El Camino winning “unconventionally”
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When Kevin Williams took over at El Camino Real this season, he had to do more than simply become the Conquistadors’ third coach in three years.
He had to broker trust between players and coaches, rebuild the frosh-soph and varsity coaching staffs, and establish an offensive system that would yield immediate results.
So far he’s doing all three.
The Conquistadors are 2-0 entering Thursday’s game against Sylmar. That already matches the win total of last year’s team. The players, who Williams said ‘didn’t like last year’s coaches, to be candid’ have been more receptive to WIlliams’ varsity and frosh-soph staffs.
And the offense? Williams brought in the double wing-T, a running attack that flies in the face of the more contemporary spread and shotgun offenses proliferating high school football. But it can be effective against teams that don’t see it often.
‘I told the kids we’re going to have to be unconventional,’ Williams said. ‘I have the philosophy that not everybody’s going to have a Jimmy Clausen-type quarterback, yet everyone wants to ‘spread’ the ball. With the kids we have -- an offensive line that could move and a tough, physical quarterback in Glenn Coppola, who also plays linebacker -- they were more in the mold of what I was looking for.’
El Camino Real hasn’t had a winning season in the past eight years, and Williams is not making any guarantees that will happen this year, especially with Sylmar, Chaminade, Taft and Birmingham on the schedule. But the Conquistadors are having fun again, along with a feeling that the changes this time around are definitely for the better.
- Mike Terry