Sierra Vista Co Head Coach Matt Villasenor.
During this social distancing we got a quick Q&A with Sierra Vista co-head coach Matt Villasenor.
In Co Head Coach Matt Villasenor’s first season last year Sierra Vista went 11-1 overall on the field and advanced to the second round of the Division 14 CIF Playoffs before losing to Loara.
Q: How’s everything going coach through this situation we’re all going through?
A: It’s going good, just taking this whole quarantine thing one day at time. Hopefully everything is back to normal sooner rather then later. I feel bad for all the 2020 kids and their families because you look forward to graduation, etc. So it must be harder on those kids.
Q: Where did you grow up and play your pop warner and high school football?
A: Boyle Heights and played football and graduated from Salesian High School.
Q: Did you play football after high school?
A: Didn’t play after high school. I suffered 5 knee surgeries then got right into coaching and helped young men achieve something I wasn’t able to achieve which is playing D1 football.
Q: Where did your coaching career start?
A: Coaching career started at Cathedral HS under coach Pearson. I was his varsity RB/LB coach right after high school.
Q: I know before Sierra Vista you were at Wilson, how was it there?
A: El Sereno Wilson was good. The one season we were there we broke LA City scoring records and signed a kid D1. We did a good job for what we had.
Q: What made you apply for the Sierra Vista opening?
A: When the Sierra Vista job opened it was intriguing to my dad and our staff. I always wanted to coach a team with black and red colors. Seeing the past there wasn’t much success there and that was intriguing for us and we wanted to challenge our coaching. Everyone can coach talented guys or coach an established program not many are willing to take a team without success and make them successful or relevant.
Q: Have you and your Dad, co-head coach Sergio Villasenor, always been together coaching?
A: My Dad and me have been together before so the past two years haven’t been new to us.
Q: When did you know you had something special with the 2019 Sierra Vista team?
A: I don’t know an exact time when we thought it would be special. I just knew what our coaching staff could do and we knew we would make a impact our first season.
Q: How are your admins at Sierra Vista? I know sometimes they can be tough to work with?
A: We have the best admin team west of the Mississippi! They truly want the best for each kid on campus and sincerely care about them. I mean our principal, Mr. Pratt, shakes every kid’s hand in the morning as they walk into the school and the admin team is out there at the end of every day saying goodbye to each kid.
Q: We all know the upcoming season is at risk with all this going on but what are some of the things that you are looking for next season?
A: This upcoming season is out of our hands but if we have one I’m looking forward to playing our tougher schedule, keeping the bell at Sierra Vista, bringing back to back league champs and getting past the second round. I feel playing a tougher schedule will help prepare us better for the playoffs.
Q: What is Premium Sports?
A: Premium sports is a 7on7 organization based in LA.
Q: Where did you get #TalkToMeNicePlz? I like it.
A: The line talk to me nice came from one of the maxpreps directors. We would use it when we would talk smack to each other and I just ran with it because it was catchy and the kids liked it. It stuck and now everyone knows that line “talk to me nice plz”. Even college coaches use it.
@gg, if you’re talking facts , then you failed to mention that both did in fact have injuries.
If they would have continued to play at the next level is a matter of one never knows. I will tell you this as fact , Sergio Villasenor played ncaa division 1 football at a time when there were very very very few Mexican American players.
Now tell me what you’ve done?
It’s obvious that there’s a lot of opinions and povs on this blog regarding The Villasenor’s. People need to just stick to facts rather than rumors and allegations.
Matt V and his dad have never been able to stay at a school for more than 2 seasons. They always get fired or have to resign under the guise that they’re doing great selfless acts. That in itself should make ADs, administrators and parents raise an eyebrow. A more thorough background check might be required.
Cathedral – let go
Firebaugh – let go
Wilson – let go
Sierra Vista – let go
Matt V probably promotes transferring schools to young people and their parents in hopes that it’ll lead to football glory. Matt V transferred about 3x times (he experience in this area) and look how it turned out for him. “I could’ve been a contender.” His father Sergio transferred from Salesian to Wilson. Sergio was not a Mule his entire career. Both will state injury prevented them from further glory, but, there’s more backstory to those claims as well.
These are all facts. Calling them names is just a matter of opinion. But, it glaring obvious that these guys have no character, nor, tell the entire truth about their athletic, coaching and professional careers.
In the end, the truth always comes to light. It may take 5; 10; 20 or 30 plus years for all the facts to come out. But, it happens, Karma.
Let’s see if this blog is like Twitter and Facebook, big tech censorship.
Hey anonymous, if you know so much, why don’t you say it. Nothing worse than someone throwing stones but not being clear on their point.. We’re all grown-ups, if your gonna put someone on blast, let’s hear it….
It doesn’t matter because without your #1 recruit you’re average. So you go ahead and bitch about guys like us that “hate” on you because as long as you keep recruiting, I’m sorry, as long as kids magically appear, you will never get the credit you deserve.
Guess schools are just supposed to tell kids not to come when they want to play for them. Albert Nuno, Abel Cueva, Nathan Velasquez, Gabriel Michel, Jose Garcia, Eric Ramirez, Joseph Herrera, Vince Herrera, Johnthan Lopez, Isiah Ariza, Joel Placencia, Simon Nuno, Nathaniel Garcia, Ramon Ramirez, Sergio Gonzalez all those kids studs all leaguers, some all CIF and some all area. All homegrown! Go bitch somewhere else, go preach lies to your team.
Go ahead and play the angles. That’s what recruiters do best. Have fun next year. You’re either going to go out and recruit, I mean kids will come to you or you’ll find surrogate kids, or you’ll try to win with homegrown talent and be average again.
You go ahead and tell me since you know. I mean I see a lot of kids play for their dad or father figure. So tell me where he played at before EM in HS.
You’re really going to sit there and tell me Booth isn’t a recruit? Hahahaha. Lame xxxx
Ask this dude why they were let go at WILSON, after breaking all those records? If you’re winning games, breaking records, doing a great job, etc, why is you entire coaching staff let go after one season??? It’s not all about winning!
Yup. Nobody was recruited kids went and played for the team. Coaches kids and kids that went to EM on their own and ended up playing. So NO RECRUITS! Lame xxxx!
No buddy. My questions was “how did you do WITHOUT recruits?” And you meant 16-0*
I would rather go 16-0 with kids that want to come in and play for us than 5-5 with nobody wanting to come in.
Win a state championship.
5-5 with home grown kids. What did you guys do without recruits?
Lame!!! Hahaha. Let me guess you guys went 4-6
Hahaha I love it! I would love to see him and El Monte’s coach and anyone else that recruits answer those questions.
Mater Dei had to forfeit games cause of an ineligible player does that mean kids shouldn’t look up to Coach Bruce Rollinson? lol
Run up the score? That’s a weak comment and only losers will say that. If you don’t like it stop it!
Illegally recruting? I think Every school recruits and if they say they don’t they are lying cause someone on there staff is recruting.
I think SV coaches can careless what other coaches in the SGV think cause most of it is hate. They can’t do things They can do etc
SV doesn’t have over 2,000 kids!
Man I’m glad people are talking about SV!
People love to HATE instead of being happy for these kids.
I guess Winning and exposure brings out the haters I see.
You guys Keep hating you guys are doing a great job!
No one was getting mad when other teams beat up on SV but now you guys are mad.
They only had one “recruit” that didn’t play the first 5 games(Woods). Dimitris was on campus the previous year but after football season from what I heard…technically he wasn’t recruited. The only transfer was Woods. We can go back and forth on transfers and strength of schedule. Only time will tell if they are pretenders or contenders!
Nothing but softball questions. Why not ask? How do you feel about recruiting kids to come to your school? What promises do you make to transfers? Is it your coaching ability that explains the SV turn around? Were you to blame for playing ineligible kids and when did you know they were ineligible. Is it true you are interested in other coaching jobs this season. What D1 players are you responsible for coaching up from the start rather than recruiting?
First, I think these guys did a good job getting their players to play football. The advantage SV has over all teams in their league is they have double the student body of everybody in their league. Duarte has 950 students and SV has over 2,000 students and same with Gladstone, Azusa and all the teams on their schedule. Second, they recruited kids to play in the weakest league in the SGV, so any good recruit will dominate in this league and with one D1 guy let alone two or three whatever they have. I saw the tape and SV does play hard, but they lack good schemes offensively and defensively. It show when they played Loara and lost. Finally, the biggest problem I had with these coaches is they would run up the scores on teams that had very little talent which you don’t see with good coaches.
When big Lou and that great CO team three years ago he could have put 80 on teams every week, but he didn’t and would walk away from the game 40-6 and so on. That’s a good coach and these guys are so insecure they run up scores in the 4th quarter when the other teams is trying to play their back-ups in the game. Yeah, so these guys done understand what it means to be a Big Lou, Bogan etc…. Coaches in the SGV have no respect for SV coaches and it will come back to roost
Wait a minute, didn’t he get the La Puente job???
If this guy could learn some humility people might respect him. It’s also hard to respect a program that preaches hard work then goes and recruits kids. Do it with BP kids.
Man you think that’s cheating? If so like they say if you aren’t cheating you aren’t trying.
SV supporter, they cheated!! How is that putting in work! Playing eneligble players, illegally recruiting…..that doesn’t seem to be putting in work! Lead by example if you’re a great leader.
He was last years coach
Lots of “HATERade” drinking going on lol
Coaching staff did a heck of a job. You don’t have to like the guy but the proof is in the pudding! They are putting the work in!
Let’s hear the responses…go
People drinking that “HATERade” the comments😂
The SV administration is very shady. They start hiring a coach before letting go of other coaches first. The end result of this staff will show how inept the administration. Be careful of what both sides say and make sure $$$ isnt diverted into unwanted expenses.
That’s 12 wins in 4 seasons this coach just had 11 in one. I am not going to bad mouth any coach but this guy has got ppl talking about Sv and the school in general. Why hate on the man? It’s a new day of football people get used to it.
Didn’t they have to forfeit games playing kids ineligible??? Yeah he’s someone our kids should look up too!! At least last years coach had class!!
Moreno that went 1-4, 5-6, 3-8, 3-7 from 04-07???
what is this guy talking about the program under coach Moreno was successful
this is a joke
Straight clown whoever this is
From T. Peterson: How so?
💙 this response!
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