ABOVE: Varsity football players strategize with coaches during the Taft game this football season, in front of a sparse crowd of dedicated fans.
Football is the backbone of high school in Texas. It’s the nights where all students come together as one to support their favorite sport. Where there are cheers and yelling, family and friends, screams and roars, and ups and downs. But for our campus, it has been a road full of sorrow and sadness. The cheers and yelling turn to sighs and silence, the crowds are empty and get emptier by the quarter, and there’s been more downs than ups.
Our team has not made the playoffs since the Fall of 2000, 20 years ago. In the Fall of 2001, the team had a winning season, and just missed the playoffs with a close loss to Taft, who would go on to play in the State Championship that year. Warren High School opened the following season, taking a large portion of the student population and football team, and since that time, the team has won one or two games a year since then if they are lucky, with one exception of a five win season in 2017.
ABOVE: From the 2000 yearbook, players celebrate a playoff victory in front of a packed house full of students and community members before heading to the State Semi-Finals, finishing in the top four teams in Texas. Feeling confident of the win, junior linebacker Jimmy Pesina has a moment of early celebration with senior safety Omar Rubio.
The team constantly feels pressured and feel like people give them pity because of their lack of success on the field in these past 20 years. They get little to no support from the school, besides the ones who have to be their like the band, pep squad, cheerleaders, and others, along with the parents of half of the players. Their downfall has caused many people to believe there’s no hope in getting out of this slump, leaving us with empty stands and silent crowds.
Former Holmes varsity quarterback from 1999 to 2001, current offensive coordinator for the Huskies, Coach Sean Salinas believes the current struggles have a lot to do with youth.
“It’s difficult for young guys coming up being in some of these starting roles and being under the lights for the first time,” Salinas said.
ABOVE: Current offensive coordinator, Coach Sean Salinas, hands the ball off in a tight game against Taft high school back during the 2000-2001 football season. Salinas was quarterback for the Huskies from his sophomore year to his senior year, during which time the team made two deep playoff runs, making it to the state semifinals and the state quarterfinals and claiming the City Championship.
He has been with the football team for the past three years and hasn’t seen much growth in wins during that time.
“I think a lot of that young vibe for us was one of the main struggles of just being young inexperienced,” Salinas said. “With more experience, you’re usually going to be better off.”
The older players on this team have done their best to be the leaders, but couldn’t seem to bring the team together to win games. When it came to being under the lights, the pressure of being in front of all those peoples tends to get to people, and it has affected the young players drastically.
Salinas’s motivation to coach the team has not seemed to change despite the slumps and droughts they have been it for these past almost twenty years.
“I don’t think there’s a team or group of kids that are ever, in my mind, going make me not want to do what I love to do,” Salinas said.
With last season’s homecoming victory over the Marshall Rams being the last win, the team still keeps the same mentality, working to get better week by week and progressing daily.
“We’re here,” Salinas said. “This is our life. This is what we do. Coaches are here Sunday to Sunday.”
Salinas and other coaches have given so much of their time to the organization and they do not plan on leaving anytime soon. Salinas gives speeches and has talks with the players to keep them on track and focused on this week or the next. Win or lose, the coaches are all-in on the team. Even if he’s been through more bad times than good with this team, Salinas plans to stay and help these groups that come through to get out of their slump. The coaches keep at it, and continue to hope that one season soon, it works and all comes together, bringing Holmes football back to its former glory.