By MARIO AGUIRRE | STAFF WRITER
LA VILLA — A year ago, La Villa lost its top offensive threat and fell short of the playoffs.
Soon after, the Cardinals lost their coach and missed spring ball.
They started this year 0-3, facing a tough non-district slate, and yet none of it seemed to matter to Ramiro Cantu.
“There’s no excuses,” he said. “You have to produce.”
As a senior, Cantu understands his window of opportunity is shrinking. In four years, he’s made the playoffs twice, but he’s yet to win a game in mid-November. Such a victory would give him, and the 11 other seniors on the team, their first postseason win at the high school level.
Early on, it didn’t seem like an attainable mark. The Cardinals hired a coach in late May. A month later, he completed his staff. And during summer training, only half of the 31 players showed. But in beating Three Rivers — where their former coach is now a coordinator — and Corpus Christi London, 5-0 at the time, La Villa has vaulted itself in the postseason conversation.
And, if Cantu has his way, that opens the possibility of winning “one or two or three” playoff games.
“Hopefully,” he said.
Cantu is one of the central figures of the Cardinals’ slot-T offense. He’s rushed for 990 yards and 11 touchdowns, while quarterback Macario Perez has added 989 yards and 13 scores on the ground. Keeping virtually the same offensive principles as the previous staff has helped first-year coach Shawn Alvarez bring his players up to speed.
It wasn’t until Week 4, against Santa Rosa, that La Villa won a game. But in facing opponents in higher classifications, the Cardinals felt prepared for district.
“It was kind of a blessing,” Alvarez said, “because we were able to throw our kids into the fire early on. We didn’t want to have an easy non-district schedule and burn through it. We didn’t want them to be in a position where they hadn’t been scored on. So, now, it’s like, we’ve been there. We’re able to put up a fight and we win those fights.”
The biggest victory of all was a 24-14 decision over Corpus Christi London in which the Pirates had blanked every opponent leading up to that game while scoring an average of 44.6 points. It pushed the Cardinals to 2-0 in district.
“That helped build our confidence,” Alvarez said. “It really helped the kids start believing in what we’re doing. As a new coaching staff, you kind of ‘what if’ everything.
“But it takes a little bit of time to build trust. And I think in winning those two (district) games, it became a real thing. Like, we can do it.”
Perez has been on both ends of the spectrum. He went a combined 17-5 in his first two seasons, making the playoffs each time. And last year, he was part of a 3-7 squad that missed the postseason.
“It made us very humble,” Perez said. “Humble and hungry.”
Even though he wasn’t with the program last year, Alvarez said he could sense his players “have a bad taste in their mouths” from a year ago. He said players don’t talk about simply making the playoffs but winning games there. And they don’t talk about winning games on Friday nights, per say, but rather “winning the day.”
“To me, that goes beyond the playing field,” Alvarez said. “They’re saying let’s do everything right everyday. For them to change their mindset like that is special. They’re understanding more and more what it takes to win.”