By Tim Peterson
(Monrovia) – Chris Williams has stepped down as the head football coach at Monrovia after five years he confirmed Thursday.
Williams indicated that a new administration is in place and they decided they wanted to go in a different direction. With that in mind he decided to resign.
The Wildcats were 35-14 overall and won three Rio Hondo League titles during Williams five-year tenure. They were 1-3 in the playoffs. Monrovia went 10-0 in the regular season in 2021 but fell to Norte Vista in the first round of the CIF Division 6 playoffs.
Last year the Cats were 8-2 in regular season and won the Rio Hondo but fell to Northwood 63-56 in the first round of the Division 8 playoffs.
Monrovia will begin the search for new head coach immediately.
Chris Williams Statement:
@ Question Mark: You’re not at the top of your game right now, because that was a strange comment.
I was a little snarky at first, but it turned out that there had been a reference to La Serna way down there in the fine print that we’d both missed. (Which is exactly what LSJ said.)
Something like this just proves we’re human, and it ended up being much more of a meeting of the minds than a tussle. You must’ve missed the bit of humor on the back end of our dialogue.
Have a good evening, sir.
@RV & LJ: Please take your hair pulling tussle back to your local high schools. Not as sexy of a cat fight as you two think.
@ LS Juggernaut: Oh darn, you’re right; that’s what I get for trying to speed-read down the thread. That paragraph written by “@CIF” wasn’t specifically about La Serna……until it was, right at the end.
I appreciate your sense of humor and good sportsmanship. Have a nice one.
@Ron Vrooman
Actually,I took a second look at this thread after your comment, and low and behold @CIF did bring up La Serna. So we were both wrong.
In a thread about a Monrovia coach. Some of you guys are too much.
One additional note on Alhambra High football coach Ed Sowers: His teams won Pacific League titles in 1948 and ’55.
@Ron seems like the baseball program is going down hill without steve
@ Anonymous (the one who misspelled “losing”): It might surprise you that Eric Bergstrom is the fourth-winningest head coach in the history of the Alhambra High varsity football team.
This is how the list goes:
1. George Hobbs (1927-47): 122-59-10. Hobbs’ teams won three CIF championships, were runners-up twice, and captured seven league titles.
2. Gil Ruedaflores (1989-2009): 111-110-2. Gil’s teams won two league titles and made a total of 12 playoff appearances. (His playoff record was 2-12, by the way.)
3. Ed Sowers (1948-57 & ’59): 58-38-9. Sowers’ 1955 squad was the CIF runner-up, and the Moors made the playoffs four times during his tenure.
4. Eric Bergstrom (9 full seasons + 1 game, 2013-present): 48-50. In his time as head coach, Alhambra has won one league championship (in 2019) and made a total of four playoff appearances.
Note: No other head coaches got remotely close to 48 wins in all the time since AHS first fielded a varsity football team in 1912.
Fun fact: Besides Hobbs, Ruedaflores, and Sowers, the only other head coaches who have had winning career records at AHS were Lou Torres (13-9 in two seasons) and Fred Whittingham (8-1 in 1972).
More fun facts: Whittingham left Alhambra after the ’72-’73 school year to become an assistant coach at BYU, and he later spent many seasons as an assistant with the Rams and the Raiders in the NFL. He was also the father of current Utah Utes head coach Kyle Whittingham.
I firmly believe that this past season was an anomaly in what has generally been an upward trend tor the Alhambra football program since the start of the 2018 season.
We were once again somewhat short of experienced players in 2022, and injuries were also a factor. Our freshman quarterback, Bryan Leonard, managed to throw for almost 1,500 yards despite having only one good receiver for most of the season. Our running attack virtually disappeared at times, we were subpar on special teams, and we experienced some crucial lapses on defense.
Coach Bergstrom and his staff will be working to remedy these problems during the upcoming spring and summer. They have always worked hard and they’re not going to change their approach now.
Alhambra also has a lot of players who’ve got something to prove. I’m cautiously optimistic about the future.
@ LS Juggernaut: That was easy to do, since the original post was about Chris Williams resigning as the head coach at Monrovia High School. Strangely enough, you’re the only person who’s mentioned La Serna on this thread so far.
@ Noah’s Dad (?): Keeping accurate stats can be a demanding job at times, but I enjoy doing it for my alma mater. I’ve done stats for Bell High School, East L.A. College, and Alhambra High, where I’ve been for the last 20 seasons. I’m willing to stay at AHS for as long as they’ll have me.
Speaking of stats, here are some that you might find interesting:
Alhambra quarterback Michael Gonzalez (2021 season)—169 completions in 326 passing attempts (51.8%) for 2,241 yards and 28 touchdowns, with only seven interceptions.
Michael spread the ball around effectively to three good receivers: Liam Barajas (51 catches), Johnny Thang (43 catches), and Joshua Soto (39 catches). He also carried the ball 99 times for 369 yards (3.7-yard average) and three TD’s. (Michael was our third-leading rusher, by the way.)
It was a real struggle at first, but Michael gradually became a leader on a relatively young and largely inexperienced team playing in its first full season since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. His leadership and his effectiveness as a passer and runner largely explain why Alhambra overcame a 1-4 start and went on a 5-2 run to the Division 14 semifinals.
In the end, Michael took advantage of the opportunity which Noah left behind when he defected to Monrovia. He became the football hero at AHS that Noah could’ve continued being had he stayed.
Speaking strictly for myself, Noah’s decision to leave his teammates, coaches. and friends at Alhambra after two highly successful seasons says volumes about his character. Talk about deserting one’s school and community…
I’m glad that Monrovia, with its ill-gotten gains, went down in the first round in 2021.
@ron I still believe they should have kept coach Chuck instead of firing him. But coach Eric has had some good seasons and some bad ones but given the state of the almont Alhambra could be a dominant force but seems to be fighting for third place. Go get the el Serrano and Pasadena kids like Gil did
Impressive. A thread with several comments but none of the haters/crybabies brought La Serna unnecessarily into the conversation.
Nice Progress.
Lol enjoy keeping the stats…..
Coach Eric needs to be on line 1 trying to hire Matty v as OC at Alhambra now that he stepped from his position down at bishop Amat
Lol ur coach has a loosing record without that QB n those are facts !!!!
@ 4th Street: Fourth Street, indeed. (It happens to be the street that runs past the athletic facilities on the Alhambra High campus.)
AHS doesn’t have much control over the funding for facilities; the school board and the district administration decide what gets done on each campus. And, the district management has allowed some of the classroom buildings at AHS, as well as the 1964 gymnasium, to deteriorate.
Coach Bergstrom was pressed into service as the athletic director following Jerry DeSantis’ retirement in 2019. He served as AD for one year before being replaced by Maya Joko, who works full-time in that job when she’s not coaching swimming and water polo. I know both coaches, and I can truthfully say that they’ve been doing everything they can with what they have.
I totally disagree with the line about “Keppel administrators,” and on a couple of levels.
First, the primary reason for a school’s existence is to provide instruction and learning opportunities. Extracurricular activities such as athletics, marching band, drama, and clubs are supposed to be complementary in nature.
Second, one AHS principal who had previously spent a long time at Keppel was Duane Russell, who coached the varsity football team there before becoming an administrator. He ran AHS from 2013 to 2019, and one of his first decisions as principal was to hire Coach Bergstrom to take over the football program. As far as I could tell, he was fully supportive of all the athletic teams at Alhambra.
Marisa Palacios served as principal for the next two years after Mr. Russell’s promotion to the district office. She closely followed our varsity football team, attending virtually all of the games in 2019, which was the last season before the Covid-19 pandemic set in.
By the way, Ms. Palacios was an assistant principal at San Gabriel High before taking a similar job at AHS in around 2015. I believe that she was also an AP at Keppel for a relatively short time before she returned to AHS as principal.
The current principal at Alhambra is Ms. Diaz-Ferguson, who was previously an assistant principal at San Gabriel. I have to admit that I’m not familiar with her approach; I’ve been spending most of my time subbing at the elementary schools this year.
Have a happy new year, everyone!
@ Moor4life: Yeah, that was my point when I contrasted Alhambra’s football facilities against Keppel’s. At least Keppel has a decent stadium, where new benches were installed roughly 10 years ago. (As a historical note, the Aztecs’ current stadium is probably 1950’s-vintage; the original football field was located where the baseball diamonds are now.)
The San Gabriel Matadors, who are also in the Alhambra Unified School District, play in a beautiful stadium, which was extensively renovated in 2007. And, Keppel’s facilities are adequate, if not great.
But, as you said, Moor Field has been inferior for decades. Temporary bleachers have to be installed every year (and are occasionally put in late), there are no locker rooms, and the restrooms are in a portable bungalow. We were actually reduced to using Port-a-Potties for a season or two.
One might think that the school board and the district administration would make a concerted effort to ensure that the facilities across the district are at least comparable, if not equal. That hasn’t been the case for many years.
Fairly recently, there has been discussion concerning the construction of a football stadium either at Moor Field or on the Alhambra High campus. (I believe there are actual plans in existence, but I can’t confirm that.) The City of Alhambra has been a major player in this drama, and God knows what else besides the pandemic has been delaying progress.
The Alhambra Thunderbirds, our longtime Junior All-American feeder program, became defunct approximately a decade ago after their president embezzled a ton of money in a raffle scam. No organization has yet risen to replace them.
Since we’re talking about the Thunderbirds, I’d like to mention that one of the last noteworthy players they produced was quarterback Darrian Cazarin, who also happened to be a grandson of AHS head coach Gil Ruedaflores. Darrian struggled during his sophomore year at Alhambra, after he became the starter at midseason, but he threw for more than 2,000 yards in each of the next two seasons (2008 and ’09).
As it now stands, some of our guys played youth football in El Sereno or elsewhere before they enrolled at AHS. However, our coaches have had to teach many of the entering freshmen (and some of the older guys) how to play football. It’s far from an ideal situation, but our coaches are willing to expend the time and effort required to develop players.
Isn’t coach Eric the AD as well at Alhambra interesting that Alhambra hasn’t invested in there facilities but ever since they started hiring keppel administrators all they care about is academics and not athletics, all our sports at Alhambra have taken a hit
Keppel facilities ain’t that good lol. Alhambra hasn’t ever had good facilities we made do with what we given it’s worse now because of time. What happened to the thunderbirds? Shocked nobody has started a feeder program
@ Anonymous: I’m not mad at anyone, sir, and your comment about Alhambra not being able to “keep any good players” is an overstatement, to say the least.
We’ll have a fair number of starters coming back next season, and we also have players coming up from our JV and freshman teams. I’d be surprised if we don’t make the playoffs, but, of course, getting there is always easier said than done.
As for that quarterback you mentioned, he and his dad were looking to leave Alhambra before the start of his sophomore season.
As it turned out, he waited another year, transferring after having played on teams that went 8-2 and 12-1. He generally played well for us, but his accomplishments wouldn’t have been so great without a supporting cast that included three All-CIF receivers and a strong defense. His departure was a hell of a way to show gratitude toward his teammates and coaches.
Alhambra’s accomplishments over the last nine full seasons (counting a league championship and four playoff appearances) have come despite having no youth feeder program, and facilities that are inferior to Keppel’s.
What are Alhambra’s selling points? Those include a school that’s at least decent academically, the idea of being part of a good community, and a coaching staff that works hard and projects a positive attitude. (Our coaches are even willing to teach guys how to play football from scratch!)
@ron you can remain skeptical Maxie because of his past but most of the kids Pasadena is getting are kids who leave Pasadena because there recruited to other schools. As far as milvon James he has coached at schools with no resources in the ghetto Hawkins high had no resources was a brand new program and Inglewood was a doormat program and also no resources, that kids transfer to him is because Mil’Von develops them for the next level. Milvon should it this year he can coach making to the championship game against schools that 3 times the resources
@ A-Town: They were all pretty tight-lipped about it; the first inkling I got that there might have been some recruiting going on was when I heard in 2009 that wide receiver Mitchell Crockom was from Pasadena. The following year, I overheard a discussion about some of the players being residents of El Sereno, which is Wilson High School country.
When I heard this stuff, I didn’t like it because I’ve always been philosophically opposed to recruiting athletes at the high school level. The football culture at Alhambra has changed for the better in this regard. We fell a little short this year, but we’re trying to win the right way, and I believe we’ll be competitive next year.
Also, just to clarify things a little more, I never posted on this website until I became aware of its existence in 2010 or ’11. That explains why you didn’t hear from me during the early 2000’s.
As for your comment about Coaches Maxie and James, I’ll remain skeptical, given their past histories.
@ron you just mad that our staff at Alhambra can’t keep any good players and they transfer out. Like our qb who transferred to Monrovia. Coach Eric needs to get out there and sell moor football get the transfer back in. Gil did a good job of recruiting kids to Alhambra
@ron funny that you were not saying anything when Gil and Torres were recruiting players over to Alhambra left and right. And if look at it coach James and maxie they bringing kids back to there local school were they were supposed to go. If Pasadena and Inglewood high didn’t have these coaches the kids would be going outside the district.
@ MJW: The answer is, the guidance office staff at the school site, which is overseen by the assistant principal for guidance. (For those who aren’t familiar with the terminology, I’m talking about the counseling office.)
Enrollments or attempted enrollments that are problematic in nature can be brought to the attention of the district office. The head coach of the team in question and the athletic director could become involved in the discussion as well.
I’m somewhat familiar with the process in the Alhambra school system, having helped out in the guidance and attendance offices at AHS on occasion during my career as a substitute teacher. However, practices could possibly vary from one school district to another.
In my experience at AHS, parents or guardians have to provide a utility bill or some other form of documentation as proof of a student’s residential status. If the student lives outside the school’s attendance boundaries, he or she must receive a permit in order to attend.
I’m not one to deflect blame away from coaches who are actively recruiting and poaching players from other schools, since they’re the instigators for all of this. But yeah, they have to have people within the school administration who are either actively helping them or looking the other way.
@Ron, AHS stat man. ANYONE may answer this question. WHO are RESPONSIBLE for a “New Enroll Student” to see IF that student is IN their District or OUT of their District; the Administration or the Coach? If you ANSWER this question CORRECTLY you will SEE where the REAL problem lay. WHO SUPPOSE TO CATCH THIS?????? The Coach can’t put a Uniform on anyone that doesn’t come through ADMINISTRATION. So how are the Coach being BLAMEED for playing Player’s OUT of thier district?
Crazy idea but wouldn’t it be nice if CIF had a site where you could see the team rosters and just the zip code of where the player lived. It would be a real eye opener, stop a lot of aguing, stop a lot of lying and see who really is coaching up their teams. Maybe make your divisions based on that. Your D1 division could be the schools that play with the most locals and on down. That would put La Serna etc rightly in D14 and Whittier High D1. Crazy huh?.
@ Coacher: There’s a big distinction between that and having coaches openly recruiting/poaching players from other high school programs. If players and their parents want to make a move on their own (literally or with a legal permit), then that’s up to them. But, CIF needs to put an end to the inducements and all the other underhanded crap that has been going on.
Williams, Villasenor, Maxie, James and other recruiter types should be forced to coach up the bulk of their players from ninth grade on, like most other coaches do. Let’s bring the “Integrity” back into CIF.
Remember this. Every School is PRIMARILY Identified by it Football Program. WHY?
The REVENUE it create. Enought said from me. I’m out of here……….!0/4
P.S. If you want a LOSING program HIRE me; and I WILL loose EVERY game
for you. “I am Just That Good!!!”
@Ron, AHS stat man. There is a element of truth in what you say; but we all KNOW that in SPORT’S today at ANY level
; it has become the NATURE of the BEAST to win. Now, people like me and the CIF didn’t start this; the DESIRE to WIN
of SCHOOL’S and Head Coache’s started this. We are ALL victem of DESIRE to WIN in every level of LIFE! At this point
of the GAME there is NO turning back to the old norm. IT’S THE NATURE OF THE BEAST!!!
So if a top kids from Montebello wanted to transfer in you wouldn’t like it? Maybe a few of your players have friends that come down cause they talked them into it. most of the time that’s how it works.
@ MJW & Coacher: Everyone who adheres to the “win-at-all-costs” philosophy, believing that all rules are meant to be bent or broken, should concentrate on the NCAA and professional sports. People like yourselves and the ethical weaklings who run CIF are ruining athletic competition at the high school level.
@MJW
100% truth
This is SPORT’S, High School Football. We complaint about teams that has a few outstanding players. We want to blame it on recruting and transfers. WHO want to play on a losing team for 3 years just to be proud that I was HOME GROWN? Tell that to Alabama, Ohio State, Michgan, LSU, Georgia, USC, UCLA, Greenbay Packers, LA Rams, Dallas Coyboys etc. Are ALL Mater Dei, St John Bosco players home growns; are do they come from ALL over? Every school should want to have a winner, but don’t blame the school who are a winner for being a winner. Let’s us all grow up!
And both places he got ran out town. He was not the head coach at both places, his dad was. Matty job was to bring in players, kind of like a recruiting coordinator.
Now these guys are looking for a DJ for the game. Next they will ask to bring your one dollar bills and send you to the VIP room. It doesn’t look like a good idea to learn your name to this endeavor. Some coaches are getting sucked in because they are afraid of losing players to these guys. Stand up to the bullies!!!
Hire coach Eric from Alhambra
He has proven that he can get transfers and call himself great then lose early in the playoffs.
@socal come on Matty has proven that he can be a a head coach at la Wilson and Sierra vista.
How many D-1 players have Monrovia put out in the last 5 years? It’s not the D-1 players that Monrovia has; it’s SYSTEM that Coach Williams has that he has prefected. He WON with it at North View and has done the SAME
at Monrovia and will do the SAME at his NEXT stop. The ONLY answer to the Riddle is this. “The answer to the
riddle is right in Front of your Face. Look closely and you’ll get your answer. “BLACK and a DAM Good Coach!!!”
The answer to the riddle is rigjt in Front of your face. Look closely and you’ll get your answers 😉
Great example is Encinas at SG.
Matt V and Maxie are assistant coaches for a reason. These guys are just PR guys that go out and recruit players. They will never coach what they have at the school, If they did they would not even compete. Most reputable coaches know these guys are full of DELETE. I was surprised that Amat hired this Joker. CIF put in competitive equity because coaches would recruit and beat up on lesser talented teams. Pasadena was out in the first round because when the talent is equal these jokers can’t compete. Yeah, saw these guys on the 7 on 7 Circuit and there would have D1 guys all over the place and barely come out with victories if that. No respect for loud mouth bullies pounding their chest for beating up on far lesser talented team. Give me a coach that takes over a program with home grown talent and does something with them. That’s not these guys!!!
I call for Coach G5 to take the reigns. I see a former alumni taking over though. Who will it be? Kennedy Bryant and sons. Not a bad Idea. I like the sound of that. Monrovia needs someone who will bring back tradition only an alumni can do.
I wonder what the new direction is, losing? Any way all kinds of coaching jobs open.
I heard Former Monrovia Alum Kennedy Bryant is being hired as the new head coach
Ronnie Hillman, former Broncos and La Habra High running back, has passed away at age 31. Cause of death was kidney cancer. Rest in peace.
@tpeterson what are the chances Matty v or maxie get hired at Monrovia. Matty v coached there for a minute and maxie has those Pasadena connections