spathias can coach; he did a superior job at Bassett. got in a tricky situation I heard; don’t know much about it. the principal then did not like him applying elsewhere I heard. Bassett football program has paid a huge price since. Real good coaches are very hard to find=stimulating teenage athletes at a school with terrible history is very difficult. Spathias must have been a real good motivator with very good knowledge of football (and good assistants of course) to ‘outcoach’ the coaches in league
@ Anonymous: Crenshaw and Dorsey haven’t been too bad, either. But, you’re right about most of the other City teams.
By the way, the Bell Eagles had some good moments in the early 90’s. The Eagles had a 10-2 record and won the Eastern League championship in ’92. (They actually beat Garfield that year.) Then, they went 11-3 to take the City 3A title in ’94.
And he always gets out coached by cif teams even though he has the better athletes
Narbonne Head Coach former lower level coach from Garfield
What’s a bell high school and who’s Juan Aguirre? City section doesn’t count when we talk football! The only team they have is narbonne, everyone else is a joke. And we hired an ASSISTANT coach from one of these CITY teams? Wow
Well, John Aguirre had a pretty good run when he was the head coach at Garfield, and he later became commissioner of the L.A. City Section. Coach Aguirre was one of our nemeses when I was at Bell High School in the 1990’s; we had a tough time against his teams.
Ex coach from Garfield? lol, so We hired an assistant coach from a city section team to be our head coach? Wow, we must be very desperate. But then again I’ve heard of great coaches coming from Garfield and doing great things. By the way, that’s me laying on a thick layer of sarcasm
Best of luck Coach Soto. The man is a great motivator and leader. Those boys have a lot of heart and pride. They just need a true mentor that is willing to invest the time in these young men.
I played for Spat. I know him like no other. He know that Bassett or any program needs him more than he needs them. I am a Bassett alumni and I hope we can compete with this new coach. He brings a staff full of football knowledge. I know when we lost him we lost his staff. Even though his a good coach his staff of Urias, Williams, and he brings and his ex players that become part of the coaching staff know the system help so much. Good luck to Bassett we are pulling for us.
Bassett hopefully has a coach who can make them believe in themselves hopefully district realize sports is a big reason why kids go to a high school. Bassett district kids have ended up going to South Hills, Sierra Vista, West Covina, and Los Altos just to name a few schools. Bassett best of luck this football season. Bassett does have a good football coach now on campus Coach Spathais but he not coaching anywhere
This is the same coach that quit on his team last year right before the playoffs. Real class act. I’m sure it won’t take long before his character reveals itself. Good luck with him.
The district fired the coach, the principal, and superintendent. The trifecta only at Bassett. $30mil missing, I hope things get better. The poor kids get the short end of the stick. The new administration thinks every student is going to college. The fact is 10% will attend college and half those kids will drop out. Why is the homeless rate so high because the other 90% have no skills. Put back auto shop and start teaching a trade because college is not for everybody.
Yeah Bassett! Someone in the saddle. Now if Nogales can get it together. Salazar moved to Fullerton over 6 weeks ago, and admin are still sitting on their thumbs. Looks like they are about to let the prior regime’s hard work go don the toilet, and it’s back to the dark ages for the Nobles… what a shame.
I wonder if they tried to convince or beg Spathais to coach again. Since he a teacher on campus.
Hopefully he can recruit the kids on campus to play.